"Of course good came of it. Is Maleldil a beast that we can stop His path, or a leaf that we can twist His shape? Whatever you do, He will make good of it."
At this point in the novel, Ransom and Weston are debating in front of Tinidril, each attempting to sway her either toward or away from the temptation to sin. Weston has just made the point that without sin on Earth, Maleldil (Jesus) would not have manifested himself in human form. After due contemplation, Ransom jumps up and makes this speech, only part of which has been reproduced in the quote. This theme, the fact that Maleldil will make good from all things, even bad ones, applies to the entire novel, tying into the Biblical truth that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28).
“... you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words.”
This humorous quote, delivered after Ransom speaks some uninformative and noncommittal adage ("There's probably some good reason"), brings comic relief to a scene with serious elements to the conversation, but it also illuminates an important truth about fallen humanity. People tend to feel a pressure to speak and a desire to be seen as someone with valid opinions, so they speak far too often and about subjects on which they have no business speaking with authority. The Lady is demonstrating a seldom-recognized flaw in human society.
“Where Maleldil is, there is the centre. He is in every place. Not some of Him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole Maleldil, even in the smallness beyond thought. There is no way out of the centre save into the Bent Will which casts itself into the Nowhere. Blessed be He!
Each thing was made for Him. He is the centre. Because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre ... In His city all things are made for each. When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!”
This speech comes during the scene of the Great Dance at the end of the novel, where the Oyéresu of Malacandra and Perelandra celebrate Ransom's victory and hand guardianship of Perelandra to its King and Queen. During the celebration, all involved (starting with the Oyéresu) begin to speak and sing praises to Maleldil in an almost Pentecostal fashion. This is a small segment of the final soliloquy, but it powerfully illustrates the central message of the novel. Maleldil (Jesus) is at the center of everything: He is the force actively combating the Black Archon; He is the life and breath in all the living beings in the Perelandran paradise; He is everything good in the universe.
