SOURCE: "Theology in Stories: C. S. Lewis and the Narrative Quality of Experience," in Word and Story in C. S. Lewis, edited by Peter J. Schakel and Charles A. Huttar, University of Missouri Press, 1991, pp. 147-56.

In the following essay, Meilaender discusses the significance of Christian storytelling and the human longing for divine communion in Lewis's fiction. According to Meilaender, "Lewis offers not abstract propositions for belief but the quality, the feel, of living in the world narrated by the biblical story."

At the outset of The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader," Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace have been whisked magically off into Narnia and are now sailing with King Caspian and his crew on a quest. Caspian is seeking some lost lords of Narnia as well as the end of the world ("the utter East"). They have many adventures—some merely strange, others dangerous. The adventure which concerns...