Today's Reading
On glory
And this brings me /to the
other sense of glory—glory as brightness, splendour, luminosity.
We are
to shine /as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star.
I think () I
begin to see what it means.
In one way, of course, God has given us the
Morning Star already:
you can go and enjoy the gift /on many fine
mornings if you get up early enough.
What more, you may ask, do we want?
Ah, but we want so much more—something () the books on aesthetics take
little notice of.
* aesthetics; a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art. 미의 원리
But the poets and the mythologies know all about it.
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is
bounty enough.
We want something else //which can hardly be put into
words—to be united with the beauty () we see, to pass into it, to receive
it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
That is why we
have peopled air and earth and water /with gods and goddesses and nymphs
and elves
—that, though we cannot,
yet these projections can enjoy in
themselves [that beauty, grace, and power //of which Nature is the image].
* people; fill (an area or place) with a particular group of inhabitants.
That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods.
They talk as if
the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t.
They
tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human
face; but it won’t. Or not yet.
For if we take the imagery of Scripture
seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star
and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise
that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history,
may be very near the truth as prophecy.
At present we are on the outside
of the world, the wrong side of the door.
We discern the freshness and
purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot
mingle /with the splendours () we see.
But all the leaves of the New
Testament are rustling /with the rumour //that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing,
we shall get in.
When human souls have become /as
perfect in voluntary obedience /as the inanimate creation is in its
lifeless obedience,
then they will put on its glory, or rather that
greater glory //of which Nature is only the first sketch.
* inanimate; showing no sign of life; lifeless.
From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses.
Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976,
revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with
permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.