I think the thrill of the Pagan stories and of romance may be due to the fact that they are mere beginnings—the first, faint whisper of the wind from beyond the world—while Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint.
For example, the experience of being married and bringing up a family cannot have the old bittersweet of first falling in love. But it is futile (and, I think, wicked) to go on trying to get the old thrill again: you must go forward and not backward. Any real advance will in its turn be ushered in by a new thrill, different from the old: doomed in its turn to disappear and to become in its turn a temptation to retrogression.
Delight is a bell that rings as you set your foot on the first step of a new flight of stairs leading upwards. Once you have started climbing you will notice only the hard work: it is when you have reached the landing and catch sight of the new stair that you may expect the bell again. This is only an idea, and may be all rot: but it seems to fit in pretty well with the general law (thrills also must die to live) of autumn & spring, sleep and waking, death and resurrection, and “Whosoever loseth his life, shall save it.”
Each revelation is a new beginning full of joy and delight. Yet, the hard work of living that revelation leads to greater joy…and more hard work. The key is to “renew our minds” daily and rising to each new revelation.
Author’s note: After a brief hiatus, today the Good Morning begins a new spiritual journey citing quotes from the great Christian spiritual writer/author and one time atheist, C.S. Lewis. As before with author Emmett Fox, Z Gardener will post Dr. Lewis’ daily devotional followed by this writer’s epilogue (In italics). As always, it is this writer’s prayer that the Good Morning Garden will be a place of peace, joy and blessings for all who enter therein.
Peace, joy and blessings,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
This comment from a gardener. Z.
Nice new direction.
C.S. Lewis has long been one of the stars in my sky.
A kind comment from a sister gardener. Z.
Welcome back! You have been missed!
An insightful response from a fellow gardener. Z.
Well, I read Tuesday’s meditation, “On Feeling”; and noted immediately the different writing style of the author (as opposed to Emmet)… had to back up a few times to focus harder and re-read. (Different syntax, colloquialisms and approach from point A to B.)
So, I looked up CS Lewis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis) to get a fix on his thought processes.
I noted in the article, from his point of view, a few things of interest:
Lewis was raised in a church-going family in the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically “very angry with God for not existing”.[27]
His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and as a duty… Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:
“Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.”
However he went on to say: “I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it…”
He slowly re-embraced Christianity, influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien. He fought greatly up to the moment of his conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.”[31] He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy:
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”[32]
… reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.[34]
Having read the past few days’ meditation/excerpts, and your epilogues, I like the combined package that you present.
Good choice and good work!