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
complete, and would feel that the Jew was no longer a sort of mysterious
and even mystical exception. But people with more common sense would
probably realise that he had only extended nomadism by extending the
meaning of nomadism; and that he had extended that until it really had
no meaning at all. It is quite true that the French soldier has made
some of the finest marches in all military history. But it is equally
true, and far more self-evident, that if the French peasant is not a
rooted reality there is no such thing as a rooted reality in the world;
or in other words, if he is a nomad there is nobody who is not a nomad.
Now that is the sort of trick that has been tried in the case of
comparative religion and the world’s religious founders all standing
respectably in a row. It seeks to classify Jesus as the other would
classify Jews, by inventing a new class for the purpose and filling up
the rest of it with stop-gaps and second-rate copies. I do not mean that
these other things are not often great things in their own real
character and class. Confucianism and Buddhism are great things, but it
is not true to call them Churches; just as the French and English are
great peoples, but it is nonsense to call them nomads. There are some
points of resemblance between Christendom and its imitation in Islam;
for that matter there are some points of resemblance between Jews and
Gypsies. But after that the lists are made up of anything that comes to
hand; of anything that can be put in the same catalogue without being in
the same category.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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