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Controversy Quotations

Holiness and Refined Sensibility

Here are two statements from C.S. Lewis (not a man who is easily accused of lacking in culture) which should certainly prevent all attempts to use him as an advocate of any point of view which would correlate good taste with a state of grace, or seek to establish any necessary connection between the two things.

Letter to �Mrs Arnold�, 7 December 1950

I naturally loathe nearly all hymns: the face and life of the charwoman in the next pew who revels in them teach me that good taste in poetry or music are not necessary to salvation.

Letter to Mrs R.E. Halverson [March 1956]

I think every natural thing which is not in itself sinful can become the servant of the spiritual life, but none is automatically so. When it is not, it becomes either just trivial (as music is to millions of people) or a dangerous idol. The emotional effect of music may be not only a distraction (to some people at some times) but a delusion: i.e. feeling certain emotions when they may be wholly natural. That means that even genuinely religious emotion is only a servant. No soul is saved by having it or damned by lacking it. The love we are commanded to have for God and our neighbour is a state of the will, not of the affections (though if they ever also play their part so much the better). So that the test of music or religion or even visions if one has them is always the same � do they make one more obedient, more God-centred, and neighbour-centred and less self-centred? �Though I speak with the tongues of Bach and Palestrina and have not charity etc.!�

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