Introduction

C. S. Lewis read Paradise Lost for the first time when he was nine years old.  By the time Lewis was sixteen years old, and a student of W. T. Kirkpatrick in Surrey, John Milton had become one of his favorite authors.  Lewis even composed a poem, Milton Read Again (in Surrey), later published in Spirits in Bondage.  The poem begins:

            Three golden months while summer on us stole

            I have read your joyful tale another time,

            Breathing more freely in that larger clime

            And learning wiselier to deserve the whole.

What is most amazing is that C. S. Lewis was an atheist when he wrote those lines.  Eventually Lewis came to realize that all of his favorite authors had Christianity in common, and he too became a follower of Christ.

Lewis's interest in Milton only grew stronger once he became a lecturer in the English School at Oxford University.  As a Fellow of Magdalen College, Lewis taught a course on "The Text of Milton's Comus" to B.Litt. students in the Trinity Term of 1930.  And in the Hilary Term of 1937 he gave a series of lectures in the English School on "Milton and the Epic Tradition".

In 1939 Lewis's great friend, Charles Williams, came to live in Oxford.  Lewis arranged for Williams to lecture on Milton.  Williams' second lecture on February 5, 1940, in the Divinity School, stirred Lewis to the core of his being.  Williams lectured nominally on Comus but really on the virtue of chastity.  Lewis felt that here at last was a university being used for learning.  He thought that, perhaps, no greater lecture had occurred in that lovely hall, with its delicate fan vaulting, for hundreds of years.  Williams later contributed an Introduction to the 1940 edition of The English Poems of John Milton published by Oxford University Press.  This too made a deep impression on Lewis.

C. S. Lewis probably would have written A Preface to Paradise Lost without the influence of Williams, but Williams' example spurred him on.  What really pulled the trigger and caused Lewis to produce his fourth work of literary criticism was an invitation from the University College of North Wales to deliver the Ballard Mathews Lectures during their session of 1941-42.  While Lewis wanted to respond positively to the invitation he was, at first, reluctant.  This was due to the fact that he had just committed to a lectureship in theology to members of the Royal Air Force.  In the end there was no conflict between the two commitments.  By the end of October 1941 Lewis had written his Preface and selected the highlights to deliver in three lectures in Wales on December 1-3, 1941.  Lewis's Preface was published by the Oxford University Press the following year.

One review was typical of the response to Lewis's Preface: "The book is one of very great moment indeed, and is, in fact, much more than an essay on Milton; it is above all the kind of criticism, of which it is an almost perfect instance, that is immensely valuable and important.  What is this kind?  It includes, but is not exhausted by, a serious effort to rethink a writer's thoughts with him, to understand and for the moment to share his presuppositions (by a suspension of disbelief, if need be), to get out of one's own skin by history and to get into his.  This is already to be released in some degree from contemporaneity and the domination of fashion and party-cries.   It is also to begin to understand, whether one approves of it or not, what has been the cultural achievement of Christianity in Europe."  (V. G. Turner SJ, The Tablet, 181, 9 January 1943, p. 20)

Discussion Questions

1. C. S. Lewis begins his Preface with a characteristic Lewisian paragraph: "The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is?what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.  After that has been discovered the temperance reformer may decide that the corkscrew was made for a bad purpose, and the communist may think the same about the cathedral.  But such questions come later.  The first thing is to understand the object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew was meant for opening tins or the cathedral for entertaining tourists you can say nothing to the purpose about them.  The first thing the reader needs to know about Paradise Lost is what Milton meant it to be."  What does Lewis suggest Milton meant Paradise Lost to be?  What similarities and differences do you see between Lewis's writing style in his scholarly books and his more popular works?
2. In chapter II Lewis takes issue with T. S. Eliot.  "Mr. Eliot says bluntly and frankly that the best contemporary practicing poets are the only ?jury of judgement' whose verdict on his own views of Paradise Lost he will accept."  Why does Lewis take exception to Eliot's view?  Do you think Lewis wins the argument?
3. What does Lewis mean by primary and secondary epic?  What examples does he give of both?
4. In chapter IX Lewis writes, "To enjoy our full humanity we ought, so far as is possible, to contain within us potentially at all times, and on occasion to actualize, all the modes of feeling and thinking through which man has passed. You must, so far as in you lies, become an Achaean chief while reading Homer, a medieval knight while reading Malory, and an eighteenth century Londoner while reading Johnson."  How does this apply to reading Paradise Lost? What do you think of this approach to literature?  How can this same approach help us in our spiritual life?
5. In chapter X Lewis quotes Addison, "The great moral which reigns in Milton is the most universal and most useful that can be imagined, that Obedience to the will of God makes men happy and that Disobedience makes them miserable."  Then Lewis concludes, "If you can't be interested in that, you can't be interested in Paradise Lost."  Why, do you suppose, Lewis is trying to get his readers interested in Paradise Lost?  What did you think of Lewis's explanation of Milton's theology in this same chapter?
6. In chapter XI Lewis writes, "The Hierarchical idea is not merely stuck on to his poem at points where doctrine demands it: it is the indwelling life of the whole work, it foams or burgeons out of it at every moment.  He [Milton] pictures the life of beatitude as one of order?an intricate dance, so intricate that it seems irregular precisely when its regularity is most elaborate."  How do you respond to this hierarchical idea?  How do you think Lewis responded?
7. Why do you think Lewis spends multiple chapters exploring and explaining Milton's theology?
8. In chapter XIII Lewis explains why Satan is the best drawn of Milton's characters.  It is because "he is incomparably the easiest to draw."  Why does Lewis maintain this is the case?  Do you agree?
9. In chapter XIV Lewis writes, "For human beings there is often an escape from this Hell, but there is never more than one?the way of humiliation, repentance, and (where possible) restitution.  For Milton's devils this way is closed. . . . They know they will not repent.  That door out of Hell is firmly locked, by the devils themselves, on the inside."  Does this statement remind you of something Lewis says elsewhere?
10. In chapter XVIII Lewis writes, "What would have happened if instead of his ?compliance bad' Adam had scolded or even chastised Eve and then interceded with God on her behalf, we are not told.  The reason we are not told is that Milton does not know.  And I think he knows he does not know: he says cautiously that the situation ?seemd remediless' (919).  This ignorance is not without significance.  We see the results of our actions, but we do not know what would have happened if we had abstained.  For all Adam knew, God might have had other cards in His hand; but Adam never raised the question, and now nobody will ever know.  Rejected goods are invisible."  Though Milton did not write about "the fall averted" Lewis did in two of his stories.  What stories did Lewis write in order to make "rejected goods" visible?  Do you think Lewis was successful?

Discussion Questions

1. C. S. Lewis wrote some of the stories in this collection as early as eight years old.  What strikes you about these stories, considering that they were written by a child of that age?
2. These first stories were also written around the time that Lewis lost his mother to cancer.  How do you think Lewis might have used writing to cope with grief?
3. What else might the content of these stories and their subject matter tell us about Lewis's life as a child and youth?
4. What hints, if any, do you get through Boxen of the later creation of Narnia?  What is similar and dissimilar between the two worlds?
5. What do you think of Lewis's artistic ability as a child as reflected in the drawings in this book?
6. What does the Encyclopedia Boxoniana reveal about Lewis the literary critic and historian?
7. Obviously Lewis maintained a lifelong interest in these childhood stories.  Why do you think that might have been the case?
8. What other insights or observations about Lewis and Boxen do you have that you would like to share with the group? 

Summary

I. Christianity and Literature is about the Christian approach to literature, about the principles of Christian literary theory and criticism. The main points are these:

• Modern literary criticism speaks of creativity whereas in the New Testament the art of life itself is the art of imitation. Therefore "an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.
• "The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan: he will feel less uneasy with a purely hedonistic standard for at least many kinds of work."

II. In Christianity and Culture Lewis asks what the Christian's attitude toward culture should be. Lewis points out in this essay that the New Testament displays a cold attitude toward culture. Culture may be innocent but it is not important. Then Lewis goes on to analyze the thought of both Pagan and Christian thinkers on the subject of culture. After that Lewis lays out the major points of his own view:

• Provided that there is a demand for culture, and that culture is not actually deleterious, literary critics such as Lewis and others in the various cultural disciplines, are justified in making their living by supplying that demand, if they are not fit for anything else.
• Christians must resist the abuse of culture.
• Culture can provide good pleasure, therefore we may enjoy those pleasures and teach others to enjoy them.
• Some of the values of culture may be sub-Christian but they may also prepare a person for conversion, as they did in Lewis's case.

III. In Religion: Reality or Substitute? Lewis explores whether the Christian religion is a substitute for the real well-being we have failed to achieve on earth. Lewis explores what he knows about realities and substitutes in other areas of life. From this examination Lewis draws the conclusion that introspection is of no use at all in deciding which of two experiences is a substitute or second best. All our knowledge depends upon authority, reason and experience.

IV. It is often asserted that the world must return to Christian ethics in order to preserve civilization, or even in order to save the human species from destruction. In On Ethics Lewis disagrees with this view because it is based upon faulty presuppositions. After defining Christian ethics as a body of injunctions Lewis goes on to point out the faulty presuppositions:

• That Christian Ethics is one among several alternative bodies of injunctions.
• That we to whom the disputants address their pleadings, are for the moment standing outside all these systems in a sort of ethical vacuum.

