Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ grounds to be a sane and decent man, said something you didn’t understand, you did not at once conclude that he had gone off his head. You assumed you’d missed the point. Same here. The two things one must NOT do are (a) To believe, on the strength of Scripture or on any other evidence, that God is in any way evil. (In Him is no darkness at all.)¹⁷⁶ (b) To wipe off the slate any passage which seems to show that He is.¹⁷⁷ Behind that apparently shocking passage, be sure, there lurks some great truth which you don’t understand. If one ever does come to understand it, one will see that [He] is good and just and gracious in ways we never dreamed of. Till then, it must be just left on one side.

      But why are baffling passages left in at all? Oh, because God speaks not only for us little ones but for the great sages and mystics who experience what we only read about, and to whom all the words have therefore different (richer) contents. Would not a revelation which contained nothing that you and I did not understand, be for that v. reason rather suspect? To a child it wd. seem a contradiction to say both that his parents made him and that God made him, yet we see both can be true.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

      Collegium Stae Mariae

      Magdalenae apud Oxonienses Aug. x. MCMLIII

      Dilectissime Pater–

      Accepi litteras tuas V^to Augusti datas. Expecto cum gratiarum actione opuscula, specimen artis vestrae typographicae: quae tamen non videbo nisi post V hebdomadas quia pertransibo eras (si Deo placuerit) in Hiberniam; incunabula mea et dulcissimum refugium, quoad amoenitatem locorum et caeli temperiem quamquam rixis et odiis et saepe civilibus armis dissentientium religionum atrocissimam. Ibi sane et vestri et nostri ‘ignorant quo spiritu ducantur’: carentiam caritatis pro zelo accipiunt et reciprocam ignorantiam pro orthodoxia. Puto, fere omnia facinora quae invicem perpetraverunt Christiani ex illo evenerunt quod religio miscetur cum re politica. Diabolus enim supra omnes ceteras humanas vitae partes rem politicam sibi quasi propriam–quasi arcem suae potestatis–vindicat. Nos tamen pro viribus (sc. quisque) suis mutuis orationibus incessanter laboremus pro caritate quae ‘multitudinem peccatorum tegit.’ Vale, sodes et pater.

      C. S. Lewis

      *

      The College of St Mary Magdalen

      Oxford Aug. 10 1953

      Dearest Father–

      I have received your letter dated the 5th August. I await with gratitude the pamphlets–a specimen of your people’s printing skill: which however I shall not see for 5 weeks because tomorrow I am crossing over (if God so have pleased) to Ireland: my birthplace and dearest refuge so far as charm of landscape goes, and temperate climate, although most dreadful because of the strife, hatred and often civil war between dissenting faiths.

There indeed both yours and ours ‘know not by what Spirit they are led’.¹⁷⁸ They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.

I think almost all the crimes which Christians have perpetrated against each other arise from this, that religion is confused with politics. For, above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own, as almost the citadel of his power. Let us, however, with mutual prayers pray with all our power for that charity which ‘covers a multitude of sins’.¹⁷⁹ Farewell, comrade and father.

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

      Magdalen

      Aug. 10th 53

      Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I have just got your letter of the 6th. Oh I do so sympathise with you: job-hunting, even in youth, is a heartbreaking affair and to have to go back to it now must be simply–I was going to say ‘simply Hell’, but no one who is engaged in prayer and humility, as you are, can be there, so I’d better say ‘Purgatory’. (We have as a matter of fact good authorities for calling it something other than Purgatory. We are told that even those tribulations wh. fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ’s sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way).¹⁸⁰

I suppose–tho’ the person who is not suffering feels shy about saying it to the person who is-that it is good for us to be cured of the illusion of ‘independence’. For of course independence, the state of being indebted to no one, is eternally impossible. Who, after all, is more totally dependent than what we call the man ‘of independent means’. Every shirt he wears is made by other people out of other organisms and the only difference between him and us is that even the money whereby he pays for it was earned by other people. Of course you ought to be dependent on your daughter and son-in-law. Support of parents is a most ancient & universally acknowledged duty. And if you come to find yourself dependent on anyone else you mustn’t mind. But I am very, very sorry. I’m a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord’s words)¹⁸¹ and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs: one is sometimes even tempted to say that if God wanted us to live like the lilies of the field He might have given us an organism more like theirs! But of course He is right. And when you meet anyone who does live like the lilies, one sees that He is.

      God keep you and encourage you. I am just about to go off to Ireland where I shall be moving about, so I shan’t hear from you for several weeks. All blessings and deepest sympathy.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

      The Silver Chair was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 September 1953.

       On 8 September Warnie wrote to Geoffrey Bles:

      REF.28/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 8th September 1953.

      Dear Mr. Bles,

      My brother will be in Eire until the 14th and I have just returned from that delectable land to find a heavy accumulation of mail. From you, I have to acknowledge on his behalf,

      (1). Spanish Screwtape.

      (2). Proofs of The horse and his boy, and

      (3). Statement and cheque for £886-16-1. He will no doubt be writing to you himself after his return.

      With all good wishes,

      yours sincerely,

      Mycroft

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