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XXVIII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

When I told you not to fill your letters with rubbish about the war, I meant, of course, that I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities In so far as the war really concerns the spiritual state of the patient, I naturally want full reports And on this aspect you seelee that there is reason to expect heavy air raids on the tohere the creature lives This is a crying exa I have coet theDo you not know that bombs kill men? Or do you not realise that the patient’s death, at this moment, is precisely ant to avoid? He has escaped the worldly friends hole him; he has "fallen in love" with a very Christian woman and is temporarily immune from your attacks on his chastity; and the varioushis spiritual life which we have been trying are so far unsuccessful At the present moment, as the full impact of the war draws nearer and his worldly hopes take a proportionately lower place in his irl, forced to attend to his neighboursit more than he expected, "taken out of hi in conscious dependence on the Enemy, he will alht This is so obvious that I a fiends are not kept out on teer of beco whoard death as the priood But that is because we have taught theanda I know it seee that your chief ai for which the patient’s lover and his- na him like the apple of your eye If he dies now, you lose him If he survives the war, there is always hope The Enereat wave of temptations But, if only he can be kept alive, you have ti, dull ed adversity are excellent ca weather You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoain defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment hich we teach them to respond to it - all this provides ad out a soul by attrition If, on the other hand, the er Prosperity knits ahis place in it", while really it is finding its place in hi circle of acquaintances, his sense of ireeable work, build up in hi really at home in earth which is just ant You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than theoddly destined these uarded the at ho life to our patients; seventy years is not a day tootheir souls fro up a fir we find theent Even if we contrive to keep theion, the incalculable winds of fantasy andof a bird, or the sight of a horizon - are always blowing our whole structure away They will not apply themselves steadily to worldly advancement, prudent connections, and the policy of safety first So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our bestthem to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven at soenics or "science" or psychology, or what not Real worldliness is a work of time - assisted, of course, by pride, for we teach theood sense or Maturity or Experience Experience, in the peculiar sense we teach thereat human philosopher nearly let our secret out when he said that where Virtue is concerned "Experience is the e in Fashion, and also, of course, to the Historical Point of Viee have largely rendered his book innocuous

How valuable tied by the fact that the Enemy allows us so little of it The majority of the huood many die in youth It is obvious that to Him human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for huate to that other kind of life We are allowed to work only on a selected minority of the race, for what humans call a "normal life" is the exception Apparently He wants some - but only a very few - of the hu Heaven to have had the experience of resisting us through an earthly life of sixty or seventy years Well, there is our opportunity The smaller it is, the better we must use it Whatever you do, keep your patient as safe as you possibly can,

Your affectionate uncle

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