V. In De Futilitate Lewis asserts that we live in a state of cosmic futility and that there are only three lines one can take about this futility: a) consistent pessimism (Bertrand Russell), b) denial of the scientific picture of the universe (Western Idealism; Oriental Pantheism; Judaism; Islam; Christianity), c) accept the scientific picture and try to do something about it. Lewis goes on to show why we cannot adopt the position of total scepticism about human thought. If there is a relation of truth between thought and objective reality then thought is not alien to the nature of the universe. Reason is not merely human but cosmic. If Reason is merely human then saying that the universe is futile has no meaning. If Reason is cosmic then saying that the universe is futile means that there is a way the universe is supposed to be and it has veered off that path. "In a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it. The more seriously we take our own charge of futility the more we are committed to the implication that reality in the last resort is not futile at all."

VI. In The Poison of Subjectivism Lewis shows why Subjectivism, the belief that reason is merely the product of chemical or electrical events in the human cortex, is untenable. Lewis maintains that the whole attempt to jettison practical reason (ie. traditional values and morals) as something subjective and to substitute a new scheme of values is wrong because 1) the human mind cannot invent a new value and 2) every attempt to do so consists in selecting one maxim of traditional morality, isolating it, and raising it above the rest. There are only two choices. Either we must accept traditional morality as the result of practical reason, or else have no values at all. Lewis goes on to prove his case that there has only been one morality common to all cultures and that accepting this unmoveable standard is the only route to true progress. Lewis also answers the Christian objections to his view of Natural Law.

VII. In The Funeral of a Great Myth Lewis pronounces a funeral oration over the myth of Evolutionism. Lewis distinguishes between the biological theorem of Evolution and Evolutionism, by which he means the idea that the world is moving in a direction of greater and greater improvements. Lewis shows how this myth came on the scene before Darwin's Origin of the Species. Lewis shows how this myth is self-contradictory. "To reach the positions held by the real scientists-which are then taken over by the Myth-you must-in fact, treat reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true."

VIII. In On Church Music Lewis starts from the assumption that nothing should be done or sung or said in church which does not aim directly or indirectly either at glorifying God or edifying the people or both. What Lewis calls "learned" music in church may not always edify a congregation with more simple tastes, but neither will more popular hymns always edify. Lewis argues for fewer, better and shorter hymns, especially fewer! Lewis thinks the case for abolishing all Church Music seems stronger than the case for abolishing the trained choir and just letting the congregation sing their "favorites". Lewis believes there are two musical situations upon which we can be confident that God's blessing rests: 1) where a priest or organist sacrifices their own trained tastes and gives the people the humbler fare they want, and 2) the situation where the untrained layman humbly accepts the trained music offered to him which he cannot fully appreciate. "Where both the choir and the congregation are spiritually on the right road no insurmountable difficulties will occur."

IX. In Historicism, Lewis shows why he thinks wrong the belief that men can, by the use of their natural powers, discover an inner meaning in the historical process. "The philosophy of history is a discipline for which we mortal men lack the necessary data."

X. In The Psalms Lewis notes how the spirit of the Psalms often feels alien to him. But for Lewis the fact that many of the Psalms display a vindictive and vengeful human spirit reveals just what God can do, by His grace, through an incorrigible group of people. According to Lewis, we can learn something even from a psalm like 109 which is full of maledictions. We can learn that: "Whenever we have wronged our fellow man, we have tempted him to be such a man as wrote Psalm 109." Therefore, we should not eliminate any of the Psalms. We need to be steeped in this book in which our Lord was also steeped. Lewis goes on in the second part of this essay to show the differences between the Jewish and the Christian attitude toward judgement.

XI. In The Language of Religion Lewis points out that there is no specifically religious language. The language of religion tends to be the same sort we use in everyday language or the same sort we use in poetry. Religious language often functions in a similar fashion to poetic language which often expresses emotion not for its own sake but to inform us about the object which aroused the emotion. In this essay Lewis does not try "to prove that religious sayings are true, only that they are significant: if you meet them with a certain good will, a certain readiness to find meaning."

XII. In Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without An Answer Lewis outlines two patterns of petitionary prayer. Pattern A is when we pray, "Thy will be done." Pattern B is commanded in Matthew 21:22: "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith." Are not these two patterns in conflict? Which pattern are we to follow?

XIII. In Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism Lewis addresses priests of the Anglican Church (shepherds) with his bleats as a layman (sheep) in regard to this subject. His first bleat is that modern theologians and biblical critics ask him to believe that they can read between the lines of the old texts but they display an obvious inability to read the lines themselves. Lewis' second bleat is that all theology of the liberal type involves the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by His followers, and has been recovered or exhumed by modern scholars. This, to Lewis, seems highly unlikely. Thirdly, Lewis finds in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur. But this is a philosophical presupposition brought to the texts of Scripture not derived from the texts themselves. Fourthly, Lewis says that all this sort of criticism attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the texts it studies, but this is quite impossible given that we have little or no reliable information outside of the New Testament itself to help us construct the genesis of these texts.

XIV. In The Seeing Eye Lewis responds to the statement from the Russian cosmonauts that they did not find God in outer space. Lewis concludes that this is not sufficient proof of the non-existence of God, rather it may be proof of the fact that the Russian cosmonauts lacked the requisite apparatus for detecting God. "Space-travel really has nothing to do with the matter. To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. Those who do not find Him on earth are unlikely to find Him in space. (Hang it all, we're in space already; every year we go a huge circular tour in space.) But send a saint up in a spaceship and he'll find God in space as he found God on earth. Much depends on the seeing eye."

Discussion Questions:

1. Which essay is your favorite? Why?
2. Which essay is your least favorite? Why?
3. What do you agree with in these essays? Why?
4. What do you disagree with? Why?
5. What do you have questions about in these essays?
6. What practical application to your life do you want to make of something Lewis has said in Christian Reflections?

Discussion Questions

1. This book is divided into six parts: Earliest Perspectives, Master, Colleague, Transatlantic Ties, Much More than a Tutor, The Essence that Prevails.  How do all of these parts together give us a full-orbed view of C. S. Lewis the Man?  Is there anything left out? 
2. How might any one of these perspectives alone give us a skewed view of Lewis?  Do any of the essays present contradictory views of Lewis?  If so, which view do you think is correct?  Or, do these differing views complement, complete and correct one another?
3. Which Lewis would you most like to have known, if you could have met him in person: Lewis the student, the teacher, the colleague or the friend?  What unique gift did Lewis bring to each of these relationships?
4. If you could spend just one day with Lewis out of his entire life, what day would you pick?  Why?  Where would you go together?  Whom would you meet?  What would you do?  What question would you most like to ask Lewis or his friends or family?
5. Out of all of these authors writing on Lewis, who do you think knew him best?  Who expresses the most interesting or attractive portrait in his or her essay?
6. Considering Lewis's many friends or family members or acquaintances who do not give voice in this collection of memoirs, from whom would you most like to hear?  Why?
7. Which essay was your favorite?  Why?
8. What did you learn about Lewis that you didn't know before?  Any surprises?
9. Do you have any unanswered questions about the man?  If so, what?
10. What lessons have you learned from Lewis's life which you would like to apply in your own?

Discussion Questions

1. What is the meaning and significance of the title Lenten Lands ?
2. How did you respond to the opening of the first chapter, with the funeral of C. S. Lewis?  How does this set the tone for the book?
3. What did you think of Gresham's portrait of his mother?  How does it compare to the portrait given in the movie Shadowlands ?
4. How does Gresham portray Warnie? How did you feel about Warnie after reading this book?
5. How did you respond to Gresham's physical description of Jack?  Is it what you expected?  Why or why not?
6. What new insights into Lewis's life and character has this book given you?
7. What did you think of Jack and Joy's relationship as Doug portrays it?  In what ways, if any, is this portrayal different from that in the movies or other biographies?
8. What did you think of Doug's encounter with God in the churchyard?
9. How did you respond to Doug's descriptions of life at the Kilns and on vacation with his mother and step-father?  Did it make you want to be there?
10. How did you feel about Doug's descriptions of life in boarding school?
11. What was Jack and Doug's relationship like after Joy's death?  Do you think they helped one another through the grieving process?  Would this book be helpful to someone experiencing grief?
12. Doug obviously experienced a lot of pain in his young life.  How do you see him dealing with that pain through the course of the book?
13. What did you think of the chapters on Doug's life after Jack's death?  How did you feel about the ending of the book?
14. In the preface Doug says that through the process of writing the book he came to see his childhood not as a time of testing and torment, but as a time of privilege and education.  What do you think of this?
15. What do you gather was the overall impact of Lewis's life on that of Douglas Gresham?
16. What questions would you like to ask Gresham about the book or about his life?

Discussion Questions

1.       What do you think of Lewis's contention in his essay On Stories?  "In life and art both, as it seems to be, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive.  Whether in real life there is any doctor who can teach us how to do it, so that at last either the meshes will become fine enough to hold the bird, or we be so changed that we can throw our nets away and follow the bird to its own country, is not a question for this essay.  But I think it is sometimes done?or very nearly done?in stories.  I believe the effort to be well worth making." (p. 20)

2.       In his essay, On Three Ways of Writing for Children, Lewis says, "I now enjoy the fairy tales better than I did in childhood: being now able to put more in, of course I get more out."  (p. 35) Do you find that to be the case in your own experience?

3.       Lewis says (on page 41) that the process of writing a story is for him something like "bird-watching".  What does Lewis mean by this?  If you are a writer of stories how would you compare or contrast your writing experience to Lewis's?

4.       How does Lewis say he went about writing his fairy tales?  How do you think this process affects the quality of Lewis's end product?  What would you respond to the person who says, "When I was a child and read the Narnia stories I didn't realize there was any religious message in the books.  When I grew up and re-read the stories and saw the hidden message in them I felt deceived."

5.       Lewis writes (on page 49), "Children are regarded as being at any rate a distinct literary species, and the production of books that cater for their supposedly odd and alien taste has become an industry; almost a heavy one.   This theory does not seem to me to be borne out by the facts."  Do you agree with Lewis?  Why or why not?

6.       How does Lewis answer the charge against science fiction that it is "escapist"?  What do you think?

7.       How does Lewis respond to Professor Haldane's charge that he traduces scientists in his science fiction?  What do you think of this charge?

8.       Lewis writes (on page 88), "The other excellence (of The Lord of the Rings) is that no individual, and no species, seems to exist only for the sake of the plot.  All exist in their own right and would have been worth creating for their mere flavor even if they had been irrelevant."  What do you think of this?  Which is more important in a story: plot or character?

9.       Which essay do you like best in this collection?  Which one do you like least?  Why?  What questions did this essay collection raise that you would like to discuss further?

Discussion Questions

1. Which one is your favorite poem?  Why?  Would you read it to the group?
2. What do you think of Lewis' poem The Planets?  Would the line "winter passed/and guilt forgiven" ever have suggested to you a connection with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?  Or a connection between LWW and Jupiter?  What do you think of Michael Ward's theory expressed in Planet Narnia?  As you read this poem do you see any connection between any of the other planets and the Narnia books?
3. Young C. S. Lewis' great desire was to be an epic poet, along the lines of Milton or Spenser.  For those who have read Lewis' only published epic poem, Dymer, what do you think of Lewis' ability as an epic poet?  How does his epic poetry compare to his lyric poetry?
4. Lewis' first publication was Spirits in Bondage, a cycle of lyric poems.  What significance do you see in the fact that Lewis was first published as a poet and only later as a writer of prose?  How do you think Lewis' skill as a poet affected his prose?
5. What do you think of the poems included here from The Pilgrim's Regress, namely Caught, Deception, Divine Justice, Dragon Slayer, The Dragon Speaks, Footnote to All Prayers, Forbidden Pleasures, Lilith, The Naked Seed, Nearly They Stood, Posturing, Virtue's Independence,When the Curtain's Down and Wormwood? Do these poems have as much meaning here as they do in the context of The Pilgrim's Regress?  Which is Lewis better at: arranging cut flowers (stand alone lyric poems) or cultivating an entire garden (poetry in the context of a wider prose story)?
6. Why do you think Lewis included less poetry in his prose works as he grew older?
7. Why did Lewis continue to publish poetry after becoming a successful prose writer?  And why do you think he published most of his poetry under a pseudonym?
8. Why do you think Lewis did not like the poetry of T. S. Eliot?  Consider Lewis' poem A Confession when giving your answer.  For those who have read both Eliot and Lewis, whose poetry do you like better?  Why?
9. Is there a poem in this collection which you have a question about?
10. Did you find the reading and understanding of Lewis' poetry harder or easier than comprehending his prose works?  Why do you think that is the case?
11. Lewis maintained in The Personal Heresy  that it was unnecessary to understand a poet's biography in order to comprehend his poetry.  In fact, Lewis felt it was dangerous and misleading to read poetry through the lens of the poet's biography.  Do you agree with Lewis?  Why or why not?  Does understanding something of Lewis' life enhance your reception of such poems as The Five Sonnets, As The Ruin Falls and To Charles Williams ?  If so, how?
12. For those who have read Spirits in Bondage, do you think Lewis' return to Christian faith made him a better poet?  If so, how?  You may wish to consider the following poems when giving your answer: On Being Human, The Apologist's Evening Prayer, Footnote to All Prayers and Love's As Warm as Tears.

Discussion Questions

1. To which extreme does America tend today: sternness or meekness?  How can we recover a balance between the two?
2. Would Lewis agree that "all men are created equal"?
3. How do we become "the third kind of men"?
4. What does Lewis's essay, My First School, teach us about the value of suffering?
5. What would Lewis say are the benefits of studying English literature?
6. What problem or problems does Lewis see with so-called "democratic education"?
7. Of which sort of politics do you think Lewis approved: that which encourages more government? Or less?
8. What, do you sense, was Lewis's attitude toward "doing his duty for his country"?
9. In his essay, Private Bates, how does Lewis put our seemingly modern problems in perspective?
10. Do you think Lewis gives an appropriate place to pleasure in his philosophy of life?  Why or why not?
11. How can we regain "the invaluable faculty of being shocked"?
12. In Modern Man and His Categories of Thought Lewis notes seven obstacles to modern day evangelism.  Do these continue to be obstacles in our day?  If so, how can we overcome them?
13. In Talking about Bicycles Lewis notes four stages of perspective in regard to numerous experiences or endeavors in life.  Do you think Lewis's four stages give us a helpful framework for looking at life?  Why or why not?
14. How does Lewis's essay, On Living in an Atomic Age, put some of our modern day problems in perspective?  What is that perspective?
15. In The Empty Universe Lewis notes a problem with atheism.  What is it?  Do you agree?  Does the same problem exist for theism?  Why or why not?
16. What does Lewis say is the problem of removing laws of decency with regard to literature?  Do you agree or disagree?
17. Based upon Lewis's description, which place do you think you would like better: Oxford or Cambridge?  If you have visited both places, which do you like better?  Why?
18. Do you think that for Lewis the study of history and literature was a means or an end?  Which is it for you?
19. Lewis states: "When the prevalent morality of a nation comes to differ unduly from that presupposed in its laws, the laws must sooner or later change and conform to it."  Do you agree or disagree?  Why?  How might this principle be applied in our own time?  Based upon a reading of Lewis's essay on Sex in Literature published in 1962 and his essay on Prudery and Philology published in 1955, what change do you think took place in British morality and British perspective on literature between those two dates?

Introduction

C. S. Lewis probably began writing That Hideous Strength soon after he finished Perelandra. However, some of the ingredients in the recipe of this book go further back in the mix of Lewis's imagination. Some time before World War I, Lewis had read about an attempt by a German scientist to keep all the functions of a human head alive after it had been severed from its body. Lewis ruminated on this idea for some time and, in fact, planned to write a horror play based upon this concept with his friend and fellow Oxford student, A.K. Hamilton Jenkin.

Lewis first mentions That Hideous Strength in a letter to fellow author, E. R. Eddison, written on 30 December 1942. He sought from Eddison advice on the nuptial practices of bears! He wrote to Eddison again on 29 April 1943 to say that he had finished three hundred sheets of the book. Lewis probably finished writing the book a few months later since the preface to the American edition is dated Christmas Eve 1943.

The quote on the title page is from Sir David Lindsay, whose Voyage to Arcturus, spurred Lewis to write his Cosmic Trilogy. Lindsay's line of verse, and Lewis's title, That Hideous Strength, both refer to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:4-9.

That Hideous Strength reveals the influence of Lewis's friend Charles Williams more than any other book that Lewis wrote. Like Williams' novels, That Hideous Strength mixes the realistic and the supernatural. Lewis especially liked this aspect of Williams' novels. In fact, Lewis and Williams first became friends when Lewis wrote to congratulate Williams on his novel, The Place of the Lion, and Williams, at the same time, wrote to congratulate Lewis on the publication of The Allegory of Love. During World War II Williams moved from London to Oxford along with the Oxford University Press and became a regular participant in The Inklings, that group of literary friends which gathered around Lewis beginning in the late 1930's and continuing on until Lewis's death in 1963.

Lewis's perverted N. I. C. E. scientists, who rely upon black magic, are reminiscent of some of the evil characters in Williams' War in Heaven and Many Dimensions. And the introduction of Merlin and the whole Arthurian matter in That Hideous Strength is definitely due to Williams' influence. At the time Lewis was writing That Hideous Strength he was already working on a study of Williams' Arthurian poetry which would eventually be published under the title: Arthurian Torso.

As Lewis notes in his preface, That Hideous Strength makes, through fiction, the same serious point he sought to make, through nonfiction, in The Abolition of Man. In fact, one might say that the former book is an illustration of the latter. Lewis spent a good amount of time in 1942 studying the ethics of other religions and philosophical systems. About the same time he learned of a school textbook, The Control of Language, which basically taught, or assumed, that all literary and moral values are subjective. Lewis leapt at the opportunity to campaign against what he called "the poison of subjectivism" in a series of lectures given at Durham University. These lectures were published as a pamphlet by Geoffrey Bles late in 1943. A second edition was issued in 1946. And The Abolition of Man was published in the United States in 1947. The Abolition of Man is Lewis's most extensive defense of the existence of objective values and the natural law, or what he referred to as the Tao.

In addition to being an illustration of The Abolition of Man, That Hideous Strength contains many of Lewis's own likes and dislikes. THS mirrors Lewis's hatred of "the inner ring" and "the progressive element", both of which he saw a bit at Oxford. According to George Sayer, Lewis's biographer, Feverstone, Busby and Curry are thinly disguised characterizations of some of Lewis's colleagues who purportedly rigged meetings and held traditional values in contempt. On the positive side, Belbury is contrasted with St. Anne's, a place of healing that welcomes all people.

