On a fateful day in 1963

Men without chests. Meaning that we should be more moral in our science, more ethical in our medicine, more responsible in our economics, and re-integrate values at all levels of education.

CSL:

'In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.'

'The practical result of (such) education... must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.'

We might illustrate this by saying that we sow violence and indiscriminate sex on media screens and computer games and then wonder why we reap violence and indiscriminate sex in our society.

Lewis again:

'Stepping outside (the moral values), they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man.'

J I Packer, in a brilliant article Surprised by Lewis in Christianity Today Sept 1998, writes:

'The Abolition of Man was the waving of a red flag at an oncoming juggernaut that would reduce education to the learning of techniques and so dehumanize and destroy it, tearing out of it that which is its true heart.

The attempt was ignored, and today we reap the bitter fruits... The inner desolation and desperation that young people experience as subjectivist relativism and nihilism are wished upon them in schools and universities is a tragedy. (If you do not know what I am referring to, listen to the pop singers; they will tell you.)'

Three visionaries each with a message for us today. We justly remember and value the great sayings of Jack Kennedy. Huxley's Brave New World has become a part of our lexicon and the threat of genetic manipulation is now inside our doorstep. Jack, as in Lewis, is now better known than ever before and his writings more significant. Lewis' fiction is about the encouragement of men with chests and the consequences of the destruction of moral law. The Narnia Chronicles are about the development of ethical, moral and spiritual values in children so they will grow chests. I commend the writings of this most significant thinker, visionary, teacher and prophet to you at this remembrance time.