SCRAPS1YES,' MY FRIEND SAID. `I DON'T SEE WHY THERE SHOULDN'T be books in Heaven. But you will find that your library in
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YES,' MY FRIEND SAID. `I DON'T SEE WHY THERE SHOULDN'T be books in Heaven. But you will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on earth.' `Which?' I asked. `The ones you gave away or lent.' `I hope the lent ones won't still have all the borrowers' dirty thumb marks,' said I. `Oh yes they will,' said he. `But just as the wounds of the martyrs will have turned into beauties, so you will find that the thumb-marks have turned into beautiful illuminated capitals or exquisite marginal woodcuts.'
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`The angels', he said, `have no senses; their experience is purely intellectual and spiritual. That is why we know something about God which they don't. There are particular aspects of His love and joy which can be communicated to a created being only by sensuous experience. Something of God which the Seraphim can never quite understand flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.'
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`You are always dragging me down,' said I to my Body. `Dragging you down!' replied my Body. `Well I like that! Who taught me to like tobacco and alcohol? You, of course, with your idiotic adolescent idea of being "grown-up". My palate loathed both at first: but you would have your way. Who put an end to all those angry and revengeful thoughts last night? Me, of course, by insisting on going to sleep. Who does his best to keep you from talking too much and eating too much by giving you dry throats and headaches and indigestion? Eh?T 'And what about sex?' said I. `Yes, what about it?' retorted the Body. `If you and your wretched imagination would leave me alone I'd give you no trouble. That's Soul all over; you give me orders and then blame me for carrying them out.'
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`Praying for particular things', said I, `always seems to me like advising God how to run the world. Wouldn't it be wiser to assume that He knows best?T 'On the same principle', said he, `I suppose you never ask a man next to you to pass the salt, because God knows best whether you ought to have salt or not. And I suppose you never take an umbrella, because God knows best whether you ought to be wet or dry.' `That's quite different,' I protested. `I don't see why,' said he. `The odd thing is that He should let us influence the course of events at all. But since He lets us do it in one way I don't see why He shouldn't let us do it in the other.'
