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XII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Obviously you areto hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position For you and I, who see that position as it really is, ht to appear to hie of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around he Eneine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable He must not be allowed to suspect that he is noever slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utlad to hear that he is still a churchgoer and a co is better than that he should realise the break it hasas he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a fe friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is o And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately

This di it ame On the other hand, if you suppress it entirely - which, by the by, the Enemy will probably not allow you to do - we lose an eleood account If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy All humans at nearly all ti of Hiue cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold They hate every idea that suggests Hiht of a pass-book In this state your patient will not oious duties He will think about theet theo you had to tempt him to unreality and inattention in his prayers: but now you will find hi you to distract his purpose and benumb his heart He ant his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Ene worms lie

As this condition becoradually freed fro Pleasures as temptations As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and exciteo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people who about on subjects that bore hi periods You can keep hi at a dead fire in a cold roo activities which ant hiiven in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent ht nor what I liked" The Christians describe the Ene is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the ratification of curiosities so feeble that the ers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or aive them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off

You will say that these are very s tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness But do re that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cuht and out into the Nothing Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without nposts,

Your affectionate uncle

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