A Shiver of Wonder Page 2

  It seems to me that, through Lewis’s writing, Kenneth Tynan had felt a shiver of wonder at things which the world, the flesh, and the devil could never match or deliver. Few who have read Lewis’s work have not had a similar shiver. Tynan had read the majestic essay Lewis wrote on The Incarnation in his book Miracles, one of the greatest defences of the deity of Christ in literature. He had read of our righteousnesses’ being as filthy rags, but of redemption made possible through Christ, and of a coming new heaven and new earth. But he had made a choice in his life, and what he chased did not satisfy the longings of his soul. Tynan’s diaries reveal a heart and mind touched by the work of the great Christian apologist, and challenged by the Christian gospel. He is a microcosm of “the man on the outside” that Lewis was always trying to reach for Christ.

  At the time of Lewis’s centenary in 1998, The Sunday Times carried a full-page feature of an extract from the section on pride in Mere Christianity. The feature contained a picture of the book as well as a photo of the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Thomas Monaghan. The article bore one of the longest headlines ever to appear in the newspaper. It read, “This man is a pizza millionaire. He’s smiling because he is giving £600m to charity and devoting himself to God. He is doing so because he read this book by C. S. Lewis.” The feature then points out that, after reading Lewis’s analysis of pride in Mere Christianity, Monaghan decided to sell his Rolls Royce and Bentley limousines, his yacht, his private helicopter, his collection of Frank Lloyd Wright artefacts, and most of his shares in Domino’s Pizza.

  In her autobiography, The Path to Power, Margaret Thatcher devotes at least three pages to Lewis’s influence on her life. “It was the religious writing of that High Anglican C. S. Lewis which had most impact upon my intellectual religious formation,” she says.

  The power of his broadcasts, sermons, and essays came from a combination of simple language with theological depth. Who has ever portrayed more wittingly and convincingly the way in which Evil works on our human weaknesses than he did in The Screwtape Letters? Who has ever made more accessible the profound concepts of Natural Law than he did in The Abolition of Man and in the opening passages of Mere Christianity? I remember most clearly the impact on me of Christian Behaviour (republished in Mere Christianity, but originally appearing as radio talks). This went to the heart of the appalling disparity between the way in which we Christians behave and the ideals we profess.13

  To Gerry Haliwell and Peter Mandelson, to Liam Gallagher and J. R. R. Tolkien, to Charles Colson and Pope John Paul II, and to millions of other people besides, aspects of Lewis’s life and work have proved helpful and inspiring. In a recent BBC TV documentary, Ian Paisley Jr. was sitting in Lewis’s Parish Church, speaking with appreciation of his writing and life.

  On 21 July 1998 the Royal Mail issued a series of special centenary stamps, entitled “Magical Worlds,” featuring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A musical portrait of Lewis’s life also toured Britain during that year. Even Hamley’s, England’s most famous toy shop, hosted a special one-hundredth birthday party in honour of C. S. Lewis. These are significant outward signs that this apologist still has an audience. The more important inward signs have been seen in the incredible number of people who have become Christians through reading his work. Here in Ulster, I think of the gifted evangelist and Bible teacher Michael Perrott, who was converted from agnosticism to Christ through reading Mere Christianity. To this day he prizes a letter he received from C. S. Lewis following his conversion.

  The list of those Lewis has influenced continues to increase. Recently I was on the thirty-second floor of a Japanese hotel in downtown Tokyo. I went down to a little shop on the ground floor to buy an English newspaper. There, in the land of thirty million gods, I noticed a little pile of books. It was The Chronicles of Narnia in Japanese. People “on the outside” are obviously still taking serious note of this unique and gifted Ulsterman. I smiled in my heart and went back with relish to my work of preaching, teaching, and writing about the Christian faith, encouraged that Christian seed brings an amazing harvest.

