The Problem of Pain

by C.S. Lewis

If any real theologian reads these pages he will very easily see that they are the work of a layman and an amateur. Except in the last two chapters,

record of crime, war, disease, and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed to give them, while it lasts, an agonised apprehension of losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of remembering. Every now and then they improve their condition a little and what we call a civilisation appears. But all civilisations pass away and, even while they remain, inflict peculiar

The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.

Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practised, in a world without chloroform.

describing its origin—a task, in my view, necessary if we are to put the problem of pain in its right setting. In all developed religion we find three strands or elements, and in Christianity one more. The first of these is what Professor Otto calls the experience of the Numinous. Those who have not met this term may be introduced to it by the

knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is ‘uncanny’ rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now

The Wind in the Willows

And far further back Ezekiel tells us of the ‘rings’ in his Theophany that ‘they were so high that they were dreadful’:6 and Jacob, rising from sleep, says ‘How dreadful is this place!’7