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The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 Notes and Quotes

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 The C.S. Lewis Foundation for Truth in Publishing

Lewis’s view of Purgatory was similar to Dante’s. Kathryn Lindskoog writes: “The analogy that works best for me is arriving at a festive dinner party in dripping wet raincoat and muddy galoshes. Instead of joining the other guests in the reception room that way, we strip off our outer wraps in the vestibule and then join the party. How long it takes (if time is involved at all) and how uncomfortable the stripping is (if it is at all uncomfortable) is a matter of opinion. But both Lewis and Dante considered Purgatory inside the heavenly gates — therefore a place of supreme safety, anticipation, and gratitude. (The idea that the Purgatory process takes longer if no one prays in order to expedite it makes me wonder ‘What’s the rush? You’ve got forever.’).”

Douglas Beyer, in The Lamp-Post, Winter 1999

A lady from New Zealand and Lewis enthusiast recently visited Belfast. Tony Wilson showed her St Mark’s Church. She is a descendant or relative of Rev Thomas Hamilton. She says that ‘Staples’ was the name of Rev Thomas Hamilton’s mother, and promised to send a copy of the family tree. The Staples family came from Cookstown, Co Tyrone. Warren mentions unfavourably a Ponsonby Staples of that family in his diaries. Ponsonby Staples would have been a remote cousin. It’s just possible that Clive, too, is a family name.

Warren – maternal grandmother
Hamilton – paternal grandfather
Staples – maternal great-grandmother

James O’Fee report

And when he can no longer feel the truth, he shall not therefore die. He lives because God is true; and he is able to know that he lives because he knows, having once understood the word that God is truth. He believes in the God of former vision, lives by that word therefore, when all is dark and there is no vision.

George MacDonald, as quoted by C. S. Lewis. Did this passage contribute to Puddleglum’s statement of faith in The Silver Chair?