Where did Jack come to see this truth? What is more important than when he came to believe in this Person? The answer is that it happened in a motorcycle sidecar, not on the road to Damascus but on the road to Whipsnade Zoo.
What had led to this significant moment in Jack’s life? What had brought him to Christ and guided him away from the lands and places he would write of in September 1932? The book he would write during that two-week holiday with Arthur Greeves at Bernagh on Belfast’s Circular Road was The Pilgrims Regress. It mentioned places as diverse as Claptrap, Haunch, Antinomia, Woodey, Sodom, Aphroditopolis, Ignorantia, Superbia, Wanhope, and Mania. How did he escape these places?
Before answering these questions, let’s go back to the evening of 19 September 1931. Three men were dining at Magdalen College. One of them was Hugo Dyson, who had been introduced to Jack Lewis through Nevill Coghill the year before. Dyson was lecturer and tutor in English at Reading University, and an Oxford Extension Lecturer. He had come to spend a weekend with Jack. The other man was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Born in South Africa, he became the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Tolkien and Lewis had become close friends. After dinner, the threesome went for a stroll around Addison’s Walk. The walk lies within the grounds of Magdalen College and runs alongside New Buildings northwards between Long Meadow and the Fellows’ Garden until it reaches the area called Mesopotamia. The walk that evening was to be no ordinary walk. Its results were to be incalculable. It was going to help lead Jack Lewis to Jesus Christ.
What was Jack’s problem with Christianity?
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, though true and important, is not Christianity; right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St. Paul, you keep getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (propitiation, sacrifice, the blood of the Lamb)—expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.3
Tolkien and Dyson showed Jack that, if he met the idea of sacrifice, death, and resurrection in a pagan story, he did not mind; indeed he was even moved by it. This was provided he met all these things anywhere but in the Gospels. To put that long, fascinating conversation in a nutshell—Tolkien and Dyson carefully sought to show Jack that the story in the Gospels really happened. Tolkien pointed out that this is a God who is real and whose dying can transform those who believe in him. A gust of wind came through the trees, and leaves fell on Jack’s shoulders. But more than leaves fell that evening: spiritual insight fell, too, that was to have wonderful results. They talked until three o’clock in the morning, when Tolkien decided he had better go home to his wife.
Hugo Dyson and Jack continued to walk and talk further. The pair of them strolled up and down the arcades of New Buildings, Dyson urging Jack to believe all that the gospel story presented. Dyson emphasised that, in believing in Christ and His gospel, a person receives peace and forgiveness of sins and can become a new person.
So it was that, three days later, on 22 September 1931, Jack got into the sidecar of his brother Warren’s motorcycle, and the pair of them set off for Whipsnade Zoo in London. It was a bright, sunny morning. Jack records that he did not spend the journey deep in thought; he had no inward emotional crisis whatsoever. He confessed that when he got into the sidecar he did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God; when he got out of the sidecar he did.
How did Jack sum up what had happened? He likened the experience to a man lying motionless in bed after a long sleep, being suddenly aware that he is awake. Christ’s apostle John put it this way: “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, abides in Him, and he in God. . . . He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. . . . [A]nd this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life: he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”4
It was a great spiritual transaction that Jack Lewis experienced that morning, and it was to lead him into discovering more and more of the beauty and glory of the person of Jesus Christ. Although the writer of this biography is not seeking to “tidy up” Jack’s life (as, for example, some Victorian writers do with their subjects), he does want to point out that what happened on the road to Whipsnade had a profound influence on Jack’s thinking. Though Jack continued to have doubts in certain areas, God had begun a tremendous work in him. As he went forward in his Christian experience, God would reveal more and more truth to his heart and mind.
Tracing the writing of C. S. Lewis, we find that he came to see that the gospel fulfils the deepest human aspirations that all other myths are groping toward; and, moreover, that the gospel is true. He came to see Christ as the Thirst Quencher, the One who was laid in a stable although He was bigger than the whole world, the One who had, in fact, made it. Powerfully Lewis showed that, considering the things He said, to state that Christ was merely a great moral teacher was ridiculous. Lewis believed that, when Christ died, He died not for humankind but for each human. If there had been only one person, He would have died for that person. He taught that, in following Christ, there were no accidents. He also believed Christ to be sinless, and that His work of ransom on the cross had been planned in Eternity. He believed that His death washed out our sins, and that in dying He had disabled death. He believed Christ to be the great and final Judge of us all and the King of Kings. Christ, he believed, was the Uncreated Light that drowns darkness. He believed that Christ would come again “as a thief in the night,” and that we must be ready for His coming at all moments.
It was a new Jack Lewis that returned to Oxford that September day. The joy he had set so much store by, he came to see, was but a signpost pointing on to the heavenly Jerusalem—to Mount Zion itself. He now stopped striding “the broad way that leads to destruction” and turned to walk “the narrow way that leads to life.”5 But he could not have dreamt of what was about to unfold in his life.