That Hideous Strength was not well liked by initial reviewers of the book back in the 1940's, though it was not exactly "universally damned" as Lewis claimed. However, the reading public has, apparently, not agreed with the critics. That Hideous Strength has, for some time, been the most popular of Lewis's four novels, and, for what it's worth, one of my personal Lewis favorites.

1. What is the major theme of That Hideous Strength which is represented in the title of the book? What is the opposite of that hideous strength? (See p. 318 for a clue.)
2. That Hideous Strength opens with the words from the Anglican wedding service about the purpose of marriage. What do you think Lewis's message is about marriage in this book?
3. Lewis also tells us that Mark and Jane Studdock did not plan to have children for a long time. Based upon this book, what do you think Lewis's view of contraception was? What do you think of his view? (See p. 14 and p. 278 ff.)
4. One of the sub-themes of this book is that of The Inner Ring. What does Lewis mean by The Inner Ring and what temptations does this pose?
5. What do you think was Lewis's view of modern science? What does Lewis suggest are the dangers of modern science? (See p. 203 in the paperback edition, chapter 9, section 5.)
6. Arthurian legend, reworked by Lewis for his own purposes, plays a strong hand in THS. What do you think of this element in the book? Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? Why does Lewis have Merlin as a character in the book? (See p. 291.)
7. How do you think Lewis does at drawing us a picture of the three main communities in this book: Bracton College, Belbury and the N. I. C. E., and St. Anne's on the Hill? How did the book make you feel as you read about each of these communities? Which did you most enjoy reading about, or wish you could visit? Why?
8. What is the main purpose of the N. I. C. E.? What do you think of its purpose? (For a clue, see chapter 2, page 41 ff. in the paperback edition.)
9. Another sub-theme of THS is retributive punishment vs. psychological rehabilitation (the humanitarian theory of punishment). What, do you gather, is Lewis's view on this subject? What point is Lewis subtly trying to make in THS? (See p. 339.)
10. Why do you suppose there is a vagueness in all the communications that take place between Mark and the leaders of the N. I C. E.?
11. Some have said that Lewis was not very successful in his creation of the character of Jane Studdock, that she turns out to be merely a cardboard character? Others have said that Lewis shows an anti-feminist streak in his characterization of Jane Studdock? What do you think?
12. What view of modern journalism does Lewis portray in THS? Do you agree with his view? Why or why not?
13. What do you think of Lewis's characterizations of various Christians as represented in Straik, at one end of the spectrum, and in the Dimbles, Dennistons and Maggs at the other end of the spectrum? What point do you think Lewis is trying to make by these contrasting characters?
14. How do you think Lewis viewed the gradual destruction of Edgestow and Cure Hardy by the N. I. C. E. and the construction of "model villages"? Do you see any corollaries in Lewis's own life and times?
15. Another sub-theme of THS concerns the evil of vivisection. What do you think of the way in which good triumphs over evil in the banquet at Belbury?
16. One of the major themes of THS is the theme of hierarchy and equality. Both St. Anne's and Belbury have a Head. What point do you think Lewis is trying to make about hierarchy and equality? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
17. What do you think of Lewis's portrayal of the gradual conversions of Mark and Jane Studdock? Are his portrayals realistic? What glimmers of Lewis's own conversion do you see in the book?
18. Another major theme of THS is the role of man and woman. What do you think THS portrays as the proper roles of men and women in relation to one another? What does THS suggest about the larger issues of masculinity and femininity in general? (See p. 315 ff.)
19. How does Lewis portray the demonic in THS? How does this portrayal compare with The Screwtape Letters?
20. Another major theme of THS is that of Logres vs. Britain. How are these two entities portrayed in the book? What do you think of Lewis's thesis on this point? (See p. 369.)
21. How does MacPhee stand in relation to all the other people at St. Anne's? What is his role? Do you recognize in MacPhee a portrait of anyone from Lewis's own life?
22. What contrasting belief systems concerning Right and Wrong (Normal and Abnormal) are represented by St. Anne's and Belbury? How does Belbury's view lead to the abolition of man? Do you think Lewis is successful, as a writer of fiction, in making good attractive?
23. Why do you think the Church, as an institution, does not appear in THS? What do you think of Lewis's commentary on the modern day Church in THS? (See pp. 292-293.)
24. What do you think of the descent of the gods towards the end of THS? Do you think Lewis does a good job of tying together all the themes from the previous two books in the trilogy?
25. What do you think of the ending of THS? Is it appropriate? Does it tie everything together?

Introduction

            C. S. "Jack" Lewis began as a letter writer at a very early age.  The first extant letter from the pen of Lewis was written by him to his brother Warnie in 1905 when he, Jack, was only seven years of age.  It is an absolutely amazing accomplishment for a child of seven.   Lewis, the boy, writes in complete and articulate sentences.  There are relatively few misspellings for a seven year old.  He mentions the fact that he is now learning French as well as Latin, but that he likes Latin better!  With that kind of education being given to him at home by his mother, perhaps it is not surprising that Lewis was an expert letter writer at such a young age.

            Most of the early letters are indeed written to Jack's brother Warnie while the latter was away at boarding school.  Then when Jack was sent away to the same boarding school, Wynyard in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, after his mother's death, he began writing weekly, compulsory letters home to his father.  Jack's letter to his father of 29 September 1908, written shortly after his arrival at Wynyard, reveals the tremendous pain of a ten year old boy who has recently lost his mother and is under the tutelage of a sadistic madman.

            My dear Papy

Mr. Capron said some-thing I am not likely to forget ?curse the boy' (behind Warnie's back) because Warnie did not bring his jam in to tea, no one ever heard such a rule before.

Please may we not leave on Saturday?  We simply cannot wait in this hole till the end of term.

            Your loving

            son Jack ^[1]

            For whatever reason, Jack's father, Albert Lewis, did not have Jack removed from Wynyard until Mr. Capron wrote to Mr. Lewis on 27 April 1910 saying that he was ?giving up school work'.  Capron died a year and a half later on 18 November 1911 in the Camberwell House Asylum.  It took Jack his whole life to really forgive Capron as he reveals in this letter to Mary Willis Shelburne on 6 July 1963:

Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel school-master who so darkened my childhood.  I'd been trying to do it for years; and like you, each time I thought I'd done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again.  But this time I feel sure it is the real thing.^[2]

            From Wynyard Jack went on to Campbell College, Belfast for one term.  Then in January 1911 he and Warnie went together to Malvern, Warnie to attend Malvern College and Jack to attend Cherbourg, the preparatory school just up the hill from the Coll.  In the autumn of 1913 Warnie went to Great Bookham, Surrey, to be prepped by William T. Kirkpatrick for entrance to Sandhurst Military College.  Jack returned to Malvern, but this time, to the College.  The compulsory weekly letters to his father continue during this time, the most notable being Jack's letter of 19 October 1913 which contained a copy of his poem "Carpe Diem" after Horace.  This poem won a special school prize and one can see why. . . .

When, in haughty exultation, thou durst laugh in

            Fortune's face,

            Or when thou hast sunk down weary, trampled in

            The ceaseless race,

            Dellius, think on this I pray thee - but the

            Twinkling of an eye,

            May endure thy pain or pleasure; for thou knowest

            Thou shalt die,

            Whether on some breeze-kissed upland, with a

            Flask of mellow wine,

            Thou hast all the world forgotten, stretched be-

            Neath the friendly pine,

            Or, in foolish toil consuming all the springtime

            Of thy life,

            Thou hast worked for useless silver and endured

            The bitter strife:

            Still unchanged thy doom remaineth.  Thou art

            Set towards thy goal,

            Out into the empty breezes soon shall flicker

            Forth thy soul,

            Here then by the plashing streamlet fill the

            Tinkling glass I pray

            Bring the short lived rosy garlands, and be

            Happy - FOR TODAY. ^[3]

Once again Lewis' early genius is revealed.  How many boys of 15 could write such a poem?

            In the autumn of 1914 Jack moved to Surrey, like his brother before him, to be tutored by William Kirkpatrick.  The only differences were that Jack was a better student than Warnie and he was being prepped for Oxford, not for military college as Warren had been.  It is with Jack's move to Great Bookham that his serious spate of letter writing began.  For now Jack had a pen friend back in Belfast by the name of Arthur Greeves.  Arthur lived in the house across the street from Jack's family home and they had discovered a common love for Norse mythology some months before.  Jack's letters to Arthur reveal more of his inner life, his thoughts and feelings, and his reactions to his considerable reading, than do his letters to his father of the same time period.  Were it not for Jack's letters to Arthur we would not have a contemporary record of his religious thinking of the time, as in this letter written in 1916:

You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion.  There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best.  All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man's own invention - Christ as much as Loki.^[4]

            One of the great values of the Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis is that it includes many of these early letters from Jack to his father, brother, and to Arthur, which were left out of the earlier Letters of C. S. Lewis.  One of Jack's most interesting letters to Arthur, written many years later, on 18 October 1931, is included in both the original Letters as well as the Collected Letters.  This letter is vital in that it gives Lewis' contemporary account of his conversion to Christianity.  What Jack says he has learned with the help of his friends Dyson and Tolkien is that "the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened . . ." ^[5]

            Two other added values we find in The Collected Letters are the footnotes and the Biographical Appendix, both created by editor: Walter Hooper.  These footnotes and biographical sketches, which tell us almost everything we could possibly want to know about the background and content of these letters, are both amazing literary and scholarly accomplishments in and of themselves.  Every reader of Lewis' work owes to Walter Hooper an incalculable debt for his painstaking labor of love over this letter collection which, altogether, spans a significant part of the twentieth century.

