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

191 (#ulink_f8fbcdaf-8a42-5a32-a1e3-c50de2049eea) 1 Corinthians 12:12: ‘For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.’

192 (#ulink_6eb5513e-8df5-5f2e-922d-f03dceccd56a) Mark 16:17-18: ‘These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’

193 (#ulink_223107b9-c8a7-5617-a1e5-32d03807a944) See Sheldon Vanauken in the Biographical Appendix. Vanauken’s ‘Notes on the Letters’ are in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/2, fols. 152b-c).

194 (#ulink_223107b9-c8a7-5617-a1e5-32d03807a944) Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), ch. 2, p. 38.

195 (#ulink_dce7d5ce-6517-58f6-be74-2e8064a3afbd) ibid., ch. 4, pp. 87-8.

196 (#ulink_330bce0c-6d20-5082-86f2-36a849a4fbbe) G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925).

197 (#ulink_df750113-d5b4-5c4f-bf7a-30f776dde250) Lewis uses the Chinese word ‘Tao’ in The Abolition of Man to mean natural law or morality.

198 (#ulink_84976225-0cea-5c67-b8ec-4b41bb02a6e2) The Rev. R. B. Gribbon, a relative of Arthur Greeves, was writing from Ballinderry Road, Easton, Maryland, USA.

199 (#ulink_231a77b4-79b6-5e9b-9685-785ba1552a22) i.e., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

200 (#ulink_5b6d5b73-2e02-568d-8f93-9e26aab64e64) Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas (1896), ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’, II, 17-18: ‘Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord: I’ve met them at their work,/An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.’

201 (#ulink_cc0789a1-28c7-56c8-9087-82072de33e9f) In his second letter to Lewis, Vanauken said: ‘My fundamental dilemma is this: I can’t believe in Christ unless I have faith, but I can’t have faith unless I believe in Christ…Everyone seems to say: “You must have faith to believe.” Where do I get it? Or will you tell me something different? Is there a proof? Can Reason carry me over the gulf…without faith? Why does God expect so much of us?…If He made it clear that He is—as clear as a sunrise or a rock or a baby’s cry—wouldn’t we be right joyous to choose Him and His Law?’ (Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, ch. 4, pp. 90-1)

202 (#ulink_d9d30bb7-87d6-56ad-8fa4-1884a2664ba3) The Eleatic school of philosophers was founded by the Greek poet Xenophanes (born c. 570 BC), whose main teaching was that the universe is singular, eternal and unchanging. According to this view, as developed by later members of the Eleatic school, the appearances of multiplicity, change and motion are mere illusions.

203 (#ulink_27dad72b-350b-53eb-94c3-41476175e8d6) William Shakespeare, Othello, The Moor of Venice (1622).

204 (#ulink_27dad72b-350b-53eb-94c3-41476175e8d6) William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608).

205 (#ulink_27dad72b-350b-53eb-94c3-41476175e8d6) Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), II, 2.

206 (#ulink_67e4e4b8-0c01-50c3-be07-1ec0bfff5b32) Luke 10:7.

207 (#ulink_986e6587-aca3-5d19-9131-15f2d9d695a9) This note was added in Lewis’s hand.

208 (#ulink_17b4dd8c-cf3d-58a1-9be6-baee70bbfb00) ‘Let us pray for one another’.

209 (#ulink_b2f42654-96ab-5b7b-96cf-320ddfe928bf) ‘the beard of corn’.

210 (#ulink_b2f42654-96ab-5b7b-96cf-320ddfe928bf) Abul Kasim Mansur Firdausi (c. 950-1020), Persian poet, is the author of Shah-natneh. Considered the greatest national epic in world literature, the poem consists of 60,000 couplets. When the work was presented to the Sultan, he rewarded Firdausi with a pitiful amount of money. The disappointed Firdausi gave the money to a bath attendant and left for Afghanistan. Lewis regretted he could not read Persian, but in his poem ‘The Prodigality of Firdausi’, published in Punch, 215 (1 December 1948), p. 510, and reprinted in Poems and CP, he extols ‘Firdausi the strong Lion among poets’ and tells how handsomely he behaved at the hands of the Sultan.

211 (#ulink_f0f5b1ac-7cee-5d21-a48e-274c76785c4a) Dorothy Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889-1956), whose collected poems were published as Early Light (1955).

212 (#ulink_1e26018b-f24b-5b1a-826f-762346c71087) Sayer had asked if Pauline Baynes should illustrate all the Narnian stories. See Pauline Diana Baynes in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1018-22.

213 (#ulink_1e26018b-f24b-5b1a-826f-762346c71087) Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), II, x: ‘Great virtues and vices no less great’.

1951 (#uab6a892d-65f5-5b6b-a50d-b1b354fd0ecb)

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Whether any individual Christian who attempts Faith Healing is prompted by genuine faith and charity or by spiritual pride is, I take it, a question we cannot decide. That is between God and him. Whether the cure occurs in any given case is clearly a question for the doctors. I am speaking now of healing by some act, such as anointing or laying on of hands. Praying for the sick—i.e. praying simply, without any overt act is unquestionably right and indeed we are commanded to pray for all men.

(#ulink_d8c8674d-1bb4-5aff-ae27-55a8e541f7fc) And of course your prayers can do real good.

Needless to say, they don’t do it either as a medicine does or as magic is supposed to do: i.e. automatically. Prayer is Request—like asking your employer for a holiday or asking a girl to marry one. God is free to grant the request or not: and if He does you cannot prove scientifically that the thing wd. not have happened anyway. Just as the boss might (for all you know) have given you a holiday even if you hadn’t asked. (Cynical people of my sex will tell one that if a girl has determined to marry you, married you wd. have been whether you asked her or not!). Thus one can’t establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics as you might establish the connection between pure milk and fewer cases of tuberculosis. It remains a matter of faith and of God’s personal action: it would become a matter of demonstration only if it were impersonal or mechanical.

(#ulink_ea0e7db7-45be-54c6-9516-d9f9e525a0a0)

When I say ‘personal’ I do not mean private or individual. All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it v. helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)

With all best wishes for the New Year.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

(#ulink_7e62a2ab-d126-5e5e-9a8f-03c41621c1f4)

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mr. Van Auken

We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more theological.

(1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

(2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which cd. not be v. easily digested in the time.

(3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.

St Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’:

(#ulink_c075bf3f-d142-5627-a16e-bca774f4cb41) sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.