These delightful letters are from Screwtape, an experienced devil, to his nephew, Wormwood, who is just beginning his demonic career and who has been assigned to secure the damnation of a certain young man, or at least to keep him from living a godly life after he has chosen Christ....all from the imagination and pen of C. S. Lewis.
(The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 14)
My dear Wormwood,
The most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of 'grace' for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation! This is very bad.
I see only one thing to do at this moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact?
All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.
Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By Jove! I'm being humble,' and almost immediately pride--pride at his own humility--will appear.
If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt--and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humor and proportion, in which he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
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