Good Reads: Still More Readings from Narnia (Part 3)

During the last week of the 2011-12 school year, I chose six readings from The Chronicles of Narnia to read. This is the final installment.



Tuesday, June 5: Chapter 15 “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time” from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The worst has happened. Aslan is dead. In order to save Edmund from having to pay for his treachery, Aslan willingly surrenders himself to the White Witch (Jadis, the Queen of Charn, unwittingly awoken in The Magician’s Nephew – see my last blog) who kills him mercilessly upon the Stone Table. Defying Aslan’s command to return to the camp, Susan and Lucy witness everything hidden in a copse of trees. After the Witch and her minions depart, the girls keep watch through the night by the slain lion. In the early hours of the morning feeling cold and sad through and through they get up to walk about the mound in an attempt to get warm. And just as the sun begins to creep above the rim of the horizon, a loud deafening noise startles them, the sound of stone cracking in two. At first too afraid to turn around, they finally do only to discover that the Stone Table has been broken in two and Aslan is gone. Just as they are about to moan his loss all over again, they are startled by the sound of a voice.

“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”


“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it magic?”


“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.


“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.


“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.


“Not now,” said Aslan.

“You’re not – not a - ?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.


“Do I look it?” he said.


“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.


“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.


“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”


Like so many others who love the Narnia stories, I love this moment. It is sheer triumph. It is like Mary meeting Jesus in the garden on that first Easter Sunday morning or Jesus walking through the locked door on that same day to stand among his disciples showing his hands and side all wrapped into one. Death, the great leveler of all, is foiled – and this time (ultimately) for good. His willing substitution of himself in the place we all justly deserved totally screws up the machinery of the universe (i.e., “The wages of sin is death…”) and in the wreckage a new truth is written (i.e., “…but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.)

After a joyful romp with the girls playing, as it were, cat and mouse (except with him being the mouse), it’s back to work. After all, the Witch is still at work and a battle is ensuing.

“And now,” said Aslan presently, “to business. I feel I am going to roar. You had better put your fingers in your ears.”

I think when Gabriel finally blows his horn summoning the return of the King, that blow will rival Aslan’s roar. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Wednesday, June 6: Chapter 16 “Farewell to Shadowlands” from The Last Battle
Frankly, I love the whole chapter and think the whole thing is worth reprinting. Old Narnia has ceased to be. All the characters we have come to know and love (save Susan) are reunited – the Pevensies (Peter, Edmund and Lucy), Eustace and Jill, Digory and Polly, Trumpkin the Dwarf, Reepicheep the Mouse, Caspian and Rilian, Trufflehunter and Tumnus and all the others all make their appearance in the closing pages of the book. They are “dead” and “in heaven” as we would call it. But there are no disembodied saints playing harps and laying on clouds in Aslan’s country. Everything is rich and redolent and teeming with life. “…there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the other, going up for ever.” But Aslan notices a tinge of sadness on Lucy’s face and says:

“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”


“Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’”


“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”


“Their hearts leapt, and a wild hope rose within them.”

“ ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.’”

In my opinion, that last sentence is one of the most powerful in English literature. “This is the morning” – what a fitting way to begin the first day of the New Heavens and the New Earth. As John the Revelator put it,

“I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea. I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new…”
(Revelation 21:1-5, Msg)

It reminds me that no matter how beautiful and wonderful the sights and moments of life on this side of the Stable Door, as Scripture says, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (Paul quoting Isaiah in 1 Corinthians 2:9).

This series of posts on the last week of our family reading for the 2011-12 school year concludes with one of my favorite in all literature. It is the last paragraph of the last chapter of the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia and it stirs a longing to join – one day – that festive throng that now enjoys His company forever.


“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”