Dear fellow pilgrims,
What a wonderful journey it has been with you as we have studied The Last Battle together, from those early days of the Ape and Puzzle the Donkey at Caldron Pool, through the last battle of Narnia, and on into Aslan’s country with a farewell to Shadowlands! It has been such a privilege to teach on a truly remarkable book.
To finish out our semester, we will be studying “The Weight of Glory,” a sermon Lewis preached during World War II at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. It is found in a collection of nine sermons and addresses under that same title, and we will also be looking at parts of another sermon entitled “Learning in Wartime” that is published in the same collection. We will begin that study on Wednesday, April 10, at 7:15 p.m. “The Weight of Glory” is a magnificent and theologically rich treasure and is one of my very favorite things that Lewis ever wrote; I so look forward to unpacking its glories with you.
Below are links to the materials from our last class, as well as a link to the performance of Sir John Stainer’s oratorio The Crucifixion, which was sung here at St. Philip’s on Palm Sunday this week. I commend it to you as part of your devotions for Holy Week.
Sending you all best wishes for the remaining days off Holy Week and for a joyous and blessed Easter!
Further up and further in,
Brian+
Class video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsH1ki52Tbo
Music link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdWN5DQ77Wk
Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-20-farewell-to-shadowlands/id1707060670?i=1000650210190
SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK’S CLASSChapter 16: Farewell to Shadowlands
–As Tirian and company continue further up and further in, they pass Caldron Pool and come to a great waterfall
–They discover they can miraculously ascend through the waterfall without getting tired, and cross the Western Wild and much beautiful country until they reach a long lake and a high green hill with a walled garden atop it
–They are greeted at the garden by Reepicheep the Mouse and are welcomed by many old friends, eventually seeing England and their parents off in the distance, and at last they meet Aslan
–Aslan says to them that they do not yet look so happy as he wishes them to be, and then explains where they are as the story ends
Themes in Chapter 16
–The beauty and wonder of Aslan’s country
–The Deep Reality of Aslan’s country
–The miraculous nature of the walled garden and Aslan’s country
–The joy of Fellowship
–The glory of life with Aslan
The beauty and wonder of Aslan’s country
“For now they saw before them Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool, the high unclimbable cliffs and, pouring down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every second, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall; and already the thunder of it was in their ears. “Don’t stop! Further up and further in,” called Farsight, tilting his flight a little upwards…Jewel also cried out: “Don’t stop. Further up and further in! Take it in your stride.” His voice could only just be heard above the roar of the water but next moment everyone saw that he had plunged into the Pool. And helter-skelter behind him, with splash after splash, all the others did the same. The water was not bitingly cold as all of them (and especially Puzzle) expected, but of a delicious foamy coolness. They all found they were swimming straight for the Waterfall itself. “This is absolutely crazy,” said Eustace to Edmund. “I know. And yet — ” said Edmund. “Isn’t it wonderful?” said Lucy. “Have you noticed one can’t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.” “By Jove, one can’t,” said Eustace after he had tried. Jewel reached the foot of the Waterfall first, but Tirian was only just behind him.”
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” I Cor. 2:9 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Rev. 22:1-5 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Psalm 84:1-2
The Deep Reality of Aslan’s country
“And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and, faster than ever, down the other sides, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountain-lakes as if they were living speedboats, till at last at the far end of one long lake, which looked as blue as a turquoise, they saw a smooth green hill. Its sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees, whose leaves looked like silver and their fruit like gold. “Further up and further in!” roared the Unicorn, and no one held back…Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. They all felt just as they had felt about the fruit — “Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?” But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open. Lucy stood…looking down over the wall of that garden, and seeing all Narnia spread out below. But when you looked down you found that this hill was much higher than you had thought: it sank down with shining cliffs, thousands of feet below them and trees in that lower world looked no bigger than grains of green salt.”
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Hebrews 11:8-10 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle! Psalm 24:3-8
The miraculous nature of the walled garden and Aslan’s country
Then she turned inward again and stood with her back to the wall and looked at the garden. “I see,” she said at last, thoughtfully. “I see now. This garden is like the Stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside.” “Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.” Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden at all but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all. “I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and, more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the Stable door! I see… world within world, Narnia within Narnia….” “Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.” Then she looked to her left and saw what she took to be a great bank of brightly coloured cloud, cut off from them by a gap. But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter! Edmund! Come and look! Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes also had become like hers. “Why!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself — Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began!” “I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund. “So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Isaiah 25:6-10
Deeper Dive: The Walled Garden
“Very few people were allowed into Bragdon Wood. The gate was by Inigo Jones and was the only entry: a high wall enclosed the Wood, which was perhaps a quarter of a mile broad and a mile from east to west. If you came in from the street and went through the College to reach it, the sense of gradual penetration into a holy of holies was very strong. First you went through the Newton quadrangle which is dry and gravelly; florid, but beautiful, Georgian buildings look down upon it. Next you must enter a cool tunnel-like passage, nearly dark at midday unless either the door into Hall should be open on your right or the buttery hatch on your left, giving you a glimpse of indoor daylight falling on panels, and a whiff of the smell of fresh bread. When you emerged from this tunnel you would find yourself in the medieval college: in the cloister of the much smaller quadrangle called Republic. The grass here looks very green after the aridity of Newton and the very stone of the buttresses that rise from it gives the impression of being soft and alive…There were no buildings straight ahead…: only a row of elms and a wall; and here first one became aware of the sound of running water and the cooing of wood pigeons. The street was so far off by now that there were no other noises. In the wall there was a door. It led you into a covered gallery pierced with narrow windows on either side. Looking out through these you discovered that you were crossing a bridge and the dark brown dimpled Wynd was flowing under you…you saw the high wall of the Wood and through the Inigo Jones gate you caught a glimpse of sunlit green and deep shadows…I suppose the mere fact of being walled in gave the Wood part of its peculiar quality, for when a thing is enclosed the mind does not willingly regard it as common. As I went forward over the quiet turf I had the sense of being received…”
–C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Ch. 1
Deeper Dive: The Walled Garden
”The garden proper, like Milton’s, is an enclosed garden atop a green hill (traditionally a holy spot for prayer) with a “high wall of green turf” (156). In medieval and renaissance Christianity, these walls shielded their enclosures from natural and spiritual onslaughts. They mark the dispensation of grace for those who enter the garden lawfully (Stewart 59). Furthermore, as in Milton’s garden, there are high gates into the garden, facing east (a sacred direction), though in The Magician’s Nephew the gates are gold with an inscription in silver letters:
“Come in by the gold gates or not at all, Take of my fruit for others or forbear,
For those who steal or those who climb my wall shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.”