            There are so many delightful, interesting, and poignant topics that Lewis' letters touch upon in this first volume of The Collected Letters: his reading, daily schedule, school and war experiences, early publishing efforts, developing friendships at Oxford as well as his journey from Christian faith to atheism and back again. There is not time or space to quote each fascinating letter in a brief introduction such as this.  Suffice to say that Lewis may be best remembered as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but his reputation as a voluminous and entertaining correspondent should not be forgotten.

Discussion Questions

1. How do the early letters we have in this collection enhance your understanding of Lewis' childhood?  Based upon these letters what effect do you think the death of his mother and his experience at various boarding schools had on him?

On 7 March 1916 Lewis wrote to his friend, Arthur Greeves, from Great Bookham, Surrey:

"I have had a great literary experience this week . . . The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald's "Faerie Romance", Phantastes, which I picked up by hazard . . . Have you read it? . . . At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply MUST get this at once . . . Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anados along the little stream of the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree . . . and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know you will quite agree with me."

2.      Warren Lewis calls this a major turning-point in his brother's life.  How did reading Phantastes affect C. S. Lewis?  How did George MacDonald become a major influence upon Lewis' thought and work?

On 7 December 1916 Lewis wrote to his father about his first impressions of Oxford:

"The place has surpassed by wildest dreams: I never saw anything so beautiful, especially on these frosty moonlight nights: tho' in the Hall of Oriel where we do our papers it is fearfully cold at about four o'clock on these afternoons.  We have most of us tried with varying success to write in our gloves."

Then on 28 April 1917 Lewis wrote to his father from University College:

"The effect of the war here is much more startling than I could have expected, and everything is very homely and out of order.  The College at present numbers six men, of whom four are freshmen!  Others are coming all the time, but I do not think we shall be more than eleven all told.  Last night we had dinner not in Hall but in a small lecture room, and none of the dons appeared.  Hall is in possession of the blue-coated wounded, who occupy the whole of one quad . . . The first thing that strikes you is the enormous size of the rooms.  I imagined a ?sitter' something smaller than the little end room.  The first one they showed me was rather larger than our drawing room and full of most beautiful oak.  I wasn't left there however, and am now in a much humbler, and very nice set, on the other side of the quad."

3.      How do you think being educated at Oxford effected Lewis' life and work?  What effect did World War I have on him?

On 15 November 1917 Lewis was ordered to the front following a 48 hour leave.  As it was impossible for him to go to Belfast, Jack went to Mrs. Moore's home in Bristol, the mother of a school friend and fellow soldier.  From there he sent a telegram to his father:

"Have arrived in Bristol on 48 hours leave.  Report Southampton Saturday.  Can you come Bristol.  If so meet at station.  Reply Mrs. Moore's address 56 Ravenswood Road Redlands Bristol.  Jack."

4.      How did Albert Lewis' misunderstanding of this telegram and failure to see Jack off from Southampton affect their future relationship?  What do you make of Jack's relationship to Mrs. Moore, based upon these published letters?

In his diary of 27 May 1926 Lewis wrote:

"Betjemann [future Poet Laureate of Great Britain] and Valentin came with O.E. [Old English].  Betjemann appeared in a pair of eccentric bedroom slippers and said he hoped I didn't mind them as he had a blister.  He seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn't help saying that I should mind them very much myself but that I had no objection to his wearing them - a view which I believed surprised him . . ."

5.      What do you think it would have been like to have C. S. Lewis as a tutor?

On 27 September Jack sent a cable to his brother Warnie:

"Sorry to report father died painless twenty-fifth September.  Jack."

6.      What influence do you think Albert's death had on Jack's subsequent conversion and future life as a Christian?

On 22 September 1931 Lewis wrote to Arthur Greeves:

"I couldn't write to you last Sunday because I had a week-end guest - a man called Dyson who teaches English at Reading University. . . . He stayed the night with me in College - I sleeping in in order to be able to talk far into the night as one cd hardly do out here.  Tolkien came too, and did not leave till 3 in the morning: and after seeing him out by the little postern on Magdalen bridge Dyson and I found still more to say to one another, strolling up and down the cloister of New Building, so that we did not get to bed till 4.  It was really a memorable talk.  We began (in Addison's walk just after dinner) on metaphor and myth - interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining.  We all held our breath, the other two appreciating the ecstasy of such a thing almost as you would.  We continued (in my room) on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot . . ."

On 18 October 1931 Lewis wrote again to Arthur Greeves:

"What has been holding me back (at any rate for the last year or so) has not been so much a difficulty believing as a difficulty in knowing what the doctrine meant: you can't believe a thing while you are ignorant what the thing is.  My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ ?saved' or ?opened salvation to' the world.  I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary: one could see from ordinary experience how sin (e.g. the case of a drunkard) could get a man to such a point that he was bound to reach Hell (i.e. complete degradation and misery) in this life unless something quite beyond mere natural help or effort stepped in.  And I could well imagine a whole world being in the same state and similarly in need of miracle.  What I couldn't see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now - except in so far as his example helped us.  And the example business, tho' true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (?propitiation'-?sacrifice'-?the blood of the Lamb')-expressions wh I cd only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.

"Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn't mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer) I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels.  The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho' I could not say in cold prose ?what it meant'.

"Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened . . . At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths.  (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning.  I am also nearly certain that it really happened . . ."

7.      What do you think of this account of Lewis' own conversion to Christianity?  How does it compare to his account in Surprised by Joy?

8.      How has reading this letter collection enhanced or changed your view of C. S. Lewis and his work?

9.      Which letter, or passage in a letter, is your favorite?  Why?  Would you read it to the group?

Discussion Questions

1.       On the first page of The Allegory of Love Lewis states, "Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind.  Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still."  Do you think this is true?  Why or why not?  Is it important to you to learn about the history of humanity?  If so, how do you go about doing this?

2.       On page four Lewis says, "There can be no mistake about the novelty of romantic love: our only difficulty is to imagine in all its bareness the mental world that existed before its coming?to wipe out of our minds, for a moment, nearly all that makes the food both of modern sentimentality and modern cynicism.  We must conceive a world emptied of that ideal of ?happiness'?a happiness grounded on successful romantic love?which still supplies the motive of our popular fiction."  How much, would you guess, is our contemporary fiction, and even nonfiction, preoccupied with the topic of romantic love?  Did it ever occur to you before that this is a novelty within the history of humanity?  What do you think of Lewis's contention?

3.       On page 15 Lewis paraphrases Albertus Magnus: "The real trouble about fallen man is not the strength of his pleasures but the weakness of his reason: unfallen man could have enjoyed any degree of pleasure without losing sight, for a moment, of the First Good."  Do you think Lewis himself agreed with Magnus?  What is your view?

4.       On page 17 Lewis says, "The general impression left on the medieval mind by its official teachers was that all love?at least all such passionate and exalted devotion as a courtly poet thought worthy of the name?was more or less wicked. . . . This cleavage between Church and court ...which will become more apparent as we proceed, is the most striking feature of medieval sentiment."  On which side in this debate does your sentiment lay, Church or court?  Why?

5.       On page 37 Lewis states, "where marriage does not depend upon the free will of the married, any theory which takes love for a noble form of experience must be a theory of adultery."  What does Lewis mean by this?  Can you imagine living in a time where all marriages were arranged by parents, and where marriage based upon "falling in love" was a novelty?

6.       Beginning on page 44 Lewis says, "This fundamental equivalence between the immaterial and the material may be used by the mind in two ways, and we need here be concerned with only one of them.  On the one hand you can start with an immaterial fact, such as the passions which you actually experience, and can then invent visibilia to express them.  If you are hesitating between an angry retort and a soft answer, you can express your state of mind by inventing a person called Ira with a torch and letting her contend with another invented person called Patientia.  This is allegory, and it is with this alone that we have to deal.  But there is another way of using the equivalence, which is almost the opposite of allegory, and which I would call sacramentalism or symbolism.  If our passions, being immaterial, can be copied by material inventions, then it is possible that our material world in its turn is the copy of an invisible world."  How important are allegory and symbolism or sacramentalism in the work of C. S. Lewis?  What examples can you provide?

7.       On page 57 Lewis says, "Monotheism should not be regarded as the rival of polytheism, but rather as its maturity.  Where you find polytheism, combined with any speculative power and any leisure for speculation, monotheism will sooner or later arise as a natural development."  Do you agree with Lewis?  Why or why not?

8.       On page 59 Lewis writes, "The really good man, in Aristotle's view, is not tempted. . . . the really temperate man abstains because he likes abstaining.  The ease and pleasure with which good acts are done, the absence of moral ?effort' is for him the symptom of virtue. . . . ?Fight the good fight'?how oddly the words would sound in the Ethics!"  Do you agree with Aristotle or do you have a different view?  Explain.

9.       On page 64 Lewis says, "But perhaps there is no writer who admits us so intimately into the heart of that age as Augustine."  In what ways does Lewis say Augustine helps us understand what was new about the medieval mind?

