'Wordsworth, The Prelude, bk. XI, line 230.
118
passion. I do not mean that what you are asking them is- not right and necessary in itself; we must forgive all our enemies or be damned. But it is emphatically not the exhortation which your audience needs. The communal sins which they should be told to repent are those of their own age and class-its contempt for the uneducated, its readiness to suspect evil, its self-righteous provocations of public obloquy, its breaches of the Fifth Commandment.2 Of these sins I have heard nothing among them. Till I do, I must think their candor toward the national enemy a rather inexpensive virtue. If a man cannot forgive the Colonel Blimp next door whom he has seen, how shall he forgive the dictators whom he hath not seen?
Is it not, then, the duty of the church to preach national repentance? I think it is. But the office-like many others- can be profitably discharged only by those who discharge it with reluctance. We know that a man may have to "hate" his mother for the Lord's sake.3 The sight of a Christian rebuking his mother, though tragic, may be edifying; but only if we are quite sure that he has been a good son and that, in his rebuke, spiritual zeal is triumphing, not without agony, over strong natural affection. The moment there is reason to suspect that he enjoys rebuking her-that he believes himself to be rising above the natural level while he is still, in reality, groveling below it in the unnatural-the spectacle becomes merely disgusting. The hard sayings of our Lord are wholesome to those only who find them hard. There is a terrible chapter in M. Mauriac's Vie de Jesus. When the Lord spoke of brother and child against parent, the other disciples were horrified. Not so Judas. He took to it as a duck takes to water: "Pourquoi cette
stupeur?, se demande Judas----// aime dans le Christ cette
vue simple, ce regard de Dieu sur I'horreur humaine."4 For there are two states of mind which face the dominical paradoxes without flinching. God guard us from one of them.
'"Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Exodus xx. 12.
'Luke xiv. 26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
"Francois Mauriac, Vie de Jesus (Paris, 1936), ch. ix. '"Why this stupefaction?' asked Judas.... He loved in Christ his simple view of things, his divine glance at human depravity."
17.
TWO WAYS WITH THE SELF
SELF-RENUNCIATION is THOUGHT TO BE, AND INDEED is, very near the core of Christian ethics. When Aristotle writes in praise of a certain kind of self-love, we may feel, despite the careful distinctions which he draws between the legitimate and the illegitimate Philautia,' that here we strike something essentially sub-Christian. It is more difficult, however, to decide what we think of St. Fran§ois de Sales's chapter, De la douceur envers nous-mesmes,2 where we are forbidden to indulge resentment even against ourselves and advised to reprove even our own faults avec des remonstrances douces et tran-quilles,3 feeling more compassion than passion. In the same spirit, Lady Julian of Norwich would have us "loving and peaceable," not only to our "even-Christians," but to "ourself."4 Even the New Testament bids me love my neighbor "as myself,"5 which would be a horrible command if the self were simply to be hated. Yet our Lord also says that a true disciple must "hate his own life."6
We must not explain this apparent contradiction by saying that self-love is right up to a certain point and wrong beyond that point. The question is not one of degree. There are two kinds of self-hatred which look rather alike in their earlier stages, but of which one is wrong from the beginning and the other right to the end. When Shelley speaks of self-contempt
Wicomachean Ethics, bk. ix, ch. 8.
2Pt. Ill, ch. ix. "Of Meekness towards Ourselves" in the Introduction to the Devout Life (Lyons, 1609).
'"with mild and calm remonstrances."
"The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, ch. xlix.
'Matthew xix. 19; xxii. 39; Mark xii. 31, 33; Romans xiii. 9; Galatians v. 14; James ii. 8.
6Luke xiv. 26; John xii. 25.
120
as the source of cruelty, or when a later poet says that he has no stomach for the man "who loathes his neighbor as himself," they are referring to a very real and very un-Christian hatred of the self which may make diabolical a man whom common selfishness would have have left (at least, for a while) merely animal. The hard-boiled economist or psychologist of our own day, recognizing the "ideological taint" or Freudian motive in his own makeup, does not necessarily learn Christian humility. He may end in what is called a "low view" of all souls, including his own, which expresses itself in cynicism or cruelty, or both. Even Christians, if they accept in certain forms the doctrine of total depravity, are not always free from the danger. The logical conclusion of the process is the worship of suffering-for others as well as for the self-which we see, if I read it aright, in Mr. David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, or that extraordinary vacancy which Shakespeare depicts at the end of Richard III. Richard in his agony tries to turn to self-love. But he has been "seeing through" all emotions so long that he "sees through" even this. It becomes a mere tautology: "Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I."7
Now, the self can be regarded in two ways. On the one hand, it is God's creature, an occasion of love and rejoicing; now, indeed, hateful in condition, but to be pitied and healed. On the other hand, it is that one self of all others which is called / and me, and which on that ground puts forward an irrational claim to preference. This claim is to be not only hated, but simply killed; "never," as George MacDonald says, "to be allowed a moment's respite from eternal death." The Christian must wage endless war against the clamor of the ego as ego: but he loves and approves selves as such, though not their sins. The very self-love which he has to reject is to him a specimen of how he ought to feel to all selves; and he may hope that when he has truly learned (which will hardly be in this life) to love his neighbor as himself, he may then be able to love himself as his neighbor: that is, with charity instead of partiality. The other kind of self-hatred, on the contrary, hates selves as such. It begins by accepting the special value of the particular self called me; then, wounded in its pride to find that such a darling object should be so disappointing, it seeks revenge, first upon that self, then on all. Deeply egoistic, but
''Richard III, V, iii, 184.
