spiritual heights required, what "answerable style"
could he use? For the style would really be part of
the content. Mere advice would be no good; every
sentence would have to smell of Heaven. And nowa-
days even if you could write a prose like Traherne's,
you wouldn't be allowed to, for the canon of "func-
tionalism" has disabled literature for half its func-
tions. (At bottom, every ideal of style dictates not
only how we should say things but what sort of
things we may say.)

Then, as years went on and the stifling experience
of writing the Letters became a weaker memory,
reflections on this and that which seemed somehow
to demand Screwtapian treatment began to occur to
me. I was resolved never to write another Letter.
The idea of something like a lecture or "address"
hovered vaguely in my mind, now forgotten, now
recalled, never written. Then came an invitation
from the Saturday Evening Post, and that pressed
the trigger.

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