10.   On page 115 Lewis says, "The biography of a poet has little relevance for criticism."  This was a strongly held belief of Lewis which he spelled out in his book The Personal Heresy.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

11.   On page 121 Lewis writes, "In the Romance Venus is the sexual appetite?the mere natural fact, in contrast to the god of Love who is the refined sentiment."  Does this remind you of something Lewis says elsewhere?  Where?  What does this reveal about how Lewis's reading of great literature influenced his philosophy of life?

12.   On page 151 Lewis says, "It was the misfortune of Jean de Meun to have read and remembered everything: and nothing that he remembered could be kept out of his poem."  Who else is this true of?  How did this power of memory affect his writing?

13.   What does Lewis say were the three most "germinal" books during the Middle Ages?  How did each of these influence Lewis?

14.   According to Lewis where is accomplished "the final defeat of courtly love by the romantic conception of marriage"?

15.   On page 304 Lewis says, "Johnson once described the ideal happiness which he would choose if he were regardless of futurity.  My own choice, with the same reservation, would be to read the Italian epic?to be always convalescent from some small illness and always seated in a window that overlooked the sea, there to read these poems eight hours of each happy day."  What is your ideal happiness which you would choose regardless of futurity?

16.   On page 321 Lewis says of Spenser, "He has been represented as a man who preached Protestantism while his imagination remained on the side of Rome."  In what sense, do you think, the same could be said of Lewis?

17.   On page 322 Lewis says, "The truth is not that allegory is Catholic, but that Catholicism is allegorical."  Do you think Lewis's contention that all allegories are in danger of being mistaken for Catholic apologetic is true?  Why or why not?

18.   On page 323 Lewis writes, "When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes.  Catholicism is accused of being much too like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all.  Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics."  Do you think Lewis's analysis is accurate?  Why or why not?

19.   On page 333 Lewis says "allegory is not a puzzle.  The worst thing we can do is to read it with our eyes skinned for clues, as we read a detective story."  How does Lewis's caution apply to reading his own works?

20.   On page 359 Lewis says of Spenser, "To read him is to grow in mental health."  Do you think the same can be said of reading Lewis?  Why or why not?

Discussion Questions

1. What are the chief characteristics of the "Medieval Situation"?  How do these differ from the chief characteristics of our own age?
2. What "Reservations" does Lewis state in Chapter II concerning his "Model" of the Middle Ages?
3. What sources are most necessary for a student of medieval literature to read?  Why does Lewis not expound upon these sources?
4. What sources from the classical period does Lewis focus upon?  Which one of these classical sources directly influenced one of Lewis's own books?  Which book?
5. What does "The Discarded Image" reveal about the scope and depth of Lewis's own reading?
6. What did Pagans and Christians have in common during "the seminal period"?
7. How did knowledge of Plato differ in the medieval and Renaissance periods?  Why?
8. Who is the second greatest author of the seminal period?  What key idea did Lewis borrow from him which was vitally important to Lewis's own philosophy and theology?
9. After reading the chapter on "The Heavens" do you think Michael Ward's thesis in "Planet Narnia" is more or less believable?
10. What are the chief differences between the way a medieval person and a modern person looks at "the heavens"?
11. What are the Longaevi and the four theories in regard to their origin and identity?
12. What was the purpose of the mappemounde?
13. How does our educational system today differ from that of The Middle Ages?
14. How were medieval people like Tolkien's Hobbits?
15. What was the great vice and what was the great virtue of medieval literature?
16. What was the typical activity of the medieval author? 
17. What was the chief characteristic of medieval art?
18. How were medieval books like the cathedrals?
19. Do you have a favorite quote from this book?  If so, would you read it to the group?
20. How did knowledge of medieval literature impact Lewis's own writing?  How was he like the medieval writers?  How was he different?
21. According to Lewis, how are we to regard all "Models"?
22. What did you learn from reading this book?

C. S. Lewis first came across the idea which would form the nucleus of The Great Divorce in August and September of 1931, shortly before his re-conversion to Christian faith. Lewis was reading the works of Jeremy Taylor, a 17^th century Anglican divine. In one of Taylor's sermons Lewis came across the idea of the Refrigerium-the idea that perishing souls in hell may sometimes have remission and refreshment. In the same sermon Taylor mentions Prudentius Aurelius Clemens, a fourth century Latin poet and hymn-writer, as a source for the idea of the Refrigerium. In his Hymn for the Lighting of the Lamp Prudentius writes: "Often below the Styx holidays from their punishments are kept, even by the guilty spirits . . . Hell grows feeble with mitigated torments and the shadowy nation, free from fires, exults in the leisure of its prison; the rivers cease to burn with their usual sulphur."

This idea remained in C. S. Lewis's mind for some time. And in April 1933 Warren Lewis recorded in his diary that his brother had "a new idea for a religious work, based upon the opinion of some of the Fathers, that while punishment for the damned is eternal, it is intermittent: he proposes to do sort of an infernal day excursion to Paradise. I shall be very interested to see how he handles it."

Eleven years later, in April 1944, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher about one of the meetings of the Inklings, the informal literary group which gathered around C. S. Lewis. Tolkien wrote about a meeting of the Inklings on April 13 in which "the best entertainment proved to be a chapter of Major Lewis's projected book - on . . . the court of Louis XIV" and "the concluding chapter of C. S. L.'s new moral allegory or 'vision', based on the medieval fancy of the Refrigerium, by which lost souls have an occasional holiday in Paradise."

These vignettes were originally titled: Who Goes Home? or The Grand Divorce and were published in twenty-three consecutive installments in The Guardian, a Church of England weekly newspaper, from November 1944 to April 1945. "Who goes home?" was the cry shouted by the policeman on duty in the House of Commons after the conclusion of a session and prior to the closure of its doors at the end of a day. Tolkien humorously suggested to the Inklings that the title of Jack's book should have been "Hugo's Home" after their mutual friend and fellow Inkling, Hugo Dyson! These vignettes were subsequently published in book form as The Great Divorce by the London publisher Geoffrey Bles in November 1945.

In his preface to The Great Divorce Lewis cautions the reader to remember that this story is a fantasy, it is a dream. The conditions of life beyond the grave are merely an imaginative supposal. Lewis did not want to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world. Certainly Lewis himself believed in hell, purgatory and heaven. But the subject of The Great Divorce is really choice. Lewis's point is that the choices we make in this life are leading us to either one ultimate destination or another, either heaven or hell. The message of the book is summed up in these words:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

Discussion Questions

1. In his preface to The Great Divorce Lewis states: "We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision." What do you think of Lewis's statement as it applies to religion? Do you think it a true statement or false? Why?
2. How do you react to Lewis's concept of hell as a place where each of the inhabitants are gradually moving further away from each other? Does Lewis's depiction of hell make it more real to you? Why or why not?
3. Upon his arrival on the outskirts of heaven Lewis says: "I had got ?out' in some sense which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair." Is Lewis's description of heaven one to which the 21^st century mind is receptive? Is his depiction of heaven attractive to you? Does it make you want to go there? Why or why not?
4. One of the ghosts from the grey city says: "I'm not asking for anybody's bleeding charity." The response of one of the solid people is: "Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought." What do you think Lewis intends to convey by the solid person's response? Why is it "Bleeding Charity"?
5. What do you make of the Episcopal Ghost who doesn't believe in a literal heaven and hell? Does Lewis's book make it easier for YOU to believe in a literal heaven and hell?
6. What is your favorite line from this book? Favorite vignette? Do you see yourself in any of the characters? In which ones? - if you dare to say.
7. Lewis says that the book is intended to teach a moral. What moral do you think it teaches?
8. Why do you think Lewis includes George MacDonald as a character in this dream? What do we learn about MacDonald's theology and Lewis's theology?
9. What do you think of MacDonald's statement: "Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell."?
10. Perhaps the major theme of The Great Divorce is that of choice with regard to salvation. Based on this book, what would you say is Lewis's view of free will and predestination?
11. One of the Spirits says: "Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him." Can you identify with this at all or have you ever known anyone like this?
12. What do you think of MacDonald's statement: "There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion."?
13. One of the sub-themes of The Great Divorce is the concept of Time. Several times throughout the book we are reminded that "this moment contains all moments". What do you think Lewis is saying about Time as it relates to human free choice and predestination?
14. What do you think of Lewis's point that Hell will not be allowed to veto Heaven? Does this make the reality of Hell more acceptable to you?

Discussion Questions

1. What motivated Calabria to write to Lewis?  What do you think motivated Lewis to respond and continue a correspondence, in Latin no less, for so many years?
2. How might we go about following Calabria and Lewis' example in seeking and fostering Christian unity?  What changes have you seen in terms of Christian unity in your lifetime, for better or for worse?
3. What do you think of Lewis' disagreements with Calabria expressed in letter 5?  Does Lewis provide us with a good model for dealing with our disagreements as Christians?
4. Do you agree with Lewis when he says in Letter 7 that we sometimes concern ourselves too much with the state of nations?  How might we best avoid this danger and follow Lewis' example in making a positive difference in our world?
5. What do you think of Lewis' comment in Letter 9 regarding his decrease in zeal for writing?  What encouragement/guidance is there for each of us in Lewis' attitude toward success or failure?
6. In our culture of increasing busyness how does the value of a life like that of Calabria strike you?  Does his example make you want to devote more time to prayer?  If so, how might those of us with "secular" jobs make more room in our lives for prayer?
7. What do you think of Lewis' reference in Letter 15 to "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" as a trifle, something in which he played rather than worked, giving free rein to his imagination but not without a mind for edification?  What do Lewis' comments suggest about the value of work which we most enjoy?
8. Letter 16 contains profound insight regarding the forgiveness of sins and the importance of not dwelling on our own sins.  What are your thoughts on this topic?
9. In Letter 17 Lewis speaks of his confessor.  In what ways do you think Lewis was close to being or becoming Roman Catholic?  In what ways not?
10. What do you think of Lewis' comments in Letter 17 and later about the strife in his home country of Northern Ireland and the danger of confusing religion and politics?
11. Are there any other points brought out in these letters which you wish to discuss? 

The Pilgrim's Regress was the first book C. S. Lewis had published after his re-conversion to Christianity. Prior to this Lewis had two volumes of poetry published under the pseudonym of Clive Hamilton: Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926).

Lewis wrote The Pilgrim's Regress during a fortnight holiday in August 1932 with his childhood friend Arthur Greeves at the Greeves family home, Bernagh, across the street from the old Lewis family home, Little Lea, in Belfast. Lewis had made an earlier prose attempt, in 1930, to describe his conversion to Theism. This first attempt was never published, but a copy resides in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A second account of his conversion, this time in verse, was attempted in early 1932. In this case the third attempt really was the charm. The fact that Lewis wrote all of The Pilgrim's Regress in a fortnight holiday reveals something of his genius.

The manuscript was sent to J. M. Dent and Sons in December 1932 and published in May 1933. Lewis himself drew the sketch for the Mappa Mundi which appeared on the endpapers of the first and subsequent editions. This first edition only sold 650 out of 1000 copies printed.

Some reviewers of The Pilgrim's Regress assumed wrongly that Lewis was a Roman Catholic, perhaps because one of the chief characters in the book is Mother Kirk. This brought the book to the attention of Sheed & Ward, a Roman Catholic publishing house in London. Dent printed an additional 1500 copies for Sheed who re-issued the book in 1935.

The blurb on the flyleaf of this second edition is really rather interesting. It says:

Lewis's comment on this second edition is worth noting for it indicates how strong an Ulster Protestant Lewis was at the time. He wrote to Arthur Greeves in December 1935:

Despite his displeasure with Sheed & Ward, Lewis allowed them to re-issue the book again in 1944, this time with a preface. In the preface, which now appears as an afterword in some editions, Lewis wrote:

Lewis attempted to correct the needless obscurity of the book by supplying running headlines throughout. The temper he left as it was. The book is still obscure to the average reader who lacks a sufficient understanding of the philosophical movements of the 1920's in England. This obscurity can be somewhat clarified by reading Lewis's spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, alongside The Pilgrim's Regress. David C. Downing's book, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis's Journey to Faith, also gives a helpful explanation of Lewis's journey from popular realism to Philosophical Idealism, Idealism to Pantheism, Pantheism to Theism, and finally from Theism to Christianity. For those in need of a handy translation and/or definitions of various terms in the Regress this introduction is followed by a glossary.

The overall purpose of The Pilgrim's Regress is summarized in the book's sub-title: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism, reason and romanticism being the two major things which led Lewis back to the Christian faith. As Lewis notes in his preface, by romanticism he means experiences of intense longing, a mere wanting which is somehow a delight. Lewis's romanticism is what the Germans call sehnsucht and Lewis himself called joy in his own autobiography. Lewis came to believe that if one would follow this romanticism, this longing, this joy, pursuing false objects until their falsity appeared and then abandoning them, then that person would eventually come to the knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy something which is never fully given in our earthly experience-that something which is a someone-namely God.

GLOSSARY^*

Ahriman: Persian, Prince of Evil.

Angular: a caricature of T.S. Eliot who was an Anglo-Catholic. Lewis is satirizing Eliot's dry anti-Romantic approach to literature.

Archtype and Ectype: the original and the copy.

Behemoth & Leviathan: huge animals referred to in Job 3:8 and 40:15.

Benedict: Spinoza, contributed to 17^th century rationalism.

Bernard: Bosanquet (1848-1923), British idealist.

Mr. Broad: the liberal church.

Claptrap: self-important, insincere and pretentious language. A trap is a two-wheeled carriage similar to Mr. Enlightenment's cart.

Classical: a caricature of Irving Babbitt, an American scholar who vigorously opposed Romanticism and died in 1933.

Clopinel: 13^th century writer, Jean de Meung.

Dialectic of Desire: the pattern of pursuing the source of joy, being side-tracked, and then corrected.

"Dixit Insipiens" means "The fool hath said . . ." from the Vulgate, Psalm 53:1, "The fool hath said in his heart ?There is no God.'"

Druery: Lovemaking.

The Dwarfs: Fascists and Communists (Marxomanni). Mussolomini are Italian Fascists, Swastici are the Nazis (Hitler had just been elected Chancellor of Germany when Lewis wrote this), and the Gangomanni are gangsters.

Eschropolis: city of foul obscenity.

"Esse Is Percipi" means "To be is to be perceived."

Evangelium eternum: the eternal gospel, pantheism.

Glugly: represents ugly and meaningless art. Lewis may have had the Dadaists of the 1920's in mind.

The Grand Canyon: the great chasm between God and man created by the sin of Adam, Peccatum Adae. It is also called the valley of Humiliation, a la Bunyan.

Mr. Halfways: represents the Romantic Poets. He is much like William Butler Yeats, whom Lewis had met and admired at one time. He also makes statements directly quoted from Keats.

Helot: a female serf in ancient Sparta.

Herbert: Spencer, coined the phrase "survival of the fittest."

Humanist: an atheist who lives to oppose optimism, Romanticism, transcendentalism and humanitarianism. He is a thinly disguised George Santayana.

Ignorantia: ignorance brought about by overemphasizing scientific/technological knowledge and suppressing classical education.

Immanuel: Kant (1724-1804).

Io Paean: a traditional Greek shout of triumph and praise.

Jehovah-Jireh: God will provide. (Genesis 22:14)

Karl: Marx.

Landlord: God.

"Let Grill be Grill" refers to a character in Lewis's favorite allegory, Spenser's Faerie Queene. Gryll had been turned into a hog, and when a knight released him from the spell, Gryll abused the knight instead of thanking him.

Luxuria: one of the seven deadly sins; unchastity.

Mr. Mammon: wealth.

The Man: Christ.

Media Halfways: Media refers to the materials of artistic creation. Halfways indicates the insufficiency of the arts to finally satisfy John's longing.

Medium Aevum: the Middle Ages.

Mother Kirk: Kirk is Scottish for church. Mother Kirk represents Christianity.

Nella Sua Voluntade: In His Will. This refers to "In His will is our peace" from Paradise, the third and last book of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Nomos: the Jewish Law, Vertue's father.

Northerners: According to Lewis the Northerners are "the men of rigid systems whether skeptical or dogmatic, Aristocrats, Stoics, Pharisees, Rigorists, signed and sealed members of highly organised ?Parties'."

Pagans: non-Jews.

Per-persecuted: extremely persecuted.

Phally: a nickname for Phallus. Probably represents D.H. Lawrence.

Pictures: Mythology.

Psittacosis: a parrot disease that men can catch.

"Quem Quaeritis in Sepulchro? Non Est Hic." is Luke 24:5-6 in the Latin Vulgate: "Whom do you seek in the sepulcher? He is not here."

Romanticism: (as used in the title of The Pilgrim's Regress), an experience of intense longing or sweet Desire; "the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight... this hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth."

Rudolph: Steiner (1861-1925), the first leader of the occult German Theosophic Association and later founder of the Anthroposophical Society, whose philosophy Lewis's friend Owen Barfield embraced.

The Rules: Morality.

Savage: a Nordic warrior much like Odin, god of war.

Mr. Sensible: common sense. He detests Reason, preferring common sense which seeks comfort instead of truth. He has a smattering of knowledge from many sources but does not fully understand any of the authors he has read, thus the many Latin, French and Greek quotes, which we will not translate here. Epicurus, who taught that the highest good is pleasure, was the founder of Mr. Sensible's house. In the end we find that Mr. Sensible is very insensible, and in fact-invisible.

Serpens nisi serpentem comederit: it is not a serpent if it doesn't eat serpents.

Shepherds: Jews.

A shaw: a small wood.

Sigismund: the son of Mr. Enlightenment, represents Sigmund Freud.

Slikisteinsauga: Sleekstone Eyes; a sleekstone is a stone used to polish something else. This is an angelic guide.

Southerners: According to Lewis the Southerners are "boneless souls whose doors stand open day and night to almost every visitant, but always with readiest welcome for those, whether Maenad or Mystagogue, who offer some sort of intoxication."

Superbia: pride, one of the seven deadly sins. Superbia is disgusted with all things physical and thus reduces her territory to sterile stone.

The Tableland: represents all high and dry states of mind including High Anglicanism.

Thrill: John's first thrill is delivery from fear of the Landlord; his second thrill is that of beautiful literature.

Vertue: human conscience.

Victoriana: Edith Sitwell, who wrote avant-garde poems but often dressed in medieval-style gowns.

Vieux jeu: French for "old hat".

Wisdom-Exoteric & Esoteric: readily understood wisdom and secret wisdom. Mr. Wisdom represents human wisdom apart from God and he teaches John basic Hegelianism. The Valley of Wisdom, in the end, turns out to be just one region in hell.

Worm: Snake.

Wormwood: a plant with a strong, bitter taste, used in Revelation 8:10-11 as a metaphor for calamity and sorrow, here used as the name for Mother Kirk's land-grabber.