  A friend of mine who is not a Christian believer was having a coffee with me. He and his girlfriend had been watching a BBC production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He suddenly turned to me and emphasised how his girlfriend “had really liked the lion.” I pointed out to my non-believing friend the Christly nature of the King of Narnia. Lewis wrote that there hung about the mane of Aslan, the High King above all kings, “some strange and solemn perfume.”14 To all who have come to know Him, this is an apposite description of Jesus Christ. To them, His name is as ointment poured forth; His love is better than wine, and the scent of His perfumes than all spices.15 That perfume touched the life of C. S. Lewis in his day; it touches us in ours, and it will touch incalculable multitudes of the redeemed forever. Following our conversation, my non-believing friend kindly purchased cinema tickets as a gift for my wife and me to see the film Shadowlands, which he subsequently went to see for himself!

  Recently, the English comedienne Ronni Ancona championed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on the BBC’s “The Big Read.” This was a television programme which asked people in the United Kingdom to choose their favourite book of the twentieth century. Various people championed a range of authors. I thought Ronni’s defence was articulate, passionate, and courageously up-front about the Christian content of Lewis’s work. She said you might as well criticise a baker for using yeast in his dough as criticise Lewis for the Christian content of his work! It was part of him. Well said, Ronni; well said!

  As I was nearing the completion of this biography, I asked Dr. Stuart Briscoe what he thought of C. S. Lewis. Stuart is a well-known speaker and Minister-at-Large of the approximately ten-thousand-member Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, USA. He has written more than forty books, and has had the privilege of preaching to hundreds of thousands of people across a hundred countries around the world. This is his moving response:

  The writings of C. S. Lewis have been a source of delight and enrichment to me for many years. Unlike many avid Lewis readers, I was not introduced to him as a child, and was not reared on Narnia. It was when I began to do a little preaching at the tender age of 17, and shortly thereafter embarked on a lifetime involvement in young people’s ministry, that I began to draw heavily on his apologetic arguments. His treatment of thorny issues, such as the problem of pain, appealed greatly to me and to the sceptical young people who abounded in the bars and coffee bars of the British Isles. I remember many a young person, who wanted to dismiss Jesus as another good man, being brought up short by Lewis’s insistence that this was not an option; because, if Jesus was not who He said He was—the Christ—then He was either a crook or crazy. But Lewis put it in such a way that even those who were defeated by his arguments had to laugh when Lewis, instead of saying Jesus would have to be crazy, suggested he would be similar to a man who thought he was a poached egg!

  In later years I was greatly impressed by his ideas about “joy” or “sehnsucht,” and particularly by his explanation that [since] even the most satisfying things in life fail to satisfy completely[,] . . . we must have been made for another world. I have found people all over the world who can relate to this insight and respond to its challenge.

  In more recent times, I have found his writings on worship of great value[s] particularly in light of what are now being called “Worship Wars.” I love his candour in explaining the time when he did not like God very much because His insistence on being worshipped seemed rather like a vain woman who thrives on compliments! But God’s desire for our worship led him to realise that worship is not for God’s benefit but ours! That set me off on deep thinking about the reality of worship.

  And in recent days I have benefited greatly from a reading of The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, in which Lewis’s powerful arguments against Freudian philosophy are laid out in compelling and relevant fashion. Lewis still speaks today!

 
I don’t know what I would have done without him.

  So, from Prime Ministers to World War II pilots, from art critics to Japanese children, from billionaires to bishops and a huge variety of people in between, millions of individuals from all kinds of corners across the world have been, and are continuing to be, influenced by C. S. Lewis.

  Sadly, it turned out that I never saw Bishop Goodwin-Hudson again. Research tells me “Arthur William Goodwin-Hudson was assistant Bishop of Sydney 1960-65, and Dean of Sydney 1962-65. On returning to England, he was incumbent of St. Paul’s, Portman Square 1965-78. He died 17th September 1985 in England.”

