Do those without obvious sin need God, too? Do good men and women need salvation? Does an injunction rest upon man to respond to God simply because of who he is, in virtue of being true to the Truth? MacDonald sets up a fascinating contrast. In Paul Faber Surgeon it is sin that leads to truth. In There and Back it is goodness that leads to truth—emphasizing what MacDonald says of one of the minor characters in Mary Marston: “She was one of those, not a few, who, knowing nothing of religion toward God, are yet full of religion toward their fellows, and with the Son of Man that goes a long way.”

Richard and Barbara, two morally virtuous young people (complete opposites to Juliet and Paul Faber), must each face their personal responsibility to respond to the truth of God’s existence, to the imperative of his goodness, and to the mandate of obedience. They must ask whether or not God’s existence is true, what God’s character is like, and what demands are placed upon them as a result.

MacDonald here approaches salvation from the vantage point of the intellect not emotion, prompted not by tearful repentance of recognized sin, but instead by a recognition of what must be true.

As is often the case, MacDonald’s characters must reason out the Christian faith. There will be no pat answers, no “humbug,” as he called it. Christianity is reasonable, sensible, intellectually consistent. God is not only the source of life’s joy, contentment, meaning, and fulfillment, but his principles are true. This true-ness pervades all MacDonald’s books as the foundation for Everyman’s spiritual quest.

With belief as a central theme, MacDonald explores more than any other place in his writings the role of spiritual “proofs” and “evidences” (some of the discussions are positively fascinating!) and develops an entire Wingfoldian apologetic for the Christian faith. The result is one of the clearest articulations we have of MacDonald’s approach to belief—that it invades the consciousness (brain and heart together) slowly, invisibly, personally, uniquely in the life of every human soul. This highly individual and invisible blowing of the Spirit’s winds is the reason MacDonald hated plans of salvation. The road to truth, and to the deep reality of the process of being “born again,” cannot be boxed into a one-size-fits-all formula. True to MacDonald’s perspective of the inner and personal essence of belief, there are no altar calls from Wingfold’s pulpit.

Those intent on formularizing salvationary moments will be scandalized by MacDonald’s words about Barbara:

Barbara was one who, so far as human eyes could see, had never required what is commonly termed conversion. She had but to go on, recognize, and do. She turned to the light by a holy will as well as holy instinct.

MacDonald’s “theology of evangelism,” so called (entirely my term—I doubt he ever thought of it as such), is brilliantly laid out in the two chapters “Wingfold and Barbara” and “The Parson’s Counsel” (chapters 19 and 23). Paralleling his perspective of how Christians should walk among unbelievers, and building upon the themes explored in The Elect Lady, MacDonald also articulates a forceful vision for the church and its clergy.