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Under A Microscope
Her first two books to be published were two poetry collections: OP.I in 1916; and Catholic tales and Christian Songs (Below) in 1918.
The result is the 241 page book which is
a journey for the reader as they explore different aspects of
Christianity: Chapter One, Conscience; Chapter 2, Sin and Grace; Chapter 3, Covetousness; Chapter 4, Forgiveness;
Chapter 5, Judgment; Chapter 6, Belief; Chapter 7, Pride; Chapter 8, Despair
and Hope; Chapter 9, Greed; Chapter 10, Creativity; Chapter 11, Resurrection;
Chapter 12, Sacrificial Love; Chapter 13, Work; Chapter 14, Equality; Chapter
15, Envy; Chapter 16, Faith; Chapter 17, Incantation; Chapter 18, The Cross;
Chapter 19, Images and Symbols; and Chapter 20, Time and Eternity. 
Then
followed by two excerpts from letters by Dorothy Sayers, radio talk shows
featuring Dorothy Sayers, satires by Dorothy Sayers, plays and poems by Dorothy
Sayers.
*Below
are excerpts from each of the themed chapters that tries to define or
illustrate the very meaning of each theme.
I well remember how an aunt of mine, brought
up in an old-fashioned liberalism, protested angrily against having continually
to call herself a “miserable sinner” when reciting the Litany. Today, if we could really be persuaded that
we are miserable sinners – that the trouble is not outside of us but inside of
us, and that therefore, by the grace of God, we can do something to put it
right – we should receive that message as the most hopeful and heartening thing
that can be imagined. -From
an address Sayers delivered in May 1940 titled “Creed or Chaos?”
Chapter
Two: Unnatural Death/ Sin and Grace
“Sin is the intention, not the deed. That is the difference between divine law and human law.”
-Lord Peter Wimsey speaking to vicar Mr. Tregold in the novel Unnatural Death
“Sin is the intention, not the deed. That is the difference between divine law and human law.”
-Lord Peter Wimsey speaking to vicar Mr. Tregold in the novel Unnatural Death
Covetousness has gone
forward and never looked back. It has
become a swaggering, swashbuckling, piratical sin, going about with its hat cocked
over its eye, and with pistols tucked into the tops of its jack-boots. Its war-cries are “Business Efficiency!”
“Free Competition!” “Get Out or Get Under!” and “There’s Always Room at the
Top!” It no longer screws and saves – it launches out into new enterprises; it
gambles and speculates; it thinks in a big way; it takes risks.
- From the talk “The Other Six Deadly Sins.”
Chapter
Four: Strong Poison/ Forgiveness
Therefore I swear, O
father and God,
I swear by Thy might
throne,
With the blood that
was shed on Calvary
I bought them for Mine
own;
It shall dye them with
shame and scarlet,
It shall sear them as
burning coals,
For they spilt and
trampled it into the mire,
And it shall save
their souls
-Jesus
speaking in “Justus Judex”
The word “punishment”
for sin has become so corrupted that it ought never to be used. But once we have established the true
doctrine of man’s nature, the true nature of judgment becomes startlingly clear
and rational. It is the inevitable
consequence of man’s attempt to regulate life and society on a system that runs
counter to the facts of his own nature.
In the physical sphere, typhus and
cholera are a judgment on dirty living; not because God shows an arbitrary
favouritism to nice, clean people, best because of an essential element in the
physical structure of the universe.
-From
“Creed
or Chaos?”
Chapter
Six: The Dogma is the Drama/ Belief
“Wasting my time,”
said Hoskyns. “I told them exactly what
they put into my mouth. You’re right,
Jim, they’d believe anything. “The elixir
of life – that’s what they really want to get hold of. It would look well in a headline. If you can’t give ’em a simple formula to
cure all human ills and explain creation, they say you don’t know your
business.”
“Ah!” said Perry, with a twinkle of the
eye, “but if the Church gives them a set of formulae for the same purpose, they
say don’t want formulae or dogmas, but just a loving wistfulness.”
-from
Documents
in the Case
In one way there is so
much to say about Pride that one might speak of it for a week and not have
done. Yet in another way, all there is
to be said about it can be said in a single sentence. It is the sin of trying to be as God.
-
1941 talk “The Other Six Deadly Sins”.
Chapter Eight: Have His Carcase/ Despair and Hope
LAZARUS: Rabbi, it is true. I feel it in you too – that immense vitality
at which a man may warm himself as at a fire.
