Sermon Tone Analysis

Proverbs and Wisdom

Seperation unto Wisdom

proverbs 9:10

1 corinthians

Wisdom is Holiness

james 3:1

Teachable and Humble

Simply Minded

C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, writing, of course, as an elder devil to a younger devil,

"One of our great allies at present is the Church itself.

Do not misunderstand me.

I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.

That, I confess is a spectacle, which makes our boldest tempters uneasy.

But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.

All your patient sees is the half-finished sham Gothic erection on the new building estate.

When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with a rather oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided.

You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors.

Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew.

It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains.

You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side.

No matter.

Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool.

Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous . .

.. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords."