From all my lame defeats and oh much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.
Thoughts are but cons. Let me not trust, instead
Of thee, their thin-word image of thy head.
From all my thoughts, even my thoughts of thee,
O thou fair silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpetry lest I die.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Apologist’s Evening Prayer (1942).
William Griffin: C.S. Lewis: 'The Authentic Voice', Abingdon, Lion Books, 1986, pp. 203-204. C.S. Lewis was the best known lay Anglican Christian apologist in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, whose successful radio broadcasts formed the basis of his best known apology, 'Mere Christianity' (1952). He gave the story of his conversion the significant title, 'Surprised by Joy' (1955). Of his earlier spiritual journey, before embracing the views of George MacDonald (1824-1905), he wrote in 1946; ' I had already been waist-deep in Romanticism; and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to perversity.'
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