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
Now, compared to these wanderers the life of Jesus went as swift and
straight as a thunderbolt. It was above all things dramatic; it did
above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It
emphatically would not have been done if Jesus had walked about the
world for ever doing nothing except tell the truth. And even the
external movement of it must not be described as a wandering in the
sense of forgetting that it was a journey. This is where it was a
fulfilment of the myths rather than of the philosophies; it is a
journey with a goal and an object, like Jason going to find the Golden
Fleece, or Hercules the golden apples of the Hesperides. The gold that
he was seeking was death. The primary thing that he was going to do was
to die. He was going to do other things equally definite and objective;
we might almost say equally external and material. But from first to
last the most definite fact is that he is going to die. No two things
could possibly be more different than the death of Socrates and the
death of Christ. We are meant to feel that the death of Socrates was,
from the point of view of his friends at least, a stupid muddle and
miscarriage of justice interfering with the flow of a humane and lucid,
I had almost said a light philosophy. We are meant to feel that Death
was the bride of Christ as Poverty was the bride of St. Francis. We are
meant to feel that his life was in that sense a sort of love-affair with
death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice. From the
moment when the star goes up like a birthday rocket to the moment when
the sun is extinguished like a funeral torch, the whole story moves on
wings with the speed and direction of a drama, ending in an act beyond
words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account