  As I now turn with deep affection to write a life of C. S. Lewis, in my mind’s eye I can still see A. W. Goodwin-Hudson. There he sits at the other side of the table, four years before his death, gentle and courteous, talking to me about his friend C. S. Lewis and the subject of reaching “the man on the outside.” The encounter makes me think about a recent conversation I had at Barr Hall near Portaferry in County Down, with Miguel Mesquita da Cunha who is a political advisor to the President of the European Commission. We talked about how Lewis was once “on the outside” himself. Said Miguel, we can now call him “the man from the outside.” This is a vitally important distinction. Significantly by God’s grace he came inside God’s kingdom, and wrote about it in a way that few others have ever done.

  This book is about that journey and its international and eternal consequences.

  Chapter One

  THE LOST ADDRESS

  OF ALL MONTHS, APRIL IS probably the best loved in Western Europe. Shakespeare wrote of “proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim.” The skies in April are bluer, and there is such a “clear shining after rain.”1 In April the songs the birds sing with their wings still wet sound more joyous than any other songs. There is a proliferation of tulips and forget-me-nots, blushing daisies and snowy blackthorns.

  On the island of Ireland, the green foliage of tree and hedge is almost intoxicating in April; virtually every shade of green can be found. All across the country buds are swelling, and fresh molehills show that Mr. Mole is again spring-cleaning. Young rabbits speed across the meadows. In sleepy gardens bees swarm from their hives, and whole columns of whirling wings can be seen rising and falling. It is the month when the swallows return from Africa and set about the very hard work of nest building from the very moment they arrive. They mend their old nests and can be seen setting the foundations of new ones.

  In the Ireland of April 1905, the swallows were not the only ones busy building new homes. A little family had just moved into their new residence in the suburbs of Belfast. They gave their home the name Little Lea. Earlier that year there was a notice in the Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory:

  Circular Road. Strandtown. Off Holywood Road. Rt. hand side. New house in course of erection for A. J. Lewis, Solicitor.2

  The details given in the Directory of Mr. Lewis’s neighbours, in the immediate and wider vicinity of his new home, display a microcosm of Irish society just following the close of the Victorian era. We find Mr. Sam Quillan, gardener, at Lakeview Cottage; Mr. W. Masterson, tea merchant, at Ballymisert House; Mr. William H. Patterson, ironmonger, at Garranard; Robert Symington, coachman, at Glenfarlough Cottages. At Bernagh lives Joshua M. Greeves, millowner; Mr. Thomas Rice, the stationmaster, looks after the local Tillysburn Railway Station.

  Moving a little farther away from the new house being built for the Lewis family, we find Sir W. G. Ewart living at Glenmachan House. Amongst others living at Glenmachan Cottages there is a labourer, a meter inspector, a groom, a land steward, and a ploughman. Col. McCance lives at Knocknagoney House, and W. Davis, a coachman, lives at Knocknagoney House Lodge. At Ormiston Buildings, we find a ship carpenter, a tobacconist, a druggist, a hairdresser, a plumber, a gas fitter, a draper, and a boat merchant.

  Even in 1905 the wider City of Belfast had moved a long way from its origins. Its name is derived from the words beol, meaning “ford,” and fearsad, meaning “sandbank.” The first recorded account of the building of ships in Belfast appeared in the year 1636, when the Presbyterian clergyman of Belfast built a vessel of 150 tons’ register. More recently, Harland & Wolfe had launched the Oceanic, then the largest ship on earth. “In the years running up to the Great War, citizens could boast that their City had the greatest shipyard, rope works, tobacco factory, linen spinning mill, dry dock, and tea-machinery works in the world.”3 The city was justly considered to be the commercial metropolis of Ireland.

  Albert James Lewis, a Police Court Solicitor, whose father had emigrated from Wales to Ireland, was educated at Lurgan College in the beautiful “Orchard County” of Ireland, the County of Armagh. A local brewer, Samuel Watts, had left an endowment for the building of a school that would provide an “English classical and agricultural education.” The second Headmaster of that school was Mr. W. T. Kirkpatrick, who came to Lurgan College from the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1875. His influence was to reach far beyond the newly established and flourishing school on Lurgan’s College Walk. Besides having Albert Lewis under his care at Lurgan College from 1877 to 1879, Kirkpatrick was to become his lifelong friend and a tutor to his son Clive. On retirement from the school, Kirkpatrick was to have Clive at his home in Great Bookham in Surrey to prepare him for entrance examinations to Oxford University. He was to teach Clive his mother’s formidable gift of logic, to devastating effect. Albert’s Welsh temperament—full of rhetoric, passion, and sentiment—could easily be moved to anger and just as easily to tenderness. Laughter and tears played a large part in his life, but happiness was not a dominant feature. He was a kind and generous man, possessing an excellent memory and a very quick mind. He had a deep, clear, ringing voice, and exuded a considerable presence.

