So says a children’s book review for The Wall Street Journal. Meghan Cox Gurdon insists that despite the hullabaloo about witchcraft that’s surrounded the book series for years, author J.K. Rowling has tipped her hand to Christianity in many ways. “The principal Hogwarts holidays have always been Christmas and Easter...in Book Six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she addressed concepts of free will, the power of love, and the sanctity of the soul. But in the final volume she gently lays it all out. The preciousness of each human life; bodily resurrection after death; mercy, forgiveness and redemption; sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil—strip away the elves, goblins, broomsticks, and magic wands, and these are the concepts that underpin the marvelously intricate world of Harry Potter.”

Gurdon says two New Testament quotations recur in the story after Harry sees each on a tombstone in the village where he was born and his mother and father died (“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” from Matthew’s Gospel) and on the grave of his own parents (“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” from 1 Corinthians). Near the end, Gurdon continues, Harry visits the hereafter, where he sees joy coming to those who in life were merciful and agony given to those who were cruel and remorseless.