Now Playing: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe soundtrack, credits song by Imogen Heap, "Can't Take It In".

It's been awhile since I've posted any Burroughs, so here's some for this evening.

“How unseemly it is that you should be a slave to every cross, that every affliction shall be able to say to your soul, ‘Bow down to us’!” (Ch. 8)

“We are of one spirit with God and with Christ, and one spirit with the Holy Ghost; therefore, we should have a spirit that might manifest the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in our spirits: that is, the spirit of a Christian. The spirit of a Christian should be a lion-like spirit….” (Ch. 8)

“A Christian’s profession is to be dead to the world and to be alive to God, that is his profession, to have his life hid with Christ in God, to satisfy himself in God. What! Is this your profession? And yet if you have not everything you want, you murmur and are discontented.” (Ch. 8)

“A Christian should be satisfied with what God has made the object of his faith. The object of his faith is high enough to satisfy his soul, were it capable of a thousand times more than it is…. God never promised me that I should have these comforts, at this time, and in such a way as I would have. I am discontented because I have not these things which God never yet promised me, and therefore I sin much against the Gospel, and against the grace of faith.” (Ch. 8)

Mr. C was talking to me the last time I was in Stillwater, and he said that a friend of his had compared reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment to a story he'd heard. Apparently a shop somewhere employs people who are disabled mentally or physically. The employees do a good job at the simple work they're given, but every few months, they forget how to do their job because of whatever disability they have. The people who own the shop have to retrain the employees several times a year to remind them what they're supposed to be doing.

That just about perfectly sums up my relationship to this book. I especially like the first and second quotes here, the second because it mentions having a "lion-like spirit". That phrase reminds me of the passage in Prince Caspian when Lucy is complaining to Aslan about having to wake her sleeping companions and Aslan must breathe on her, making her a lioness, before she can obey willingly.