The writer, in a dream, boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. In this scene from The Great Divorce, one person in heaven tries to convince his friend not to return to the bus, but instead to stay in heaven.
‘Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances... I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness—and scope for the talents that God has given me—and an atmosphere of free inquiry—in short, all that one means by civilisation and—er—the spiritual life.’
‘No,’ said the other. ‘I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.’
‘Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind, must it not? “Prove all things”… to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’
‘If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for.’
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1946, Harper Collins edition 2001) 39-40.
