Even as we talked and played with our friends and explored the city, I was discovering Jesus College, dining ‘on’ hall two or three times a week, and making further friends in the Junior Common Room: Trevor and John and Alan, all reading ‘Greats’ (or classics); Edmund Dews, tall and urbane, who had taken us on our first walk to Binsey; and John Dickey, who was reading law and concealed beneath an amiable, easy-going friendliness a mind like a razor. There were conversations with various dons about my work—the matter of choosing a subject for research—and a good deal of exploratory reading amidst the ancient grandeur of the Bodleian Library. Often as I, or Davy and I, pored over the books, there would be in the very background of awareness the persistent sound —almost monotonous and yet, after all, not monotonous, and cheer-ful, even gay—of change-ringing bells from one of the churches round about. Then, too, there were the college and university societies to look into, societies for every conceivable interest, serious and frivolous, including a yacht club through which we did a bit of sailing on the Isis.
But I was troubled by the things I could do, or had to do like dining in hall, that Davy could not do. We had a long talk about it, she urging me to experience the whole richness of Oxford and come back and tell her—and bring back, as, indeed, I was doing, the friends I made. ‘I’ d rather hear about it than not experience it at all,’ she said. ‘Besides, isn’t that what Peter Ibbetson and Mimsey did? Showing each other in dreams all they experienced? You can make me see—you’re good at that.’ So it was agreed: we would while we were here seek the whole of the Oxford thing, together when we could, apart when we must. And I did, most faithfully, recount all to her, and in the end what was to prove the deepest part of our Oxford days we shared completely.
One of the societies I, therefore, joined when I was invited to was a college dining society, limited to ten members, called the Antler, which twice a term had a dinner somewhere in the Oxford country, such as the Bear at Woodstock or Studley Priory. The dinner and the wines would be painstakingly selected in advance by one of us, we wore dinner jackets, and for half the dinners we invited a distinguished guest. The conversation ranged from good to brilliant; and what we sought, though we did not of course say so, was civilisation. Lew Salter was a member as was Edmund Dews, one of the most urbane of conversationalists who, in our opinion, outshone even Sir Maurice Bowra, the Vice-Chancellor, the night he dined with us.
One most memorable dinner was one Davy and I gave at the Woodstock flat. We had had Mother send us a good Virginia country ham, perhaps a Smithfield, and yams and cornbread. So we had a Lee’s Birthday Dinner amongst the dreaming spires for both our American and English friends, including John Dickey and Edmund and the ‘Christian Five’ and others. John lingered after-wards and we talked late.
Always at Oxford there would be in full term literally an embarrassment of riches: musical productions, including the annual visit of the D’Oyly Carte Gilbert and Sullivan troupe, plays destined for London openingfirstin Oxford, and of course the bump races of the college eights, which we watched from the handsome Jesus barge, one of a long line of colourful college barges moored along the river bank.
While the subject of major research was still being considered by Davy and me, I did a short paper for History Today, which paid me twenty guineas. It was on the English historian, James Anthony Froude, and I was given some help with it by A. L. Rowse of All Souls, that beautiful and austere college without undergraduates. Upon completion of my paper, my mentor invited me to dine at All Souls, black tie and, for some reason, a long gown.
The vast hall of All Souls was lighted only by candles—the table was a blaze of candles—but a little ways from the table and up, up towards the high vaulted roof, there was darkness. When I followed my host in, as part of the procession of dons, I was placed next to Warden Sumner, and, during the dinner, he talked to me with the most charming courtesy. His face in the candlelight with the dark behind—all down the table one saw the scholarly faces and the white of shirt fronts, but the gowns merged into darkness—his face had the austere beauty of a medieval saint. All the long centuries of Oxford came to a focus in that fine-drawn beautiful face. It is engraved on my mind as one of the great things I have seen. After the port and the conversation, as I walked out the Woodstock Road with my gown floating about me and the bells near and far announcing midnight, I thought of the words to make Davy see, and I thought that I had begun to know the meaning of Oxford.
One afternoon, having strolled with a friend along the Isis, I was walking alone across Port Meadow into Oxford, hearing change-ringing bells in the distance. It may be that the bells led me to picture a church spire surmounted by a cross. Anyhow, into my mind came, as it had done every now and then through the years, the memory of the shadow of a cross made by the destroyer’s mast and yardarm and my subsequent resolve some day to have another look at the case for Christianity. Perhaps now was the time to do it? The idea seemed less revolting than at other times it had recurred. Of course Christianity couldn’t possibly be true, a thought suggested. Still, another thought pointed out, there was that resolve; and one ought to be fair. As I made my way through the streets to Jesus to collect my bicycle, I happened to look up, There against the darkening grey sky was the tremendous soaring uprush of the spire of St. Mary the Virgin. My resolve came to the point: this was the time to do it. I swung about, nearly colliding with another Jesus man, and went into BlackwelPs, the booksellers.
