Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ a good congregation. At the 11.30 service we had a very large one. I had quite forgotten the most unpleasant feature of an Irish service—the large number of people present who have obviously no interest in the thing, who are merely ‘good prodestants’. You know what one is supposed to find—‘the spirit of worship which burns all the brighter in the stark simplicity of the service etc.’³ In fact, one finds something that to my present eyes looks like studied indifference. I am sure the English practice of not going unless you believe is a much better one. The Rector, ‘the Reverend Belton’ is a poor creature.⁴

I saw a lovely thing done yesterday on the lines of ‘Give me a bottle of soda water.’⁵ An elderly labourer had been standing for several minutes with his back to the bar on which rested his empty tumbler. Without moving, or even turning his eyes from the window, he whispered reflectively ‘Anither pint.’ The barman instantly filled his glass with porter and added a large tot from a bottle of spirits. The customer never looked round during the whole transaction.

      Minto is frightfully sorry about Vera. It is not a practical joke nor was it intended.

      Yours

      Jack

      P.S. Leeboro’ garden is a paradise of daffodils: it has never looked so well before, I must confess

       TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS (W):

      Rostrevor,

      Co. Down

      [4 April 1934]

      My dear Griffiths,

      A wet day—and a cold—and this delightful sea and mountain village where I have been spending my holiday, seems a good occasion for answering your most welcome letter.

      I think our positions about Pantheism are exactly the same: for we both, in places, travelled the same road to Christianity, and the result of the arrival is certainly not any ingratitude or contempt to the various signposts or hostelries that helped on the journey. On the contrary, it is only since I have become a Christian that I have learned really to value the elements of truth in Paganism and Idealism. I wished to value them in the old days; now I really do. Don’t suppose that I ever thought myself that certain elements of pantheism were incompatible with Christianity or with Catholicism.

What I did think—and still do think—was that an influential school of thought both in your church and mine—were very antagonistic to Idealism,⁶ and in fact were availing themselves of a general secular reaction against 19th century thought, to run something which they call Neo-Scholasticism⁷ as the cure for all our evils. The people I mean are led by Maritain⁸ on your side and by T. S. Eliot on ours. Perhaps I over-rate their importance. I hope I do, for I confess there is no section of religious opinion with which I feel less sympathy. Indeed I consider that it is no overstatement to say that your Church and mine are, at the moment, closest to each other where each is at its worst. God forgive me if I do them wrong, but there are some of this set who seem to me to be anxious to make of the Christian faith itself one more of their high brow fads. Then their ignorance! As if there ever was any such thing as ‘scholasticism’ as a doctrine! But enough of this.

The question of ‘generality’ in prayer is not so simple. The doctrine held by your own Church about the position of the virtuous heretic or pagan—I need hardly say that I use both the word virtuous and the word heretic positionis causa—is, you will find, far from crude. Is it not held that many who have lived and died outside the visible Church are finally saved, because Divine Grace has guided them to concentrate solely on the true elements in their own religions?⁹ And if so, must one not admit that it was the mysterious will of God that these persons should be saved in that peculiar way? I use this argument to point out that even such a comparatively general prayer as that for a man’s conversion, may yet be too particular.

And while I am on the subject, I had better say once and for all that I do not intend to discuss with you in future, if I can help it, any of the questions at issue between our respective churches. It would have the same unreality as those absurd conversations in which we are invited to speak frankly to a woman about some indelicate matter—wh. means that she can say what she likes and we can’t. I could not, now that you are a monk, use that freedom in attacking your position which you undoubtedly would use in attacking mine. I do not think there is any thing distressing for either of us in agreeing to be silent on this matter: I have had a Catholic among my most intimate friends for many years¹⁰ and a great deal of our conversation has been religious. When all is said (and truly said) about the divisions of Christendom, there remains, by God’s mercy, an enormous common ground. It is abstaining from one tree in the whole garden.

      I should rather like to attend your Greek class, for it is a perpetual puzzle to me how New Testament Greek got the reputation of being easy. St Luke I find particularly difficult. As regards matter—leaving the question of language—you will be glad to hear that I am at last beginning to get some small understanding of St Paul: hitherto an author quite opaque to me. I am speaking now, of course, of the general drift of whole epistles: short passages, treated devotionally, are of course another matter. And yet the distinction is not, for me, quite a happy one. Devotion is best raised when we intend something else. At least that is my experience. Sit down to meditate devotionally on a single verse, and nothing happens. Hammer your way through a continued argument, just as you would in a profane writer, and the heart will sometimes sing unbidden.

      I think I agree with you that ‘historical research’ as now understood, is no work for a monk, nor for a man either. To all that side of my own work I attach less and less importance: yet I become each year more contented in the actual teaching and lecturing. I have very little doubt now that the work is worth doing. It is true that neither the terms of my appointment nor my own stature allow me to teach the most important things: but on the lower level there is honest work to be done in eradicating false habits of mind and teaching the elements of reason herself, and English Literature is as good a subject as any other. I should be in a bad way by now if I had been allowed to follow my own desire and be a research fellow with no pupils. As it is, nearly every generation leaves me one permanent friend.

      Please accept my thanks, and convey them to the Prior, for your offered hospitality. Some week end in the long Vacation would suit me best, and I should like to come.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      P.S. This has some relevance both to the questions of Prayer and Idealism. I wrote it over a year ago.

      They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with You, Since You make no replies, it’s all a dream —One talker aping two.

      And so it is, but not as they Falsely believe. For I Seek in myself the things I meant to say, And lo!, the wells are dry.

       Then, seeing me empty, You forsake The listener’s part, and through My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake The thoughts I never knew.

Therefore СКАЧАТЬ