Chapter Twelve
TAKING A HEADER
SOME PEOPLE CALL DECEMBER “THE dead of the year.” Yet, for the careful observer of the English countryside, a few plants are still producing occasional flowers in December. There are the red campion, the hogweed, and the white dead-nettle in the hedges. In the meadows, yarrow and dandelion can be found. In the thickets, crops of shaggy parasol mushrooms come up under the thorn trees.
A careful search in the sheltered hollows of the English countryside in December will reveal the first stirrings of new growth—green shoots poking through the leaf mould, poised to grow and expand when the warmer spring days come.
In the dusk of a December day, an observer lingering in the woods might catch sight of a badger stomping about and grunting. Some people call it the British bear. By the streams, otters come out to fish, and sometimes they cross the meadows to look for another stream. Since their feet are webbed, they are able to move easily on land. High above the valleys and heaths of England, lone kestrels can be seen at times, sinking like stones to capture their prey. The screeching, screaming, and chattering of birds warn that a fox is about. December nights find him on his many nocturnal prowls.
As December 1931 proceeded, berried holly was being harvested to deck millions of homes across Britain. December, with its very own quiet and subtle beauty, its days of sun and wind-scudded clouds in an azure sky, was heralding Christmas. Many children longed for snow; but the small birds loathed the hoarfrost that powdered them as they darted in and out of the bushes; as the hoarfrost penetrates their skin, it slowly melts and chills them to misery. Children, bounding to their windows in the mornings, were fascinated by the frost on the panes. The essayist F. W. Boreham, writing of such mornings in his youth, recalled
how we stood round [the window], little wh
ite-robed shivering groups, and, even while our teeth chattered with the cold, we told each other of all the wonders that we could see in the frozen glass! Such ferns and flowers and forests! Such ogres’ castles and fairy palaces! Such ships and seas and desert islands! Such flocks of sheep and packs of wolves and herds of antlered deer! Finding pictures in the frozen window-panes was like finding faces in the glowing embers. There was no end to it.1
The village of Headington Quarry lies just about three miles from the centre of Oxford. In Christmas 1931, there were new residents in the area. In October, Jack, Mrs. Moore, and Maureen had moved into their new, permanent, home called The Kilns. Named after the two brick kilns that lay to the left of the house, it was set in an eight-acre garden, half of which was a wooded segment of Shotover Hill. The Kilns lay at the end of a narrow lane that gave it delicious privacy. Jack and Warren had discovered the place in July 1930. It was the stuff of dreams.
Back in April, Jack and Warren had spent their last time together at Little Lea, and they had buried their childhood toys in a box in the garden. They set aside some items to move to England and other things to be sold at auction. They took to Oxford the considerable volume of papers, connected with the Lewis family, that had been kept by their father. Warren eventually typed them up and bound them in eleven volumes that he entitled Memories of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930. Today they are on microfilm in the Bodleian Library in Oxford; the originals are in the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton College, Illinois.
At the front of The Kilns, there were a lawn and tennis court; at the back a large, beautifully wooded pond, suitable for bathing, lay between the lower and upper parts of the property. The land then rose steeply through little ravines and nooks to a little cliff that was topped by a meadow, ending in a thick belt of fir trees. The view from the top was simply glorious. Mrs. Moore was the nominal owner of The Kilns, with the agreement that, on her death, the house would be left to Jack and Warren for their lifetime. The property would become Maureen’s after the death of both brothers. Jack and Warren put up some of the money to purchase the property.
On Christmas Day 1931, the figure of Jack Lewis was to be seen walking the half mile to Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry. It was a short journey on foot, but it had been an immensely long journey of mind, heart, and conscience actually to reach that morning.
To understand fully what was going on in Jack’s mind that Christmas Day, one would need to read The Pilgrims Regress. In the summer of 1930, Jack—who loved to be in water—had been taught to dive by his friend Owen Barfield. Anyone who has known how difficult it is to take a first dive, and how simple it seems afterwards, can empathise with Jack. In The Pilgrim’s Regress he likens the experience to becoming a public part of the body of Christ. First, Lewis emphasises the necessity of either accepting grace through Christ, or experiencing spiritual death. He then proceeds to what follows on from the acceptance of grace: the experience of becoming a part of the mystical body of Christ and a communicant in the Church. In Lewis’s allegory, the pilgrim John stands on the edge of a large pool, being urged to take off the rags he has long worn on his pilgrimage and to dive into the water. Diving simply necessitated letting himself go; as the chapter heading puts it, Securus Te Projice (throw yourself away without care).
As Jack walked that half mile to Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, one wonders if he heard the same voices challenging him as the pilgrim John did while he stood on the water’s edge. John heard again from people he had met earlier in his pilgrimage; the voices of Mr. Enlightenment, Mr. Media, Mr. Halfway-Sensible, Mr. Humanist, and Mr. Broad tried to stop him from diving in. Judging from the way that Jack writes in The Pilgrims Regress, one feels that he did.2
In Dickens’s novel A Christmas Carol, on Christmas Eve Scrooge heard the voices of the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future; but on Christmas Day 1931 the voices Jack Lewis must have heard were not trying to dissuade him merely from a Victorian-style Christmas of good will and bonhomie. They were determined to distract him from committing himself so publicly to the Christian Church that had been created by the One who was born on the first Christmas Day.