Somewhile later I arrived at the Woodstock flat with an armload of books on Christianity. Over tea I told Davy of my thoughts and the effect of that thirteenth-century spire of St. Mary’s, quite possibly the loveliest spire in Christendom. Davy was pleased.
‘I’ ve been thinking that we ought to know more,’ she said. ‘Oh, good! I see you’ve got some C. S. Lewis. Thad and the others are always talking about him. Who is he, anyhow ?’
‘A don,’ I said. ‘He’s a don in one of the colleges—Magdalen, it says on this book. Not theology, though. English lit. Very brilliant, I think. I read part of a debate he was having with some philosopher. I think I’ ll read this one first—Miracles.’
‘Okay,’ said Davy. ‘I’ ll read Screwtape Letters. Then we can trade. Mary Ann and Lew, everyone in fact, will be pleased, won’t they ?’
‘They certainly will,’ I said. ‘But listen, Davy. We’re just having a look, you know. Let’s keep our heads. There are enormous arguments against Christianity.’
‘Oh, I know!’ she said. ‘I don’t see how it could be true. But-well, how would you feel if we decided that it was true ?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘I’ m not sure. One would know the meaning of things. That would be good. But we’d have to go to church and all that. And, well, pray. Still, it would be great to know meanings and, you know, the purpose of everything. But, dammit! it couldn’t be true! How could Earth’s religion — one of Earth’s religions—be true for the whole galaxy—millions of planets, maybe? That’s what rules it out right in the beginning. It’s—it’s too little!’
‘I know,’ said Davy. ‘Look—these three are a sort of science-fiction trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Did you know that ?’
‘Good lord!’ I said. ‘No. I’ ll read those first—unless you want to?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to read Screwtape. Thad says it’s funny.’
And that’s how it all began. The encounter with Light. Only of course it didn’t begin then. It began when we came to Oxford. Or it began with shadows of masts and trees. Or it began with our abandoning our childhood religion: To believe with certainty, somebody said, one has to begin by doubting. Wherever it began, what it was was a coming-together of disparate things—our love for each other and for beauty, our longing for unpressured time and the night of the cold sea-fire on Grey Goose, the quality of our Christian friends and the Oxford built by hands and the Oxford that I saw in the face of the Warden of All Souls. They came together into one, into focus,
and the Light fell upon them.
There were half a hundred books that first autumn and winter in Oxford. We became interested, absorbed, in the study of Christianity right from the start—though, still, it was only a study. It was fortunate that I chose to read that C. S. Lewis science-fiction triology first, for, apart from being beautiful and enthralling, it made me conscious of an alliance with him: what he hated (That Hideous Strength) I hated and feared. Much more important, perhaps, the triology showed me that the Christian God might, after all, be quite big enough for the whole galaxy. Nothing was proved except that, quite reasonably, He might be big enough; but, in fact, an insuperable difficulty—that of Christianity’s being only a local religion—was overcome. Apart from Lewis, we read G. K. Chesterton, who with wit presented in The Everlasting Man and other works a brilliant, reasoned case for the faith. And Charles Williams, theologian and novelist, who opened up realms of the spirit we didn’t know existed, was tremendously important to us both. Graham Greene showed—terribly—what sin was, and what faith was—also terrible. Dorothy Sayers made Christianity dramatic and exciting, and attacked complacency and dullness like a scorpion. We had read T. S. Eliot for years, but now we began to see what he was really saying in Ash Wednesday and the Four Quartets—and it scared us, rather. His description of the state of being a Christian lingered in our minds: ‘A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything).’ Everything! There were many other books, including Christian classics like St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. And we read the New Testament, of course, in numerous translations along with commentaries. But there is no doubt that C. S. Lewis was, first to last, overwhelmingly the most important reading for us both. Only someone who has faced the question—is Christianity false?—can help someone else resolve the counter-question—is it true? We read everything he ever wrote, including Great Divorce, Miracles, Problem of Pain, Pilgrim’s Regress (which I found very meaning-ful), and much more, including his scholarly works, such as The
Allegory of Love. The man’s learning was immense, in English literature, in the classics, and, despite his disclaimers, in theology. His was perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most lucid mind we ever knew: he wrote about Christianity in a style as clear as spring water without a hint of sanctimoniousness or vagueness or double-talk, never suggesting that anything be accepted on other than reasonable grounds. He gave us, simply, straightforward, telling argument laced with wit. And that incredible imagination.
As we read, we talked to our Christian friends, raising our questions and doubts. They answered us very patiently and thoughtfully. By now there were other Christian friends besides the original five, particularly a little Welshman in my college named Geraint Gruffydd, a poet and a reader of poetry. An important insight struck us—Davy and me—one day when we realised that our friends, though Anglican, Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran, were united by far more—mere Christianity, as Lewis would put it —than divided them. ‘And they’re all so—so happy in their Christianity,’ said Davy. And I said, ‘Could it be—that happiness— what’s called “Christian joy”, do you think ?’ That night I wrote in our Journal:
The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians—when they are sombre and joy-less, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Chris-tianity dies a thousand deaths. But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though very easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them. Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity—and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order.
