The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
in its two great divisions, the Jewish race, the memories of Greece
and Egypt, and the whole Mahometan world in Asia and Africa.
It may be that he regards these as small things; but I should be glad
if he would cast his eye over human history, and tell me what are
the large things. The truth is that the things that meet to-day in
Jerusalem are by far the greatest things that the world has yet seen.
If they are not important nothing on this earth is important,
and certainly not the impressions of those who happen to be bored
by them. But to understand them it is necessary to have something
which is much commoner in Jerusalem than in Oxford or Boston;
that sort of living history which we call tradition.
For instance, the critic generally begins by dismissing these conflicts
with the statement that they are all about small points of theology.
I do not admit that theological points are small points. Theology is only
thought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion
need not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste.
The old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single
letter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world.
An atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians
are so subtle as to distinguish definitely between the two.
But though I do not in any case allow that it is idle to be concerned
about theology, as a matter of actual fact these quarrels are not
chiefly concerned about theology. They are concerned about history.
They are concerned with the things about which the only human sort
of history is concerned; great memories of great men, great battles
for great ideas, the love of brave people for beautiful places,
and the faith by which the dead are alive. It is quite true that with
this historic sense men inherit heavy responsibilities and revenges,
fury and sorrow and shame. It is also true that without it men die,
and nobody even digs their graves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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