  Albert was a brilliant and skillful teller of short, entertaining stories about real incidents or people. He could act all the characters in his stories. He loved poetry that contained pathos and rhetoric; this significant literary streak, being encouraged by his Headmaster, led Albert to write his own stories and poetry. He loved the liturgy of the Church of Ireland as contained in its Prayer Book, and he loved the infinite treasures found in the verbal vaults of the Bible. With these gifts and interests, it is not surprising that he was the first Superintendent of the Sunday School at St. Mark’s, Dundela, a nearby Belfast suburb. Albert’s law practise was at 83 Royal Avenue, and he was to become Sessional Solicitor of the Belfast City Council and the Belfast and County Down Railway Company, as well as Solicitor to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He impressed many juries with his effective speaking abilities, and he also gave his services as a speaker to the Conservative Party, gaining frequent acclaim from newspapers for his efforts. He loved to read Anthony Trollope’s political novels. Later both his boys claimed that, given the freedom and the resources, he would have made a significant politician.

  Through his love for literature, Albert came to meet the love of his life. It is said that a faint heart has never won a fair lady. His heart had been stirred by the Rector’s pale, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter, Florence Augusta (Flora) Hamilton, but her love was difficult to win. Flora was born at Queenstown in County Cork in 1862 and as a young girl lived in Rome with her parents. She proved to be of a much cooler temperament than her father, who was a chaplain in the Royal Navy during the whole of the Crimean War and a chaplain of the Anglican Holy Trinity Church in Rome from 1870 to 1874. The Hamiltons were the descendants of a titled Scottish family that was allowed to take land in County Down in the reign of James I. The Reverend Hamilton was a very highly principled and emotionally charged man. We are told that he frequently wept in his pulpit. It must have caused him and his family great sadness that he had to spend much of his short life in a mental hospital. It seems that he suffered from scant praise. Yet surely a man is not without memorable significance who willingly served in the Crimea and, in fact, volunteered for duty in camps where death from cholera occurred
every single day. Perhaps he saw things that others of us will never see. Let his Maker be his judge.

  So, Thomas Hamilton was the first Rector of St. Mark’s, Dundela, ministering there from 1874 to 1900. His wife, Mary, was a liberal in politics, an enthusiastic feminist, a supporter of the suffragettes, and a Home Ruler. (A Home Ruler was a person who believed that Ireland should be self-governed but still remain part of the British Empire.) She was a committed vegetarian and a cat collector, and she kept an extremely untidy and disorganised rectory! Mary Warren Hamilton came from an Anglo-Norman family planted in Ireland in the reign of Henry II. She was an extremely political animal indeed, and very intelligent with it.

  Mary Hamilton’s daughter, Florence, known as Flora, is of great significance in any study of the life of C. S. Lewis. She was to have a profound influence upon him, even though she died when he was only ten years of age, leaving him horrendously bereft. She had a great gift that she would pass on to him: a mind that thought distinctly and logically.

  Between 1881 and 1885 Flora attended ladies’ classes at Methodist College, Belfast, and, at the same time, the Royal University of Ireland, now known as Queen’s University. The University’s beautiful main college building, designed by Charles Lanyon, is modelled on Magdalen College, Oxford, where Flora’s son would achieve great fame. Nearby, stretching across seventeen acres, are the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens, with their lawn, Teak Ground, Yew Ground, and Hawthorn Collection. The Ornamental Water, the Fernery, and the famous Palm House conservatory enhance all of these grounds.