Needless to say, they don’t do it either as a medicine does or as magic is supposed to do: i.e. automatically. Prayer is Request—like asking your employer for a holiday or asking a girl to marry one. God is free to grant the request or not: and if He does you cannot prove scientifically that the thing wd. not have happened anyway. Just as the boss might (for all you know) have given you a holiday even if you hadn’t asked. (Cynical people of my sex will tell one that if a girl has determined to marry you, married you wd. have been whether you asked her or not!). Thus one can’t establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics as you might establish the connection between pure milk and fewer cases of tuberculosis. It remains a matter of faith and of God’s personal action: it would become a matter of demonstration only if it were impersonal or mechanical.2
When I say ‘personal’ I do not mean private or individual. All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it v. helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)
With all best wishes for the New Year.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): 3
Magdalen College
Oxford Jan 5/51
Dear Mr. Van Auken
We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more theological.
(1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.
(2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which cd. not be v. easily digested in the time.
(3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.
St Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.
Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’:4 sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS
REF.23/51.
Magdalen College,
6th January 1951
Dear Miss Pitter,
No, don’t! I mean don’t waste a copy on me. Contemporary pictures be blowed! It sounds horrible: the Ugly Duchess with a vengeance.
Incidentally, what is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one does’nt like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself? One might as well read everyone who had the same job or the same coloured hair, or the same income, or the same chest measurements, as far as I can see. I whistle, and plunge into the tunnel of term.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):5 TS
RER20/51.
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 8th January 1951.
Dear Miss Baynes,
My idea was that the map should be more like a medieval map than an Ordnance Survey–mountains and castles drawn—perhaps winds blowing at the corners—and a few heraldic-looking ships, whales and dolphins in the sea.6 Asian gazing at the moon would make an excellent cover design (to be repeated somewhere in the book; but do as you please about that.)
My brother once more joins me in all good wishes.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
You didn’t keep me a bit too long and I shd. have been v. glad if you’d stayed longer. I was hurried (I hope, not rudely so) only because I didn’t want to be left with a long vacancy between your departure and the next train).
TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford 8/1/51
Dear Mr. Van Auken
Look: the question is not whether we should bring God into our work or not. We certainly should and must: as MacDonald says ‘All that is not God is death.’7 The question is whether we should simply (a.) Bring Him in in the dedication of our work to Him, in the integrity, diligence, & humility with which we do it or also (b.) Make His professed and explicit service our job. The A vocation rests on all men whether they know it or not: the B vocation only on those who are specially called to it. Each vocation has its peculiar dangers & peculiar rewards. Naturally, I can’t say which is yours.
When I spoke of danger to your academic career on a change of subject I was thinking chiefly of time. If you can get an extra year, it wd. be another matter. I was not at all meaning that ‘intellectual history’ involving Theology wd. in itself he academically a bad field of research.
I shall at any time be glad to see, or hear from you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TOP. H. NEWBY(BBC): 8
C4/HT/PHN
Magdalen College
Oxford 11/1/51
Dear Mr. Newby
I don’t think I’d care to do a Work in Progress