121
now with an inverted egoism, it uses the revealing argument, "I don't spare myself"-with the implication "then a fortiori I need not spare others"-and becomes like the centurion in Tacitus, immitior quia toleraverat.*
The wrong asceticism torments the self: the right kind kills the selfness. We must die daily: but it is better to love the self than to love nothing, and to pity the self than to pity no one.
'Annals, Bk. I, sect, xx, line 14. "More relentless because he had endured (it himself)."
18.
ON THE READING OF OLD BOOKS1
THERE IS A STRANGE IDEA ABROAD THAT IN EVERY SUB-
ject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modem books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Pla-tonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore be
en one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring then secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker2
'This paper was orginally written and published as an Introduction to St. Athanasius's The Incarnation of the Word of God, trans, by A. Religious of C.S.M.V. (London, 1944).
2Richard Hooker (c. 1554-1600), an Anglican divine.
123
or Butler,3 but M. Berdyaev4 or M. Maritain5 or Mr. Niebuhr6 or Miss Sayers7 or even myself.
Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why-the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed "at" some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.
'Joseph Butler (1692-1752), bishop of Durham.
•"Nicolas Berdyaev (1874-1948), a Russian philosopher and author.
'Jacques Maritain (b. 1820), a French Thomist philosopher.
6Reinhold Niebuhr (b. 1892), an American theologian.
'Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), author of several religious plays and many popular detective stories.
124
All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook-even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united-united with each other and against earlier and later ages-by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century-the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"-lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt8 or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
I myself was first led into reading the Christian classics, almost accidentally, as a result of my English studies. Some, such as Hooker, Herbert,9 Traherne,10 Taylor" and Bunyan,12 I read because they are themselves great English writers; others,
•This was written in 1943. 'George Herbert (1593-1633), the English poet. 10Thomas Traherne (1637-74), an English writer of religious works. "Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), an English divine, best known for his Holy Living and Holy Dying.
12John Bunyan (1628-88), best known for his Pilgrim's Progress.
125
such as Boethius,13 St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, because they were "influences." George MacDonald I had found for myself at the age of sixteen and never wavered in my allegiance, though I tried for a long time to ignore his Christianity. They are, you will note, a mixed bag, representative of many churches, climates and ages. And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them. The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some of these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted to think-as one might be tempted who read only contemporaries-that "Christianity" is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages "mere Christianity" turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity,141 learned to recognize, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales;15 it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser16 and Walton;17 it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal18 and Johnson;19 there again, with a mild, frightening, paradisial flavor, in Vaughan20 and Boehme21 and Traherne. In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not safe-Law22 and Butler were two lions in the path. The supposed "paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep it out; it lay in wait where a man might have supposed himself safest, in the very center of The
13Boethius was born about 470 A.D: and wrote The Consolation of Philosophy.
'•"Those who wish to know more about this period should read Lewis's autobiography, Surprised by Joy (London, 1955).
"Frangois de Sales (1567-1622) is best known for his Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God.
''Edmund Spenser (1522?-99), author of The Faerie Queene.
17Izaak Walton (1593-1683), best known for his Compleat Angler.
"Blaise Pascal (1623-62), especially noted for his Pensees.
"Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84).
20Henry Vaughan (1622-95), an English poet.
21 Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), a German Lutheran theosophical author.
22William Law (1686-1761), whose Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life much influenced Lewis.
126
Faerie Queene and the Arcadia.13' It was, of course, varied; and yet-after all-so unmistakably the same; recognizable, not to be evaded, the odor which is death to us until we allow it to become life:
an air that kills From yon far country blows.M
We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed
also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact, despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep tracks.
The present book is something of an experiment. The translation is intended for the world at large, not only for theological students. If it succeeds, other translations of other great Christian books will presumably follow. In one sense, of course, it is not the first in the field. Translations of the Theologia Ger-manica,2i the Imitation,26 the Scale of Perfection,27 and the Revelations of Lady Julian of Norwich,28 are already on the
Loving praise for Page 15
