Sermons in Reverse

The sharpest religio-psychological writer of the season is an elderly devil named Screwtape, whose letters of instruction have somehow fallen into the hands of C. S. Lewis, Fellow of Oxford's Magdalen College. (Writes Mr. Lewis in the preface to THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (Macmillan; $1.50): "I have no intention of ex plaining how. . . .") In a series of Chesterfieldian letters, written from the cozy depths of Hell, Screwtape advises his inexperienced nephew Wormwood on the best means of eternally damning the soul of his "patient." The "patient," a young Englishman who is never named, "backslides" into religion, is "rescued" by life among clever agnostics, regains his faith, does his duty in London's air raids, and is snatched into salvation by a bomb.

Sectarian Fiends. Screwtape and his deputy are strictly Church-of-England fiends, in seeming agreement with God (called The Enemy) on sexual ethics, the nature of time, the unimportance of worldly goods, and almost everything else except Love and Free Will.

Screwtape writes with the sly temperateness of wisdom and of age: "Doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter haw small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. In deed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without mile stones, without signposts. . . ."

An enormous help in the devil's sleight of hand is the present vogue of The Historical Point of View. "The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking 'Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?' they will neglect the relevant questions."

The Value of Time. Wormwood, a youngster full of a youngster's appetites, is beside himself with joy as the war intensifies. His uncle, snarling at "your readiness to forget the main point in your immediate enjoyment of human suffering," warns him: "I sometimes wonder if you young fiends ... are not in some danger of becoming infected by the sentiments and values of the humans among whom you work. They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so. . . .

"You should be guarding him like the apple of your eye. If he dies now, you lose him. If he survives the war, there is always hope. . . . The long, dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. . . ."

"All that sustains me. . . ." Screw-tape's last letter reads with the raging crankiness of a Browning monologue: "You have let a soul slip through your fingers. . . . The more one thinks about it, the worse it becomes. He got through so easily! No gradual misgivings, no doctor's sentence, no nursing home, no operating theater, no false hopes of life; sheer, instantaneous liberation. One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses ... the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream, never again to be of any account. . .

"Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself, the greatest curse upon us is the failure of our Intelligence Department. If only we could find out what He is really up to! Alas, alas, that knowledge, in itself so hateful and mawkish a thing, should yet be necessary for Power! Sometimes I am almost in despair. All that sustains me is the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end. Meanwhile, I have you to settle with. Most truly do I sign myself

"Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE."

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