Zeitgeistheim: home of the Spirit of the Age which is Freudian reductionism.

^*For many of the definitions in this glossary I am indebted to Kathryn Lindskoog and her excellent commentary on The Pilgrim's Regress entitled Finding the Landlord, published by Cornerstone.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. What do you think is the significance of the fact that John must regress rather than progress like Bunyan's Christian?
2. Lewis says that this book is an "allegorical apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism". How is this book a defense of each of these three entities?
3. What is the significance of the fact that John is born in the land of Puritania? How might this relate to Lewis's own life? How do Puritanism in Bunyan's allegory and Puritanism in Lewis's allegory compare and contrast?
4. How does John's experience of the primroses compare to Lewis's first experience of joy?
5. What is the meaning of the masks in Book I, chapter 3? Has your experience of religion ever been similar to John's? How?
6. What is the meaning of the Island? Is John's vision of the Island merely an aesthetic experience? Does reading John's story fill you with any desire to see the Island?
7. What is meant by the chapters entitled "Leah for Rachel"? Have you ever sought joy in a certain place only to find it wasn't there?
8. How does John's desire for the Island ultimately lead him to Mother Kirk? How did Lewis's experience of joy lead him to Christ? How about you- has desire played any role in leading you to God?
9. What role does Reason play in leading John to Mother Kirk? What role did Reason play in leading Lewis to Christianity? What role has Reason played in leading you closer to Christ?
10. What did you think of Mother Kirk's Story in Book V, Chapter 2? Do you find it more or less compelling than the corresponding biblical account of the fall? Why?
11. What is the significance of the Man's comment to John that he and Vertue will both recover only if they keep together?
12. There is an element of fear in John that runs throughout the story, fear of the Landlord, fear of the black hole, fear of death, fear of Mother Kirk, fear of prayer. Why is John afraid and how is this fear ultimately transformed?
13. In the chapter entitled "Caught" John expresses one of his deepest wishes. What is that wish? How does this correspond to Lewis's own wishes before his conversion? Have you ever had this wish?
14. The essence of The Pilgrim's Regress is perhaps best summed up in John's words to the hermit, "For I set out to find an Island and I have found a Landlord instead." How are the Island and the Landlord related? How did you feel when John finally crossed the Canyon and saw the Island and realized it was the other side of the Eastern Mountains?
15. The hermit tells John that there are two ways to the Landlord that were united in the Landlord's Son. What are these two ways? Who travels these two different routes? What do you think of Lewis's theology on this point?
16. In the second chapter entitled "Archtype and Ectype" John expresses a fear that many people have when he says, "I am afraid that the things the Landlord really intends for me may be utterly unlike the things he has taught me to desire." Have you ever had this fear? How does the hermit answer John's fear?
17. What is the significance of the fact that John must dive into the pool to get across the Canyon? What does the dive into the pool symbolize?
18. Why does the world look different to John as he regresses? What is Lewis's meaning here?
19. John's angelic guide during his regress makes the statement, "Anyone can refute the charge of cruelty. If he really wants to damage the Landlord's character, he has a much stronger line than that to take. He ought to say that the Landlord is an inveterate gambler. That would not be true, but it would be plausible, for there is no denying that the Landlord does take risks." What do you think the angel means by this statement? How does this fit in to Lewis's theology? What do you think?
20. What do you think of Lewis's concept of hell as a tourniquet?

Introduction

The Introduction and Preface to The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses is already so complete that nothing else really need be added to them. However, the reader might be interested to know what the response was to Lewis's sermons, since this volume contains five of them. In response to that interest I make so bold as to quote two paragraphs here from my essay "Lewis in Oxford: The Later Tutorial Years (1939-1953)" published in Volume 1 of C. S. Lewis: Life, Works and Legacy.

On October 22, 1939, C. S. Lewis preached his first sermon at St Mary the Virgin, the University Church in Oxford. The sermon was published in a pamphlet by the Student Christian Movement under the title, The Christian in Danger. Subsequently, the publisher Ashley Sampson, who had also invited Lewis to contribute The Problem of Pain to the Christian Challenge series of books he was bringing out, now asked Jack if he could include his sermon in an anthology he was editing entitled: Famous English Sermons. Jack wrote to Warnie saying that he couldn't make up his mind whether he should be grateful for the honor or fearful of looking a fool if his sermon should appear alongside the work of such historical figures as Bede, Latimer and Donne. When Jack later included this sermon in Transposition and Other Addresses he changed the title to Learning in War-Time. . . .

On Sunday evening, June 8, Jack preached his most famous sermon, "The Weight of Glory," in St. Mary's, the University Church, in Oxford. What was the response to Jack's sermons? Fred Paxford, Jack's gardener on whom Jack later modeled the character of Puddleglum in The Silver Chair, once wrote:

Mr. Jack should have been a clergyman. He would have made a great parson. When he preached at Quarry Church, it was always packed. He had a full clear voice which could be heard all over the church; and he nearly always brought a bit of humor into the sermons; and people seemed to like this. On a few occasions I had to drive him in to Oxford to preach in St. Mary's. As he always liked to be early, I parked the car and went to the service, and the church was always packed.

The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses contains such a wide variety of material that I have kept the discussion questions on this volume brief and general in nature. Hopefully this way the discussion group can focus on the aspects of these sermons and essays which are of most interest.

Discussion Questions

1.      Which one of C. S. Lewis's addresses in this collection is your favorite? Why?

2.      Which is your least favorite? Why?

3.      What ideas expressed in this collection do you have questions about?

4.      What ideas do you want to think further about?

5.      What ideas do you want to take action on in your life?

Introduction

The World's Last Night and Other Essays is a collection of essays each of which Lewis wrote as stand-alone pieces for other occasions and for various publications.  These were collected together and prepared by Lewis for re-publication in the United States by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1960.  Two of these essays appeared in another essay collection which Lewis later prepared for publication by Geoffrey Bles in the United Kingdom in 1962.  That essay collection was entitled, They Asked for a Paper.

What follows is my summary of the main points of each essay followed by discussion questions. . . .

The Efficacy of Prayer

• What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?
• Prayer is request; it may or may not be granted. The efficacy of prayer can't be proven by experiment.
• Assurance of answered prayer can't come on the basis of scientific experiment, but only on the basis of personal relationship.
• Does prayer work? This is the wrong question.
• In prayer God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayer is a corollary.
• Petitionary prayer is commanded.
• Summary: "Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate." p. 10

On Obstinacy in Belief

• Christian faith, at least initially, is based on evidence. It is not recommended for acceptance in the absence of or in the teeth of evidence.
• Wish fulfillment does not explain faith because we all have wishes on both sides.
• Summary: "If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this." pp. 24-25

• Summary: "'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' The higher the pretensions of our rulers are, the more meddlesome and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in whose name they rule will be defiled. The highest things have the most precarious foothold in our nature. By making sanctity or culture a moyen de parvenir you help to drive them out of the world. Let our masters leave these two, at least, alone; leave us some region where the spontaneous, the unmarketable, the utterly private, can still exist." p. 48

• Screwtape proposes a toast to mediocrity.
• There are no great sinners today, but there is more abundant fare.
• Summary: "These, then, are two welcome phenomena. First, the abundance of our captures; however tasteless our fare, we are in no danger of famine. And secondly, the triumph; the skill of our Tempters has never stood higher. But the third moral, which I have not yet drawn, is the most important of all.
• "The sort of souls on whose despair and ruin we have-well, I won't say feasted, but at any rate subsisted-tonight are increasing in numbers and will continue to increase. . . . The 'great' sinners . . . will not disappear. But they will grow rarer. . . . It is a change for the better. The great (and toothsome) sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena, the great Saints. The virtual disappearance of such material may mean insipid meals for us. But is it not utter frustration and famine for the Enemy?" pp. 55-56

• God wants us, if it is within our choice, to do work (as an occupation) that is worth doing, in and of itself, and to do it well.
• Summary: "'Great works' (of art) and 'good works' (of charity) had better also be Good Work." p. 80

• This essay should be read in conjunction with The Cosmic Trilogy.
• Summary: Lewis seeks to answer the question: "Will we lose God in outer space?" or "Will science ever show us anything that will necessitate the abandonment of our Christian faith?"
• Lewis's answer is: "Christians and their opponents again and again expect that some new discovery will either turn matters of faith into matters of knowledge or else reduce them to patent absurdities. But it has never happened." p. 92

• Summary: Lewis responds to the two grounds for modern embarrassment over the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ: (1) theoretical, that this doctrine is apocalyptic, belongs merely to outmoded first century thinking and conflicts with our favorite mythology - evolutionism; (2) practical, that this doctrine has led to great follies.
• Lewis responds to these objections by showing that (1) to reject a doctrine merely because it is part of the warp and woof of first century thinking is chronological snobbery, and not a valid reason for rejecting it; (2) evolutionism is a myth; (3) we should never try to date the Second Coming because even Jesus said that He did not know the day or hour of His return.
• Lewis concludes the essay with an exhortation to always be ready for the Second Coming of Christ because tonight could be "the world's last night."

Discussion Questions

1. Which one of Lewis's essays in this collection is your favorite? Why?
2. Which is your least favorite? Why?
3. What ideas expressed in this collection do you have questions about?
4. What ideas do you want to think further about?
5. What ideas do you want to take action on in your life?