The Christian virtue of caritas suggested in this poem (i.e. “Take of my fruit for others or forbear”) and its opposite, the sin of acedia, spiritual despair brought about by the slothful satisfaction of sinful desires (i.e. by “those who steal or those who climb my walls”), will become more apparent in the later temptation scene of Digory by the Witch..The gates, like the garden walls, reaffirm the realm’s exclusiveness, accessible only to those who follow Aslan in Narnia and God in our world: “[y]ou never saw a place which was so obviously private. You could see at a glance that it belonged to someone else. Only a fool would dream of going in unless he had been sent there on a very special business”. The doctrine of grace, similarly available specifically to the faithful, who can hear God’s words (or Aslan’s in Narnia), is represented by another common medieval and renaissance garden motif-the fountain at the center of the enclosed garden. An ubiquitous image in medieval paintings as well, it alludes to the “well of living waters” from the Song of Solomon (4:15) and the spring of eternal life in John 4:14.”
— “The Enclosed Garden in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia”, by Salwa Khoddam, March 17, 2009, In Pursuit of Truth
The joy of Fellowship
“Welcome, in the Lion’s name. Come further up and further in.” Then Tirian saw King Peter and King Edmund and Queen Lucy rush forward to kneel down and greet the Mouse and they all cried out, “Reepicheep!” And Tirian breathed fast with the sheer wonder of it, for now he knew that he was looking at one of the great heroes of Narnia, Reepicheep the Mouse, who had fought at the great Battle of Beruna and afterwards sailed to the World’s end with King Caspian the Seafarer. But before he had had much time to think of this, he felt two strong arms thrown about him and felt a bearded kiss on his cheeks and heard a well-remembered voice saying: “What, lad? Art thicker and taller since I last touched thee?” It was his own father, the good King Erlian: but not as Tirian had seen him last when they brought him home pale and wounded from his fight with the giant, nor even as Tirian remembered him in his later years when he was a grey-headed warrior. This was his father young and merry as he could just remember him from very early days, when he himself had been a little boy playing games with his father in the castle garden at Cair Paravel, just before bedtime on summer evenings…the whole company moved forward to the centre of the orchard where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all and at the foot of that tree were two thrones and in those two thrones, a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them. And well they might, for these two were King Frank and Queen Helen from whom all the most ancient Kings of Narnia and Archenland are descended. And Tirian felt as you would feel if you were brought before Adam and Eve in all their glory.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head,running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Psalm 133
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. I Cor.15:49, 53
I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Mt. 26:29 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Rev. 19:6-9 That you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Luke 22:30 What we shall later be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 Jn 3:2
The glory of life with Aslan
“Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” “No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are — as you used to call it in the ShadowLands — dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Rev. 22:3-5 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Rev 21:3-4 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready…”Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Rev. 19:6-9
E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come
Peace be to you and grace from him
Who freed us from our sins
Who loved us all and shed his blood
That we might saved be.
Sing Holy, Holy to our Lord
The Lord, Almighty God
Who was, and is, and is to come
Sing Holy, Holy Lord.
Rejoice in heaven, all ye that dwell within
Rejoice on earth, ye saints below
For Christ is coming, is coming soon
For Christ is coming soon.
E’en so Lord Jesus, quickly come
And night shall be no more
They need no light nor lamp nor sun
For Christ will be their All!
–Paul Manz, 1953
Paul and Ruth Manz wrote “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come” in 1953 during a time when their three-year-old son was critically ill. Reflecting on the time, Ruth Manz reported, “I think we’d reached the point where we felt that time was certainly running out so we committed it to the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus quickly come’. During this time, she had prepared some text for Paul for a composition based on the Book of Revelation. While at his son’s bedside, Paul Manz began drafting the composition, which later became the current piece. Their son did recover, which the couple attributed to the power of prayer.
Link to Sir John Stainer’s The Crucifixion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFGVzN9RAHk
