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II

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I note with grave displeasure that your patient has becoe the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so In the meantime we must make the best of the situation There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are noith us All the habits of the patient, both reat allies at present is the Church itself Do not misunderstand h all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans All your patient sees is the half-finished, shaoes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer hiy which neither of the corrupt texts of a nuious lyrics, ets to his pew and looks round hihbours whom he has hitherto avoided You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains You reat warrior on the Enemy’s side No matter Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion e, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial His s and the mere fact that the other people in church wear h of course an unconscious - difficulty to him Never let it come to the surface; never let hi hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to a in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords

Work hard, then, on the disappoint to the patient during his first feeeks as a churchman The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories fro Greek It occurs when lovers have got ether In every depart aspiration to laborious doing The Ene all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers and servants - "sons" is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged ani their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry theoals which He sets before them: He leaves them to "do it on their own" And there lies our opportunity But also, reh this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and thereforehitherto on the assuround for disappointment Of course if they do - if the patient knows that the woe-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner - then your task is so much the easier All you then have to do is to keep out of hiswhat I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You ht fro even to a human mind It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it si like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Ene hireat hu", cohbours at all Keep hi as you can

Your affectionate uncle

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