At the Back of the North Wind.3rd

At the end of Chapter 8, after Diamond has awakened from his adventures in the cathedral, he goes out into the Coleman's garden to see the effects of the storm during which North Wind sank a ship, and he sees that a tree has fallen, smashing the summerhouse.  A kindly clergyman is surveying the damages and, seeing Diamond, remarks to him that he wished we all lived at the back of the north wind.  His interest piqued, Diamond asks where that is, to which the clergyman responds, "in the hyperborean regions.  The hyperboreans of Greek mythology were a people reputed to live in an unidentified country in the far north, a people renowned as pious and divinely favored, adherents to the cult of Apollo.

In Chapter 9, when Diamond is again with North Wind, he asks to be taken to her back, she responds that would be very difficult for her since she is herself nobody there, i.e., there is no adversity of any kind whatsoever in heaven.  She adds: "You'll be very glad some day to be nobody yourself.  But you can't understand that now, and you'd better not try.  If you do, you'll probably start imagining some outrageous nonsense and make yourself miserable about it" (86, 87).

MacDonald captures here a truth that is at the very heart of Christianity.  It suggests the central paradigm of Christian experience, and the nature of God himself, for agape love is completely self giving.  Christian conversion begins with a choosing of Christ over the self. Christ states this truth many times in such statements as "he that would gain his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will gain it to life everlasting,"  and "if any one would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."  Being "nobody someday" depicts Christian maturity--which all Christians strive towards in this life but no one completely attains.  It will be fully realized only in the afterlife.

It is important to grasp this truth.  Most people have an ongoing inner quarrel within themselves, regretting or criticizing what they did over against their sense of what they should have done.  The contemporary poet Dana Gioia has a provocative poem that captures an aspect of this inner unrest, which begins:  "Just before noon I often hear a voice, / Cool and insistent, whispering in my head. /  It is the better man I might have been, / Who chronicles the life I've never lead. /  He cannot understand what grim mistake / Granted me life but left him still unborn.  /  He views his wayward brother with regret  /  And hardly bothers to disguise his scorn . . . ."

But such struggle is not the Christian ideal.  Rather, it is to do one's best to forget about oneself:  to be rid of self-concern altogether.  The self is to be denied and forsaken.  Attitudes of Christian love focus one's attention upon the desires of God and the needs of others, together with a willingness to do what is within one's power to do to meet those expectations and needs.  One's best efforts are always inadequate, but the successful Christian life consists of that glad, on-going consciousness of God's presence in one's life, confession of one's shortcomings, claiming forgiveness, and gladly renewing one's efforts.  His yoke is intended to be easy, his burden light.  I think this is a part of what Christ had in mind when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he counsels:  "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. . . . But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness . . . .  Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matt. 6:25, 33, 34).    

After a difficult and strenuous journey, Diamond arrives at the threshold of the afterlife.  While he is ill and in a deep dream or coma, North Wind puts him on a yacht and maneuvers it to sail into the wind.  He momentarily loses her company, than finds her "sitting on her doorstep," and is told he must walk through her to enter into the land at her back.  Some adversity--illness, accident, or whatever--precedes everyone's entry.

At the beginning of Chapter 10 the narrator announces his difficulty in describing Diamond's experiences there, for Diamond not only could not recall much about them, but also found extreme difficulty in describing anything he could recall. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him" (I Cor 2:9).   One thinks of Paul's inability to describe any of his experience of being caught up into the "third heaven" (II Cor. 12).  He said he heard inexpressible things, things which no man is permitted to tell.  That he describes his experience in the third person--"I knew a man," he says--suggests the complete change of one's nature that must take place before a person can know the full joy of heaven.  "When we see Him, we shall be like Him. . . " John remarks in I John 3.  We shall all be changed, Paul assures us.  When Christ spoke of the afterlife, he focused attention upon God, not on any descriptions, for oneness with God is the requisite and essential condition.

Diamond does have some vague recollections.  He remembers a river there, and one may recall Psa. 46:4:  "There is a river which makes glad the city of God."  That a little daughter whom the gardener lost will one day return suggests the coming Resurrection, as does the fact that those whom Diamond met "looked as though they were waiting to be gladder some day."  However, they are able to climb a certain tree and from that vantage point observe those whom they love on earth.  MacDonald is echoing here Heb. 12:1:  having recalled the great heroes of the faith who have gone before, the writer remarks:  since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. . . ."  But Diamond doesn't care to return, because he feels as though he has never left it, and he wants to help those on earth whom he loves.  This deep sense within him of the certainty of Christian hope and the crowning delight of its fulfillment is that which explains his motivations for his preternatural behavior in the ongoing episodes of the tale.

Having returned, Diamond learns that the ship North Wind sank was Mr. Coleman's, who is not such into economic woes.  MacDonald muses:  "It is a hard thing for a rich man to become poor, but it is an awful thing for him to become dishonest, and some kinds of business speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he realizes what he is doing.  Poverty will not make a man worthless--he may be worth much more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes a long way toward making a man of no value at all" (Chapter 12).  Economic poverty is a much more fertile soil that economic riches for the growing of spiritual fruit.  MacDonald illustrates this principle throughout his writings.

The suggestion contained in the title of the story has now been fulfilled, but the story itself is but one-third over.  What are MacDonald's intentions?  They are, I think, twofold.  He wants to develop the very important principle that a good grasp of Christian hope offers primary motivation for a person actively working in the world to effect good.  He also wants to dismiss any notion that, in a world permeated and controlled by God's providence, a person may simply be a passive observer of God's working his will.  The great truth is that Christian hope clearly grasped enables one to be a sacramental channel of grace to needy people in a world of spiritual poverty.  God bestows upon willing people the great privilege of His working through them to accomplish His will.

So the child who is listening to this story being told receives a model of excellent behavior.  One cannot but think by comparison of the dearth of proper models for young people in our culture today.  Why so few?  The primary reason is that our thoroughly materialistic society no longer believes--as MacDonald's Victorian did--in any transcendent spiritual reality, let alone Christian truth.  So Diamond's selflessness seems ridiculous to most.  The degenerative state of all the arts in today's culture, with the type of values most often commended, offers abundant evidence.