# “A pointer to something other and outer” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2022/04/02/a-pointer-to-something-other-and-outer-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2022-04-02T12:00:30-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“But what, in conclusion, of Joy?

For that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth,
the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian.

I cannot, indeed, complain, like Wordsworth, that the visionary gleam has passed
away.

I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the old stab, the old 
bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any
time of my life whatever.

But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never
had the kind of importance I once gave it.

It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.

While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts.

When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter.

He who first sees it cries, “Look!” The whole party gathers round and stares.

But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall
not stop and stare.

They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up.

But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars
are of silver and their lettering of gold.

‘We would be at Jerusalem.'”

–C.S. Lewis, [_Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life_](https://amzn.to/3Dww4Uu)(
New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1955), 238.

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