If minds like St. Augustine’s and Newman’s and Lewis’s could wrestle with Christianity and become fortresses of that faith, it had to be taken seriously. I writhed a bit at the thought of my easy know-nothing contempt of other years. Most of the people who reject Christianity know almost nothing of what they are rejecting: those who condemn what they do not understand are, surely, little men. Thank God, if there is a God, we said, that we are at least looking seriously and honestly at this thing. If our Christian friends —nuclear physicists, historians, and able scholars in other fields— can believe in Christ, if C. S. Lewis can believe in Christ, we must, at least, weigh it very seriously.
Davy and I, we later decided, were immeasurably helped in our serious look at Christianity by where we considered ourselves to be: we did not at all suppose that we were Christians, just because we were more or less nice people who vaguely believed there might be some sort of a god and had been inside a church. We were right outside of the fold. Thus we were perfectly aware that the central claim of Christianity was and always had been that the same God who made the world had lived in the world and been killed by the world; and that the (claimed) proof of this was His Resurrection from the dead. This, in fact, was precisely what we, so far at least, did not believe. But we knew that it was what had to be believed if we were to call ourselves Christian. Consequently, we did not call ourselves Christian. Later we were to meet people who no more believed in this central claim than in the Easter bunny, yet they called themselves Christians on the basis, apparently, of going to church, being nice and respectable, and accepting some assorted bits of the Sermon on the Mount. I wrote sardonically that such people are proof that there can be smoke without fire. But Davy and I were not too close to Christianity to see it. We didn’t mistake the foothills for the mountain. We saw it there only too clearly, solitary, vast, ice-capped, and apparently unscalable, at least by us. For we knew we had to believe. Christianity was a faith.
And by now we knew that it was important. If true—and we admitted to each other the possibility that it was—it was, very simply, the only really important truth in the world. And if untrue, it was false. No halfway house. First or nothing. I wrote:
It is not possible to be ‘incidentally a Christian’. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming firsts but many balances.
One December night, after Davy and I had been talking about the fact that Christianity claimed to be an answer to all the eternal questions—a consistent answer, our physicist friends kept murmuring—we admitted to each other that we did, quite desperately, want an answer. The only trouble, I added, was that we couldn’t believe the Christian one. Then I suggested that we go out for a walk, but she said she was a bit headachey and wanted to go to bed. I told her to go on, then, and I should just walk up to the corner and back. While I was walking I thought what I should like to ask C. S. Lewis if only he were here. When I returned to the flat, I sat down, on an impulse, and wrote to Lewis, a busy man whom I had never so much as seen. He replied, straight to the point, immediately; and I wrote again.
The correspondence, two letters apiece, now follows with only the salutations and closings omitted:
To C. S. Lewis (I)
I write on an impulse—which in the morning may appear so immodest and presumptuous that I shall destroy this. But a few moments ago I felt that I was embarked for a voyage that would someday lead me to God. Even now, five minutes later, I’ m in-clined to add a qualifying ‘maybe’. There is a leap I cannot make; it occurs to me that you, having made it, having linked certainty with Christianity, might, not do it for me, but might give me a hint of how it’s to be done. Having felt the aesthetic and historical appeal of Christianity, having begun to study it, I have come to awareness of the strength and ‘possibleness’ of the Christian answer. I should like to believe it. I want to know God—if he is knowable. But I cannot pray with any conviction that Someone hears. I can’t believe.
Very simply, it seems to me that some intelligent power made this universe and that all men must know it, axiom
atically, and must feel awe at the power’s infiniteness. It seems to me natural that men, knowing and feeling so, should attempt to elaborate on that simplicity—the prophets, the Prince Buddha, the Lord Jesus, Mohammed, the Brahmins—and so arose the world’s religions. But how can just one of them be singled out as true? To an intelligent visitor from Mars, would not Christianity appear to be merely one of a host of religions ?
I said at starting that I felt I was treading a long road that would one day lead me to Christianity; I must, then, believe after a fashion that it is the truth. Or is it only that I want to believe it? But at the same time, something else in me says: ‘Wanting to believe is the way to self-deception. Honesty is better than any easy comfort. Have the courage to face the fact that all men may be nothing to the Power that made the suns.’
And yet I would like to believe that the Lord Jesus is in truth my merciful God. For the apostles who could talk to Jesus, it must have been easy. But I live in a ‘real world’ of red buses and nylon stockings and atomic bombs; I have only the record of other? claimed experiences with deity. No angels, no voices, nothing. Or, yes, one thing: living Christians. Somehow you, in this very same world, with the same data as I, are more meaning-ful to me than the bishops of the faithful past. You accomplished the leap from agnosticism to faith: how? I don’t quite know how I dare write this to you, a busy Oxford don, not a priest. Yet I do know: you serve God, not yourself; you must do, if you’re a Christian. Perhaps, if I had the wit to see it, my answer lies in the fact that I did write.
A Severe Mercy Page 9
