"C.S.Lewis. Mere christianity " - читать интересную книгу автора

colloquialisms I ordinary use in conversation. In the printed version I
reproduced this, putting don't and we've for do not and we have. And
wherever, in the talks, I had made the importance of a word clear by the
emphasis of my voice, I printed it in italics. I am now inclined to think
that this was a mistake - an undesirable hybrid between the art of speaking
and the art of writing. A talker ought to use variations of voice for
emphasis because his medium naturally lends itself to that method: but a
writer ought not to use italics for the same purpose. He has his own,
different, means of bringing out the key words and ought to use them. In
this edition I have expanded the contractions and replaced most the italics
by a recasting of the sentences in which they occurred: but without
altering, I hope, the 'popular' or 'familiar' tone which I had all along
intended. I have also added and deleted where I thought I understood any
part of my subject better now than ten years ago or where I knew that the
original version had been misunderstood by others.The reader should be
warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two
Christian 'denominations'. You will not learn from me whether you ought to
become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic. This
omission is intentional (even in the list I have just given the order is
alphabetical). There is no mystery about my own position. I am a very
ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially 'high', nor
especially 'low', nor especially anything else. But in this book I am not
trying to convert anyone to my own position. Ever since I became a Christian
I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my
unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been
common to nearly all Christians at all times. I had more than one reason for
thinking this. In the first place, the questions which divide Christians
from one another often involve points of high Theology or even of
ecclesiastical history, which ought never to be treated except by real
experts. I should have been out of my depth in such waters: more in need of
help myself than able to help others. And secondly, I think we must admit
that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring
an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them
we are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion
than to draw him into our own. Our divisions should never be discussed
except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there
is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son. Finally, I got the
impression that far more, and more talented, authors were already engaged in
such controversial matters than in the defence of what Baxter calls 'mere'
Christianity. That part of the line where I thought I could serve best was
also the part that seemed to be thinnest. And to it I naturally went.
So far as I know, these were my only motives, and I should be very glad
if people would not draw fanciful inferences from my silence on certain
disputed matters.
For example, such silence need not mean that I myself am sitting on the
fence. Sometimes I am. There are questions at issue between
Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer. There
are some to which I may never know the answer: if I asked them, even in a
better world, I might (for all I know) be answered as a far greater
questioner was answered: 'What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.' But there