while yours would be a single glimpse

[soso]

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F.,

 an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said,

 ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. 

But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. 

I know () there’s a God. 

I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. 

And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. 

To anyone //who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. 

I think () he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert.

And when he turned /from that experience /to the Christian creeds,

I think () he really was turning /from something real /to something less real. 

In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach,

 and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, 

he also will be turning /from something real /to something less real:

 turning /from real waves /to a bit of coloured paper. 

But here comes the point. 

The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things () you have to remember /about it. 

In the first place,

 it is based on [what hundreds and thousands of people have found out/ by sailing the real Atlantic]. 

In that way it has behind it [masses of experience] /just as real as the one () you could have from the beach;

only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences /together. 

In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. 

As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. 

But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach /if you want to get to America.

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis