Text: Romans 14 v 5 'Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind'
I would first like to express my thanks to the Rector, the Reverend James Campbell, for inviting me to preach at this service commemorating the centenary of the baptism of Professor C.S. Lewis in this church on the 29th January 1899; and also to the Right Honourable David Bleakley and the Centenary Group for suggesting my name to the Rector.
My pretext for preaching this morning is so slender that I feel that I have hardly any right to mention it at all. It is based on the fact that while I was a curate in this parish I met C.S. Lewis on one occasion when he was on a visit to his relatives, the Ewart family at Glenmachan. I have cherished that experience now for nearly fifty years. I was invited to dine with him by Miss Kelsie Ewart.
As many other people have reported on first meeting C.S. Lewis, the robustness and strength of his presence surprised me. He looked more like a County Down farmer, albeit a gentleman farmer, than a distinguished academic and author of books that were world-acclaimed. His beautiful baritone voice invited conversation rather than engaging in monologue; his friendliness and his interest were patent; he wanted to know what was going on in Strandtown and in St Mark's, Dundlea. In a relaxed and expansive mood he left aside the relentless machine-gun like dialectic learnt from his old teacher, William T. Kirpatrick, the Great Knock, which was said to characterise his tutorials. His conversation glowed with local interest and was charged with personal reminiscence. He listened carefully and graciously, savouring phrases in the conversation, encouraging even the third curate of St Mark's to express his own interest in theology and philosophy. He spoke of his love for the County Down countryside and of the fact that he would spend the next week or so walking in the hills and mountains, staying in village cottages and hillside farms to capture again the genius of the place he had loved since childhood. The richness of analogy and simile that captivated his readers in every genre of his writing illuminated his conversation. It was second nature to him as he relaxed after the meal with coffee and his pipe.
Since then whenever I read his books I can hear that strong mellifluous voice behind the elegant cadences and the warm deep laugh describing the ineptitude of Wormwood and the irritation of Screwtape. He conveyed the confidence of a man who had found a sure path in life, who knew where he had come from and where he was going.
Last year, the centenary of his birth in November 29th 1898, saw the international acclaim of his genius, as perhaps the greatest and certainly the most popular apologist of the Christian faith this century; and as a scholar of the English language unsurpassed in his exposition of Medieval and Renaissance English literature. All over the world his name was honoured and his works reviewed with growing appreciation. His place was affirmed in the pantheon of the giants of Irish English literature to stand with Swift, Berkeley, Yeats, Synge and Joyce; a master of words and the delicate and precise practitioner of their use to affect the human mind and spirit.
Though C.S. Lewis spent the greater part of his life in England, his heart and mind were formed in Ireland; his imagination had its early training here in this parish of St Mark's, Dundela and East Belfast along the Lough on the Craigantlet Hills in Hollywood and Craigivad, beside the sea and amongst the hills that stirred his imagination.
Ireland's romantic past was one of the imaginative delights of his childhood. The aristocratic splendour of the Courts of the Celtic kings at Rathcroghan, Aileach, Emain Macha and Tara. He knew that life spread far beyond the narrow focus of recorded written history, that life was real, that love and hate, that intrigue and deception, that nobility and courage were known and felt intensely, before the first scribe had made the first mark on his vellum sheet. His imagination broke the stifling bonds of conventional historical periods, he found beauty, romance and challenge in the voyages of the Celtic monks and in the sea-going Nordic heroes. His was not a wild imagination. It was a controlled and constructive imagination, restrained by philosophical reflection and order by logic.
C.S. Lewis fell away from the promises expressed on his behalf at his baptism when he was two months old, here in the font of this church on the 29th January 1899; those promises that he reluctantly and with a bad conscience, affirmed at his Confirmation also in this church on the 6th December 1914. His fall into atheism at that time owed more to emotion than to intellect; the scars left by his dearly loved mother's death were still raw and painful. The gift of faith seemed to have been withdrawn from him for fourteen or fifteen years. He came to loath the Christian faith, suspicious of its origin, contemptuous of its fruits in human culture, despairing of its insights into human nature. C.S. Lewis appeared to be bereft of faith, the gift of baptism; but not bereft of imagination often the handmaid of faith. As Jesus said several times in the New Testament to those restored to full life by him "Thy faith has saved you", it might well be said of C.S. Lewis "Thy imagination has saved you". Aided by its handmaid faith in all its liberating strength and joy returned to Lewis' life in the late 1929s and early 1930s, when he decided to 'Let God be God'. he tells us that he was at first a reluctant and dispirited convert, expecting to be diminished by his surrender, only to discover that life was given back to him enhanced, broadened, deepened, to be used for purposes greater than his own, however elevated and refined they may have been.
C.S. Lewis showed a strongly northern Irish characteristic; he was not a man for compromise, he confronted a problem with all the power of his intellect; he followed where the argument led and only when he had reached full conviction did he accept the conclusion and render complete commitment to its consequences.
