The Everlasting ManChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The Everlasting Man
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Catholic Church -- Apologetic works; Christianity and other religions; Religion
Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier than
policy: by hatred. When men hung on in the darkest days of the Great
War, suffering either in their bodies or in their souls for those they
loved, they were long past caring about details of diplomatic objects as
motives for their refusal to surrender. Of myself and those I knew best
I can answer for the vision that made surrender impossible. It was the
vision of the German Emperor’s face as he rode into Paris. This is not
the sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. I am
quite content to call it hatred; the hatred of hell and all its works,
and to agree that as they do not believe in hell they need not believe
in hatred. But in the face of this prevalent prejudice, this long
introduction has been unfortunately necessary, to ensure an
understanding of what is meant by a religious war. There is a religious
war when two worlds meet; that is, when two visions of the world meet;
or in more modern language, when two moral atmospheres meet. What is the
one man’s breath is the other man’s poison; and it is vain to talk of
giving a pestilence a place in the sun. And this is what we must
understand, even at the expense of digression, if we would see what
really happened in the Mediterranean; when right athwart the rising of
the Republic on the Tiber, a thing overtopping and disdaining it, dark
with all the riddles of Asia and trailing all the tribes and
dependencies of imperialism, came Carthage riding on the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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