The Weight of Glory

In brief, a sermon delivered during wartime to Oxford students, which may be Lewis’s finest work: we desire too little, and there is no such thing as “ordinary people.”

The title essay starts from the observation that we are “too easily satisfied,” like a child in a slum who cannot imagine what a seaside holiday is. Lewis speaks of the longing for a distant country that beauty awakens without satisfying, and then of the promised glory: to be known, welcomed, “appreciated” by God. He draws a very concrete conclusion: everyone we meet is destined to become either a creature of unimaginable splendor or a horror. The collection also includes other famous essays: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1939), on the meaning of study when the world is burning; The Inner Ring (1944; in French “Le petit cercle”), on the desire to belong to an inner circle of initiates; Transposition, The Great Divorce, On Forgiveness.

• Original title — The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
• First published — 1941 (sermon); 1949 (collection)
• Genre — Sermons and lectures
• First English edition — Sermon delivered on June 8, 1941 at St Mary the Virgin University Church in Oxford; collection published in 1949 (Macmillan, New York; in the UK as Transposition and Other Addresses)
• Availability in bookstores — The sermon exists in French: “Le poids de gloire,” in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre (EBV/Brunnen, Basel, 1985, trans. Étienne Huser), along with “Transposition,” “Le petit cercle,” and “Is Theology Poetry?”. No complete French translation of the collection is listed. The 1985 volume was republished by Empreinte temps présent in 2025; we have not verified whether this reissue includes “Le poids de gloire.”
• Reading level — Intermediate
• For whom — The ideal text to discover Lewis’s prose in half an hour, available in French in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre or in English.
• Year — 1941

Did you know

• Le poids de gloire, in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre — EBV (Éditions Brunnen) — Basel — 1985 — Étienne Huser — the sermon, pp. 91–106, along with three other essays from the English collection: “Transposition,” “Le petit cercle” (The Inner Ring), and “Is Theology Poetry?”

Did you know

• Desire and glory.
• Every person’s dignity.
• The “inner ring” and the temptation of exclusivity.
• Studying and thinking in times of crisis.

On screen

• The Weight of Glory (1941)

## How to Approach It

Level: Intermediate. The ideal text to discover Lewis's prose in half an hour, in English.

## In Brief ## In the book ## On screen ## Going Further ## The Story ## The books ## Trivia ## Did you know ## On screen ## Going further ## On the screen ## The Last Battle ## The Silver Chair ## The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ## Prince Caspian ## The Horse and His Boy ## The Magician's Nephew ## The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ## The story ## The books ## The Weight of Glory (1941) ## The Weight of Glory ## The Magician's Nephew ## The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ## The Horse and His Boy ## Prince Caspian ## The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ## The Silver Chair ## The Last Battle ## The Last Battle ## [Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weight_of_Glory) ## [De the Box to Aslan: the "Joy", the secret desire that connects all of Lewis's work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weight_of_Glory) ## [From the trenches of Artois to the evacuated children: how two wars opened the wardrobe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weight_of_Glory) ## [This Hideous Strength](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weight_of_Glory) ## [The Last Battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weight_of_Glory)