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
It came on the world with a wind and rush of running messengers
proclaiming that apocalyptic portent; and it is not unduly fanciful to
say they are running still. What puzzles the world, and its wise
philosophers and fanciful pagan poets, about the priests and people of
the Catholic Church is that they still behave as if they were
messengers. A messenger does not dream about what his message might be,
or argue about what it probably would be; he delivers it as it is. It is
not a theory or a fancy but a fact. It is not relevant to this
intentionally rudimentary outline to prove in detail that it is a fact;
but merely to point out that these messengers do deal with it as men
deal with a fact. All that is condemned in Catholic tradition,
authority, and dogmatism and the refusal to retract and modify, are but
the natural human attributes of a man with a message relating to a fact.
I desire to avoid in this last summary all the controversial
complexities that may once more cloud the simple lines of that strange
story; which I have already called, in words that are much too weak, the
strangest story in the world. I desire merely to mark those main lines
and specially to mark where the great line is really to be drawn. The
religion of the world, in its right proportions, is not divided into
fine shades of mysticism or more or less rational forms of mythology. It
is divided by the line between the men who are bringing that message and
the men who have not yet heard it, or cannot yet believe it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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