His baptism here in the font of this church at the hands of his grandfather, the Reverend T.R. Hamilton, the rector, with his loving mother Flora and father Albert and elder brother, Warren and with all the extended family present was from one point of view a local family affair; but its consequences were wide and ever extending. Lewis may have turned from God, but God had not turned from Lewis; the net of God is wider than that; in the words of Francis Thompson's 'Hound of Heaven' "I fled Him down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the labyrinth ways of mine own mind only to surrender on the top of a London bus with the conviction that 'God was God and Jesus is Christ". Baptism is deeper and stronger than we sometimes think. It is not just a fading social convention rapidly following the path to oblivion with spats, antimacassars and afternoon tea.
For C.S. Lewis conversion was a poignant experience of which he frequently spoke, but of whose effects he was not immediately aware; they would become evident in time, as he let God be God in his life. He had, of course, no memory of his baptism, nor of the prayers of his parents, god parents and family for him; but after his conversion he would not have treated his baptism in this church, a hundred years ago, as insignificant or purely conventional but as having a power and significance which lay in the inscrutable destiny of the individual who let God be God in his life.
The Christianity to which C.S. Lewis was converted (reconverted) was traditional Christianity, the Christianity of the whole Gospel and the practices of the Church based upon the gospel records, embracing what might be regarded as sometimes tedious and outmoded practices, like the observation of Saints' Days, fasting once a week, and during Lent and Holy Week, practising auricular confession, and other practices involving humility and reception. It was fully incarnational Christianity, with all the weakness of human nature fully recognised in the light of redemption and grace. Lewis was a pub man; his was an inveterate pipe smoker, at times like all of us, his temper was short, he could be harsh in his castigation of other people; he recognised all this and accepted himself and glorified in it in the transforming light of redemption and grace.
The issue of this experience of grace was the writing of a number of superb books presenting the Christian faith to the modern world in terms of the experience of life of every man and every woman and leading to a re-assessment of life's experience in the light of an astounding gospel. The books flowed from his pen with amazing facility and speed, considering the demands of his other professional writings; Pilgrim's Regress 1933; The Problem of Pain 1940; The Screwtape Letters 1942; The Last Battle 1956; Surprised by Joy 1955. His broadcast talks given during some of the darkest days of Britain's history in their uncompromising strength and humour gave light and hope. At heart he was a moral theologian presenting the eternal gospel in the light of prevailing human predicament; presenting it convincingly and with a challenge to the individual. His range of interests and his capacity to adapt his style of presentation to very different subjects revealed his great gifts as an author and presenter of the Christian faith; in its broadest sense, in fact as an evangelist.
In 'The Abolition of Man' Lewis presents a close-knit and subtle moral argument which calls for the readers unremitting concentration, so as not to lose a link in the finely woven argument; while in his Narnia Tales he can capture the imagination of a child in simple words and vivid pictures.
A mind finely honed in the discipline of classical studies, philosophy and English literature and a sense of humour which could be identified as distinctly Northern Irish, was placed at the service of the Christian Gospel and the Christian Church with incalculable effect in the middle years of this century in the person of Clive Staples Lewis, for which we have every reason to give thanks this morning.
When I came to Strandtown as curate of St Mark's in 1950 there was an Old World atmosphere about the district, about many of the shops and houses. Most of the side streets and suburban roads were still lit by gaslight and many of the older houses did not have electricity. There was an air of Victorian graciousness about the social life of the great houses. Strandtown and Belmont were very distinctive places. I am very grateful for the four years I spent here, for the friendships I made here, many of which have lasted to the present day. Throughout my life in the ministry of the Church of Ireland during which we lived all over Ireland from Kerry to Belfast, from Kilkenny to Enniskillen, from Dublin to Limerick, the formative years of that ministry, the years I spent here, have always remained foremost in my memory. Very often unconsciously I would compare other churches, other congregations to St Mark's, Dundela, and ask how my first beloved rector, C.I. Peacocke would have dealt with the problems, which presented themselves to me. There was great companionship here amongst the clergy of St Mark's Church; life was well ordered without any sense of pressure, led by example, sustained by respect and affection. In the writings of C.S. Lewis something of that Old World comes through, you can pick it up in a phrase, in a passing image of chidhood and youth and in his capacity to surprise.
The fulfilment, which C.S. Lewis found through his writings and teaching and through his man years of devoted care of his brother through depressing days of illness and addiction, was happily completed in his love for and marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham in the last decade of his life. In her, despite their very different upbringing and experiences of life, their lives on different continents, he found his soulmate, a fellow thinker and writer, a courageous and undaunted battler for the truth; a fellow Christian with the same ever-critical faith and the same joy in believing and the same fulfilment in the order and practice of the life of the Church; the Church which C.S. Lewis discovered here in St Mark's. In 'A Grief Observed' written after her untimely death Jack Lewis bared his soul as perhaps never before, showing all the hurt that such a tragedy can bring enforced by the memory of his mother's death fifty years before the raging against God; the slow recovery and sense of thanksgiving for her loving fellowship in the faith, and the quite hope of a joyful reunion in the heavenly places, the wonderful Shadowlands.
We honour the name of C.S. Lewis in this church and give thanks for his fellowship in the faith in the Church militant and the Church triumphant.
Read more about C S Lewis in the St Mark's & C S Lewis Page