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
But above all, it is true of the most tremendous issue; of that tragedy
which has created the divine comedy of our creed. Nothing short of the
extreme and strong and startling doctrine of the divinity of Christ will
give that particular effect that can truly stir the popular sense like a
trumpet; the idea of the king himself serving in the ranks like a common
soldier. By making that figure merely human we make that story much less
human. We take away the point of the story which actually pierces
humanity; the point of the story which was quite literally the point of
a spear. It does not especially humanise the universe to say that good
and wise men can die for their opinions; any more than it would be any
sort of uproariously popular news in an army that good soldiers may
easily get killed. It is no news that King Leonidas is dead any more
than that Queen Anne is dead; and men did not wait for Christianity to
be men, in the full sense of being heroes. But if we are describing, for
the moment, the atmosphere of what is generous and popular and even
picturesque, any knowledge of human nature will tell us that no
sufferings of the sons of men, or even of the servants of God, strike
the same note as the notion of the master suffering instead of his
servants. And this is given by the theological and emphatically not by
the scientific deity. No mysterious monarch, hidden in his starry
pavilion at the base of the cosmic campaign, is in the least like that
celestial chivalry of the Captain who carries his five wounds in the
front of battle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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