As John “took a header”3 into the pool (this is distinctly an Ulster expression), so Jack Lewis took his “header,” and received communion for the first time since boyhood. He remained a communicant member of Holy Trinity Church for the rest of his life, and was buried in its cemetery. (His Roman Catholic friend George Sayer stated that there is no evidence that Jack ever seriously considered becoming a Roman Catholic.)4
What thoughts filled his mind as he headed back to The Kilns? Could he have imagined how God was going to prove to him the truth of Christ’s words, “He who loses his life for My sake will find it.”6
Life at The Kilns now moved along steadily under the careful eyes of Mrs. Moore and Fred Paxford the gardener and handyman. Showing her compassionate side, Mrs. Moore bought a bungalow in sections and had it put up in the grounds of The Kilns, to give a home to an old woman who was in need. The poor and hungry were often fed at Janie’s table. Though the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and sister of an Anglican dean, she seriously resented Jack’s conversion. Janie Moore blamed God for the death of her son Paddy, and she nagged Jack about his faith. In December 1932, Warren returned from the army and came to live at The Kilns. When he joined Jack for communion at Holy Trinity Church on Sunday mornings, Mrs. Moore chided them for going to “those blood feasts.” Her atheism, though, did not stifle her outstanding kindness.
During term time, except at weekends Jack stayed at his Magdalen College rooms. He attended Dean’s Prayers at the college chapel each morning at 8.00 a.m. and then went to breakfast in the Common Room. At this time in Jack’s life, Common Room breakfast was shared with three men, Paul Beneke, the grandson of the composer Mendelssohn; Professor J. A. Smith, the Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy; and Adam Fox, the Dean of the Divinity School. The ensuing conversations would, no doubt, have made a book in themselves.
Jack usually lunched at The Kilns and had evening dinner “at hall” in Magdalen. Twice a week he would have wine and some fruit and nuts in the Senior Common Room, and he would talk with the extraordinary men who gathered there. His life was full. He tutored students extensively, gave lectures, and did his research during holidays. One result of his early research was his profound work of literary history and criticism, The Allegory of Love.
Jack Lewis maintained that Christianity was like seeing the sun. It was not just that he saw the sun, but that by the sun he saw everything else. His conversion to Christ had now given him a fixed point from which to write and teach. He did not try to convert his students; indeed, a student could have listened to him and not known that he was a Christian. The truth is, though, that if a man is in love he cannot hide it; and it would not be long before his love for Christ would be known nationwide. But even as his love for Christ shone undeniably, he wisely did not take undue advantage of his captive audience.
By all accounts, Jack lectured with enthusiasm and aplomb. He had a loud, booming voice, and his lectures lasted for exactly three-quarters of an hour. As his reputation grew, so did the number of students attending his lectures. There he stood, in baggy jacket and trousers, jovially and engagingly giving his views on the literature of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. He was the only lecturer of the 1930s and 40s to draw and hold large audiences. If he was late for a lecture, he was even known to begin it before he entered the lecture hall. His booming voice would be heard as he came up the steps outside, and he continued lecturing as he headed toward the dais. When he had finished his last sentence, he would step off the dais, hand back the watch he had borrowed from a student, and walk briskly out of the lecture hall, taking no questions.
All great teachers, while they inspire others, need inspiration themselves. While giving out to others, they too need to take in. Jack had undoubted ability as an outstanding literary critic, but he needed those who would cha
llenge and criticise his own writing and nourish his intellect and spirit. These needs were fulfilled each week when he met with the group called The Inklings. Their meetings were for him a truly pleasant experience.
Around 1930 an undergraduate of University College called Tangye Lean founded The Inklings to create the opportunity for dons (university lecturers) and undergraduates to meet together and read unpublished compositions aloud. These works were then discussed and criticised—and maybe even praised. Lean invited Jack and J. R. R. Tolkien, the Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, to join his club. Lean had two novels published while he was at University and was Editor of the undergraduate magazine Isis from 1932 to 1934. Tangye Lean went on to become an extremely talented wartime broadcaster for the BBC. His club dissolved when he left Oxford in June 1933; and that autumn Jack used the name The Inklings to describe the group of friends who met weekly in his rooms at Magdalen.
Tangye Lean’s brother, David, became the famous film director of such classics as The Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India, and, of course, Ryan’s Daughter. One wonders what kind of classic film David Lean could have produced about The Inklings. Maybe someone, somewhere, will rise up soon and make one. No doubt the camera would pan around the hugely talented characters who met, both on Thursday evenings at Jack’s rooms in Magdalen College, and eventually on Tuesday mornings during term time in the back room of The Eagle and Child in Oxford. As those men of learning met to discuss poetry, language, myth, imagination, the state of the world, theology, and, at times, things frivolous, they were an unelected and undetermined group. They had no rules, no officers, and no agenda. The only way in was by invitation. The Scripture says, “As in water face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man.7 A lot of reflection and revelation took place during those discussions.
A Shiver of Wonder Page 13