In your presence, I think, no one could easily yield to death – not even
I. yet I am not like Mary. I hold to life only with one hand, and not
with a very strong clasp. If death came
to me quietly one day when you were not beside me, I should not struggle, but
slip away with him in silence and glad to be go.
JESUS: Do you love me so little, Lazarus?
-In
the Light and the Life, play seven of The Man Born to Be King
If we make ourselves
greedy and grasping tyrants of the earth – ravishing and not serving it - it takes its revenge in waste lands, barren
soil, flood, drought an dearth. Every
time we upset the balance of natural forces by over-cultivation, either of
earth, animals or what-not, we seem to come up against some law which sends
back to us in famine or disease the catastrophes we tried to avoid.
-From
a letter
The Architect stood
forth and said:
“I am the master of
the art:
I have a thought
within my head,
I have a dream within
my heart.
“Come now, good craftsman,
ply your trade
With tool and stone
obediently;
Behold the plan I have
made-
I am the master; serve
you me.
-Jesus
speaking in the poem “The Makers”
The Christian faith is
the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man – and the
dogma is the drama.
From
the Newspaper article “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the
Official Creed of Christendom”
Chapter
Twelve: The Mind of the Maker/ Sacrificial
Love
“Sacrifice” is another
world liable to misunderstanding. It is
generally held to be noble and loving in proportion as its sacrificial nature
is consciously felt by the person who is sacrificing himself. The direct
contrary is the truth.”
-from
The
Mind of the Maker
I believe, however,
that there is a Christian doctrine of work, very closely related to the
doctrines of the creative energy of God and the divine image of man.
-from
the talk “Creed or Chaos?”
Chapter
Fourteen: Are Women Human?/ Equality
When I was asked to
come and speak to you, your Secretary made the suggestion that she thought I
must be interested in the feminist movement.
I replied – a little irritably, I am afraid – that I was not sure I
wanted to “identify myself,” as the phrase goes, with feminism, and that the
time for “feminism, in the old-fashioned sense of the world, had gone
past. In fact, I think I went so far as
to say that, under present conditions, an aggressive feminism might do more
hard than good. As a result I was,
perhaps not unnaturally, invited to explain myself.
-from
the lecture address “Are Women Human?”
Hand in hand wit
Covetousness goes its close companion- Invidia
or Envy, which hates to see other men happy.
-From
“The
Other Six Deadly Sins”
The law is framed on
the assumption that my life is sacred; but upon my word I can see no sanction
for that assumption at all, except on the hypothesis that I am an image of
God-made, I should say, by a shockingly bad sculptor. And if I see no sanctity in myself, why would
I see it in Finland? But I do. It seems altogether irrational. All the same, I still have the sense of
liberation. “Fall into the hand of God,
not into the hand of economic humanity.” -from the private diary of Sayers’s protagonist
Lord Peter Wimsey
I feel sure that it is
in the interests of a true reverence towards the Incarnate Godhead to show that
His Manhood was a real manhood, subject to the common realities of daily life;
that the men and women surrounding Him were living human beings, not just
characters in a story; that, in short, h was born, not into “the Bible,” but
into the world.
-Dorothy
L Sayers outlining her overarching goal of writing the nativity play He
That Should Come.
1ST
SOLDIER: Stretch your legs. I’ll give you the king of the Jews.
2nd
SOLDIER: Hand me the mallet.
JESUS: Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing. (His voice breaks off in a sharp gasp as the
mallet falls. Fade out in the dull thud
of hammering). . .
-crucifixion
scene from The Man Born to Be King.
PERSONA DEI: I the image of the Unimaginable
In the place where the
Image and the Unimaged are one,
The Act of the Will,
the Word of the Thought, the Son
In whom the Father’s
selfhood is known to Himself,
I being God and with
God from the beginning
Speak to Man in the
place of the images.
-from
the play The Just Vengeance
“How can a man be born
when he is old?” asked Nicodemus (John 3:4).
His question has been ridiculed; but it is very reasonable and even
profound. “Can he enter a second time
into his mother’s womb and be born?” Can he escape from Time, creep back into
the comfortable pre-natal darkness, renounce the value of experience. The
answer makes short work of all such fantasies.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit.” The spirit alone is
eternal youth; the mind and the body must learn to make terms with Time.
-from
a newspaper article.
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