CS Lewis died 50 years ago today. Below are the top ten quotations from his books, articles and letters that have most helped me.
'"Sir," said Caspian, "I've always wanted to have just one glimpse of their world. Is that wrong?"
"You cannot want wrong things any more, now that you have died, my son," said Aslan.'
CS Lewis, The Silver Chair, p.451 (of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia)
'In the light of the New Creation all miracles are like snowdrops - anticipations of the full spring and high summer wh. is slowly coming over the whole wintry field of space and time.'
CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol II, p.649.
'...any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in "the High Countries."'
CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, p.8.
'The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive the examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in his son - it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory, which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.'
CS Lewis, 'The Weight of Glory' in The CS Lewis Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church, p.102.
'Isn't the spiritual value of having to accept money just this, that it makes palpable the total dependence in which we always live anyway? For if you were what is called "independent" (i.e. living on inherited wealth) every bit you put into your mouth and every stitch on your back wd. be coming from the sweat and skills of others while you (as a person) wd. not really be doing anyhthing in return. It took me a long time to see this - tho', heaven knows, with the Cross before our eyes we have little excuse to forget our insolvency.'
CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.) in The Collected Letters of CS Lewis Vol III, p.761.
'The Christian doctrine of suffering explains I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God witholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.'
CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p.94.
'I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience etc doesn't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be v. muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, & the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the v. sign of His presence.'
CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), Collected Letters Volume II, p. 507.
'...in Friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at our first meeting - any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another."'
CS Lewis, The Four Loves, p.83.
'Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”
Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”
“No fear of that,” said Asan. “Have you not guessed?”
Their hearts leapt and a wild hope rose within them.
“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning"
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no-one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.’
CS Lewis, The Last Battle, p. 524 (in The Complete Chronicles of Narnia)
'...we must never imagine that our own unaided efforts can be relied upon to carry us even through the next twenty-four hours as "decent people". If he does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death.
That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a tough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disapointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being necessary. It seems to us unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.
I find I must borrow another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanantion is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.'
CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.173.
