Erin Sheley in his 1867" unspoken" sermon," The Child in the Midst," George MacDonald explains one of his favorite theological premises:" to enter this kingdom [of heaven] we must become children"(MacDonald, God's Words 106). He inter-prets Christ's words to his disciples at Capernaum1 to mean" they could not enter into the kingdom save by becoming little children—by humbling themselves" and in simple terms affirmed the Romantic idea that" the childlike is the divine"(103,100). In both his theology and his fairy tales, the goal of maturing into childhood is omnipresent: Lona, the Beatrice figure in Lilith, is" one who, grow to what perfection she might, could only become the more a child"(174); his ever-present eternal grandmothers seem younger in appearance as they grow older; and in a letter to his brother, MacDonald describes his own children as" not little by any means now, but... growing more and more of children—as they grow bigger"(Letters 364). Roderick McGillis distinguishes MacDonald's divine child from Wordsworth's in that" for Wordsworth childhood is bound by time; it passes. For MacDonald, the opposite is true; childhood is a state of being which everyone must aspire to"(Romanticism 152). MacDonald's divergence from his Romantic predecessors with respect to the longevity of childhood relates to his controversial concern with biblical time.