A Miscellany of MenChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
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A Miscellany of Men
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
In Christendom he will never find rest. The perpetual public criticism
and public change which is the note of all our history springs from a
certain spirit far too deep to be defined. It is deeper than democracy;
nay, it may often appear to be non-democratic; for it may often be the
special defence of a minority or an individual. It will often leave the
ninety-and-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost. It
will often risk the State itself to right a single wrong; and do justice
though the heavens fall. Its highest expression is not even in the
formula of the great gentlemen of the French Revolution who said that
all men were free and equal. Its highest expression is rather in the
formula of the peasant who said that a man's a man for a' that. If there
were but one slave in England, and he did all the work while the rest
of us made merry, this spirit that is in us would still cry aloud to
God night and day. Whether or no this spirit was produced by, it clearly
works with, a creed which postulates a humanised God and a vividly
personal immortality. Men must not be busy merely like a swarm, or even
happy merely like a herd; for it is not a question of men, but of a
man. A man's meals may be poor, but they must not be bestial; there must
always be that about the meal which permits of its comparison to
the sacrament. A man's bed may be hard, but it must not be abject or
unclean: there must always be about the bed something of the decency of
the death-bed.
This is the spirit which makes the Christian poor begin their terrible
murmur whenever there is a turn of prices or a deadlock of toil
that threatens them with vagabondage or pauperisation; and we cannot
encourage the Dean with any hope that this spirit can be cast out.
Christendom will continue to suffer all the disadvantages of being
Christian: it is the Dean who must be gently but firmly altered. He had
absent-mindedly strayed into the wrong continent and the wrong creed. I
advise him to chuck it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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