I think this is my third time through but Athanasius never ceases to amaze with his clarity and pinpoint theology of why the Incarnation was necessary. His prose bleeds with passion to express the love of God for humanity and swaggers with a confidence in the Christian hope that is so shocking in its purity that it breezes over the hurdles of cynicism that we have placed unawares.

Not to mention C. S. Lewis's introduction. I have dedicated my life to "reading old books" but he makes me want to read oh so many more. Here is a taste of what he thought of Athanasius's meditation on the incarnation:

“They [miracles] are here shown to be rather the re-telling in capital letters of the same message which Nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand; the very operations one would expect of Him who was so full of life that when He wished to die He had to ‘borrow death from others.’”