MacDonald's Creed

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I believe in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, my elder brother, my
lord and master; I believe that he has a right to my absolute obedience
whereinsoever I know or shall come to know his will; that to obey him
is to ascend the pinnacle of my being; that not to obey him would be to
deny him. I believe that he died that I might die like him--die to any
ruling power in me but the will of God--live ready to be nailed to the
cross as he was, if God will it. I believe that he is my Saviour from
myself, and from all that has come of loving myself, from all that God
does not love, and would not have me love--all that is not worth
loving; that he died that the justice, the mercy of God, might have its
way with me, making me just as God is just, merciful as he is merciful,
perfect as my father in heaven is perfect. I believe and pray that he
will give me what punishment I need to set me right, or keep me from
going wrong. I believe that he died to deliver me from all meanness,
all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all poverty of spirit, all
cowardice, all fear, all anxiety, all forms of self-love, all trust or
hope in possession; to make me merry as a child, the child of our
father in heaven, loving nothing but what is lovely, desiring nothing I
should be ashamed to let the universe of God see me desire. I believe
that God is just like Jesus, only greater yet, for Jesus said so. I
believe that God is absolutely, grandly beautiful, even as the highest
soul of man counts beauty, but infinitely beyond that soul's highest
idea--with the beauty that creates beauty, not merely shows it, or
itself exists beautiful. I believe that God has always done, is always
doing his best for every man; that no man is miserable because God is
forgetting him; that he is not a God to crouch before, but our father,
to whom the child-heart cries exultant, 'Do with me as thou wilt.'

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I believe that there is nothing good for me or for any man but God, and
more and more of God, and that alone through knowing Christ can we come
nigh to him.

I believe that no man is ever condemned for any sin except one--that he
will not leave his sins and come out of them, and be the child of him
who is his father.

I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing;
without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to
the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he
will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they
pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness
with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the
Son, and the many brethren--rush inside the centre of the life-giving
fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking
which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.

I believe that to him who obeys, and thus opens the doors of his heart
to receive the eternal gift, God gives the spirit of his son, the
spirit of himself, to be in him, and lead him to the understanding of
all truth; that the true disciple shall thus always know what he ought
to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do; that the spirit
of the father and the son enlightens by teaching righteousness. I
believe that no teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks,
but to lead them to the living Truth, to the Master himself, of whom
alone they can learn anything, who will make them in themselves know
what is true by the very seeing of it. I believe that the inspiration
of the Almighty alone gives understanding. I believe that to be the
disciple of Christ is the end of being; that to persuade men to be his
disciples is the end of teaching.

(from Unspoken Sermons, George MacDonald; compliments of the Project Gutenberg Online Reader)