The gift God wanted Hester to use in his kingdom was a simple one—her music. At the time of MacDonald’s writing, singing was not considered a great “witnessing” tool alongside the preaching of the mighty evangelists of the day. Yet Hester’s music was the tool God had given her. It was the talent she had been given. It was her gift, and she faithfully put it to use. That was all God required.

In addition to MacDonald’s constant theme of living faith, a number of sub-themes capture our attention. MacDonald reveals that his views of marriage ran counter to the accepted Victorian norms, and were a century ahead of his time. “You have very different ideas from such as were taught in my girlhood concerning the duties of wives,” Miss Vavasor says to Hester. “A woman, I used to be told, was to fashion herself for her husband, fit her life to his life, her thoughts to his thoughts, her tastes to his tastes.”

In one sense, this book summarizes MacDonald’s message to Christendom—worry less about doctrine, theology, and the forms of religion, and do the work God has put before you. Weighed and Wanting is thus one of the least theological of MacDonald’s works. It illustrates that faith without works is no faith at all. MacDonald brings this theme to a concise fulfillment at the book’s close with the words, “Let every man or woman work out the thing that is in him. Whoever uses the means that he has, great or small, and does the work that is given him to do, stands by the side of Jesus and is a fellow worker with him.”

MacDonald began writing Weighed and Wanting probably in the latter months of 1881, on the heels of the publication of the American edition of Castle Warlock. The writing no doubt continued through 1882 as it was being serialized in the U.K. from January to December in the Sunday Magazine. It was also serialized in the U.S. by the Cottage Hearth Magazine, also running throughout 1882, possibly extending into 1883.

An intriguing fact about the Cottage Hearth serialization is the statement made in the magazine that the copy is from “advance sheets” of the book from the author. ¹¹ The conundrum of delivery to two different publishers on opposite sides of the Atlantic, at almost identical times, again rears its head. Coming as it does precisely between Castle Warlock and Donal Grant, whose varying editions are the subject of so much intriguing uncertainty, Weighed and Wanting sheds yet more light on the validity of American editions. As we have seen with the Lippincott publications, and of course in MacDonald’s arrangement with Lothrop for Castle Warlock, the following handwritten note, accompanying the delivery of of Weighed and Wanting, establishes further evidence that authorized American editions of MacDonald’s books were on the increase.

Referencing his delivery of an “authorized” manuscript to the magazine, in whatever form the “advance sheets” took, MacDonald wrote:

London, Nov. 7, 1881