If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species.

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About C.S. Lewis

British writer and scholar of the early-to-mid 20th century, best known for his Christian apologetics and fantasy literature. His most famous works include *The Chronicles of Narnia*, a series of allegorical fantasy novels, and *Mere Christianity*, a collection of essays exploring faith. His prose blends intellectual rigor with imaginative storytelling.

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"If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet…" — C.S. Lewis | Daily Quotes