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The Holy Ghost Is There
Owen:
No sooner does the soul begin to feel the life of a promise warming his heart, relieving, cherishing, supporting, delivering from fear, entanglements, or troubles, but it may, it ought, to know that the Holy Ghost is there; which will add to his joy, and lead him into fellowship with him.--John Owen, Communion with God (Christian Focus, 2007), 373-74
Truly Spiritual
On April 16, 1940, Lewis wrote to Dom Bede Griffiths:
One thing we want to do is kill the word 'spiritual' in the sense in which it is used by writers like Arnold and Croce. Last term I had to make the following remark to a room full of Christian undergraduates: 'A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep, in humility, thankfulness, and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride'--obvious to you, but I could see it was quite a new light to them.--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 391
All Gold Glitters
Evangelista, a mature Christian, to Antinomista, an antinomian:
He will not be Jesus a Savior to any but only to those unto whom he is Christ a Lord. . . .--Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 200-201
Although we cannot say, every one that hath a form of godliness hath also the power of godliness, yet we may truly say, that he who hath not the form of godliness, hath not the power of godliness; for though all be not gold that glitters, yet all gold doth glitter.
And therefore, I tell you truly, if you have no regard to make the law of Christ your rule, by endeavoring to do what is required in the Ten Commandments, and to avoid what is there forbidden, it is a very evil sign: and, therefore, I pray you consider of it.
Only One Could Fully Taste Death
In August 1939 C. S. Lewis wrote a fascinating letter to his friend Owen Barfield concerning the incarnation. At one point Lewis said:
In Gethsemane it is essential Freedom that is asked to be bound, unwearied control to throw up the sponge. Life itself to die.--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 268
Ordinary men have not been so much in love with life as is usually supposed: small as their share of it is they have found it too much to bear without reducing a large portion of it as nearly to non-life as they can: we love drugs, sleep, irresponsibility, amusement, are more than half in love with easeful death--if only we could be sure it wouldn't hurt!
Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.