From Hell to Heaven

Men who can write readable books about religion are almost as rare as saints. One such rarity is the Oxford don, Clive Staples Lewis. In The Screwtape Letters (TIME, April 19, 1943) Author Lewis gave his readers Hell, and they liked it. Americans and Britons bought some 200,000 copies of these ironically instructive letters from an elderly devil in Hell to his callow young nephew on earth. But writers, as Dante and Milton knew, have usually felt more at home in Hell than in Heaven. Last week in Christian Behaviour (Macmillan; $1) Author Lewis succeeded in the much tougher task of making Heaven as readable as Hell.

Like his previous book, The Case for Christianity (Macmillan; $1), Christian Behaviour is a collection of Author Lewis' BBC talks. The Case for Christianity explained why he believes Christianity is true. Christian Behaviour explains what a Christian must do to make religion ring true in his life. Lewis' main point: morals are not like the schoolboy's definition of God--"The sort of person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it." Morals, says Lewis, "are directions for running the human machine. ..."

There are no startling new truths in Christian Behaviour, no startling inferences from old truths. Its subject matter is not exclusively Christian. It is common to all religions. What Lewis contributes is a childlike simplicity (not to be confused with naivete) that is the essence of the Christian spirit, and which pierces all obscuring subterfuges of thought and language to fix and define the simple moral and religious points he is making. He also contributes a swift humor that humanizes what might otherwise be bald homilies.

Reluctant Believer. Red-cheeked, balding, Belfast-born, Clive Staples Lewis, 45, has been tutor and lecturer at Oxford's Magdalen College since 1925, teaches medieval English literature. His lectures are an Oxford rarity: they are jampacked. During World War I he served in France with the Somerset Light Infantry, was invalided home. His aunt, says he, was relieved to learn that the wound in his back came from a misdirected British shell, and was not an indication that he had been running away from the Germans.

Some 14 years ago Lewis passed from polite skepticism to religious belief. Said he: "I didn't want to. I'm not in the least the religious type. I want to be left alone, to feel I'm my own master: but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in." Two books influenced his conversion: Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy; G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Of the latter Lewis says: "That book still needs a lot of answering."

Today Lewis varies his Oxford lectures with BBC broadcasts, with talks on religion at many an R.A.F. airfield. His mail also takes up a lot of his time. Most of his correspondents are serious and he tries to answer their questions seriously. But occasionally he gets letters signed: "Jehovah." He never answers letters from Jehovah.

Armored Mice. Lewis started writing when he was very young. "My first stories," he says, "were nearly all about mice, but mice in armor killing gigantic cats. That is, I wrote the books I should have liked to read if only I could have got them.

That's always been my reason for writing." He has published two volumes of poetry (he will not tell under what name), some nonsense verse, a few novels (some under his own name, one under Clive Hamilton). Modern writers seldom interest him. Two exceptions: Rose Macaulay, Stephen Vincent Benet.

A bachelor, Lewis lives with his foster mother and brother in a rambling brick house at Headington, near Oxford, occasionally preaches a sermon at Oxford's St. Mary's. He likes to wear old clothes, go on walking trips with two or three cronies, putting up at small pubs. He also likes to sit up late at night in college rooms talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea and pipes. Says he: "There's no sound I like better than adult male laughter."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.