[Extract from Chesterton's book "Orthodoxy" (1908)]

THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY

THE real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an

unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The

commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not

quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for

logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular

than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is

hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of

what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were

to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the

essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two

men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having

noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a

leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and

still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same

number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin

lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then,

where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was

another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he

was right, he would be wrong.

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is

the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret

treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to

get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth

itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple

astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called

after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it

doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet

and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never

escapes till the last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it

could easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved. It

would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides, he

should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men are still

organising expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are so

fond of flat country. Scientific men are also still organising

expeditions to find a man's heart; and when they try to find it,

they generally get on the wrong side of him.

Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether

it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our

mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he

might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the

brain. But if he guessed that the man's heart was in the right

place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician.

Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound

for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but

that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to

speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things,

but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go

wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the

unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is

stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two

hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it)

the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only

purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever

we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall

generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such

and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course,

anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there

really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can

be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple

one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has

actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in

Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less

it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of

the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if

snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I

think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a

miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of

Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the

truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems

of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I

began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has

that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses

those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once

one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as

scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how

rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a

compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a

hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are

both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right

key.

But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very

difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this

accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend

anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively

easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially

convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing,

and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a

philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is

only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And

the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction,

the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus,

if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the

moment, "Why do you prefer civilisation to savagery?" he would

look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able

to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the

coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen."

The whole case for civilisation is that the case for it is

complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of

proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply

impossible.

There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of

huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time

to get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly

enough, from an indifference about where one should begin. All

roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get

there. In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction I

confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing as

another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But if

I am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear, it will,

I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments of the last

chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of these mystical

coincidences, or rather ratifications. All I had hitherto heard of

Christian theology had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at the

age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen; and

I cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen without

having asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a

cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical

interest in the Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded

Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that, even in that point,

He had an advantage over some of His modern critics. I read the

scientific and sceptical literature of my time -- all of it, at

least, that I could find written in English and lying about; and I

read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note of

philosophy. The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a

healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know

this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I

read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert

Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology.

They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our

grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and

the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine

horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of

any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had

got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had

occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's

atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke across my mind,

"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." I was in a

desperate way.

This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts

deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take

only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-

Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow

and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind

-- the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary

thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most

flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for

combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was

attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner

had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east

than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much

too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its

angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to

notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case

any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such

instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction in

the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them; there are fifty

more.

Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack

on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and

still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere

pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than

otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But

if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely

pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow

up St. Paul's Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They

did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that

Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they

began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One

accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by

morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the

bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men

with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white

nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful

enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic

objected that Christian optimism, "the garment of make-believe

woven by pious hands," hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly,

and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly

done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call

it a fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed

inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on

a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state

of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a

coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to

stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way

or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured

spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all

young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the

dreariness of the creed --

"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has

grown gray with Thy breath."

But when I read the same poet's accounts of paganism (as in

"Atalanta"), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray

before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards. The poet

maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch

dark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man

who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself a pessimist.

I thought there must be something wrong. And it did for one wild

moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very

best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their

own account, had neither one nor the other.

It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that

the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced

that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than

they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it

must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man might be too fat in

one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape.

At this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the

Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the

rationalistic mind.

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong

case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is

something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called

"Christian," especially in its attitude towards resistance and

fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth century were

largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a

reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem

tenable that there was something weak and over patient about

Christian counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the

fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible

the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too

like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing

different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read

something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic

manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was

to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting

too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars.

Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got

thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry.

And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been

the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his

anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people

who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance

of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also

with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of

poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the

Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The

Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians;

and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic

Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this

Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars?

What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first

because it would not fight, and second because it was always

fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder

and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a

queerer shape every instant.

I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it

involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real

objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one

religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds

of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing

confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has

practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this

argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine

often preached in Ethical Societies -- I mean the doctrine that

there is one great unconscious church of all humanity rounded on

the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said,

divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek

the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find

essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under

Eastern trees, and he would be writing "Thou shalt not steal." It

might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval

desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be "Little boys

should tell the truth." I believed this doctrine of the

brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I

believe it still -- with other things. And I was thoroughly

annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that

whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of

justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found

that the very people who said that mankind was one church from

Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had

changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong

in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we

needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one

creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly

pointed out that one of men's universal customs was to have an

altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me

that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of

savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity

that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die

in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for

themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one

people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their

chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment

to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about

all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering

some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one

religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were

only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could

trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed.

We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had

changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two

thousand.

This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if

Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if

any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again

could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious

to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting

themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no

further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one

supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I

will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics

wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on

the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and

contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their

children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said

that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and

marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their

homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation.

The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in

the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-

Christians to show contempt for woman's intellect. But I found

that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's

intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the

Continent that "only women" went to it. Or again, Christianity was

reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth

and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being

reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of

porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain

and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been

accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the

Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is

often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of

religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic

pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, "One

thinks one thing, and one another," and rebuked also for its

union, "It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from

going to the dogs." In the same conversation a free-thinker, a

friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then

despised it himself for being Jewish.

I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair

now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was

all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was

very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one

thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are

men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare.

There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if

this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and

bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet

pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of

women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly

optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil

something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist

teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption.

Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one

of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key

to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose

to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as

supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic

institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a

miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only

explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that

Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if

Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a

still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another

explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many

men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too

tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some

lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too

fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that

he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He

might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to

be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who

are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out;

old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond

the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair

like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him

distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is

really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre.

Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its

critics that are mad -- in various ways. I tested this idea by

asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything

morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find

that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd

that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily

austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very

odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury

with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought

Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the

modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever

ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man

found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too

complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern

life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts

was mad on ENTREES. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of

preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity

involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the

simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in

the extravagant ENTREES, not in the bread and wine.

I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far.

The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of

Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily

explained. It was no longer a complication of diseases in

Christianity, but a complication of diseases in Swinburne. The

restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more

hedonist than a healthy man should be. The faith of Christians

angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man

should be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked

Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-

Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a

little anti-human about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that

Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There

was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had

justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might

be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it

was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and

respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance

each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints

were very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this

point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the

martyr and the suicide. In that matter there had been this

combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow

amounted to sanity. This was just such another contradiction; and

this I had already found to be true. This was exactly one of the

paradoxes in which sceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I

had found it right. Madly as Christians might love the martyr or

hate the suicide, they never felt these passions more madly than I

had felt them long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then the most

difficult and interesting part of the mental process opened, and I

began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts

of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching

the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or

compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and

wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to

ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this

combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox

theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart

from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half

not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things

thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this notion as

I found it.

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium;

that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little.

Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress

and evolution which seeks to destroy the MESON or balance of

Aristotle. They seem to suggest that we are meant to starve

progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts

every morning for ever. But the great truism of the MESON remains

for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance

except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance,

the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance

can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve:

that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved

in a very strange way.

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity

declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions

apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent;

but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us

follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and

take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the

brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong

desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that

will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of

mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice

for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine

guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of

courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut

off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the

precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping

within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to

cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with

a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to

life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must

not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will

not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious

indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink

death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this

romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not

done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits

of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the

distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who

dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above

the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the

Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese

courage, which is a disdain of life.

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the

Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a

moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take,

for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere

pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average

agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but

not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and

many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that

he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but

not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and

rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted

against the compromise between optimism and pessimism -- the

"resignation" of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of two things, it

is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full

strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does

not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad

in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild

rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make

it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching

humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of

the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice

must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses

both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble.

Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of

them.

It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In

one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in

another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In

so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am

a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant

pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his

whole destiny -- all that was to go. We were to hear no more the

wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the

brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of

all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about

the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only

sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had

spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man

was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus

held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed

in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at

the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness

of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic

submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows

of St. Bernard. When one came to think of ONE'S SELF, there was

vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and

bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go

-- as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open

playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against

himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let

him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is

Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving.

He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again

in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining

furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both

furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly

think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of

one's soul.

Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which

some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy.

Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly,

charity certainly means one of two things -- pardoning

unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask

ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan

would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at

the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some

people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole

wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor

could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as

the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is

rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no

place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a

great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere

tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the

charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in

startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It

divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive

unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It

was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger

and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than

before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room

for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered

Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a

rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for

good things to run wild.

Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look.

Really they require almost as careful a balance of laws and

conditions as do social and political liberty. The ordinary

aesthetic anarchist who sets out to feel everything freely gets

knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He

breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. But in ceasing to

feel home limits he has ceased to feel the "Odyssey." He is free

from national prejudices and outside patriotism. But being outside

patriotism he is outside "Henry V." Such a literary man is simply

outside all literature: he is more of a prisoner than any bigot.

For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little

difference whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked

out. What we want is not the universality that is outside all

normal sentiments; we want the universality that is inside all

normal sentiments. It is all the difference between being free

from them, as a man is free from a prison, and being free of them

as a man is free of a city. I am free from Windsor Castle (that

is, I am not forcibly detained there), but I am by no means free

of that building. How can man be approximately free of fine

emotions, able to swing them in a clear space without breakage or

wrong? THIS was the achievement of this Christian paradox of the

parallel passions. Granted the primary dogma of the war between

divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the world, their

optimism and pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like

cataracts.

St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting

optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil,

could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions

were free because both were kept in their place. The optimist

could pour out all the praise he liked on the gay music of the

march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into

battle. But he must not call the fight needless. The pessimist

might draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the

sanguine wounds. But he must not call the fight hopeless. So it

was with all the other moral problems, with pride, with protest,

and with compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the Church not

only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what

was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence

otherwise possible only to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic

than madness. Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange

COUP DE THEATRE of morality -- things that are to virtue what the

crimes of Nero are to vice. The spirits of indignation and of

charity took terrible and attractive forms, ranging from that

monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the first and greatest

of the Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in

the official shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal.

Poetry could be acted as well as composed. This heroic and

monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with

supernatural religion. They, being humble, could parade

themselves: but we are too proud to be prominent. Our ethical

teachers write reasonably for prison reform; but we are not likely

to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go into Reading

Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse before it is cast into the

quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly against the power of

millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockefeller, or any

modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey.

Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing

nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real

light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at

once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once

(if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and

fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side

like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white

upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred

of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the

feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of

black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the

whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the

statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a

colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that

Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours

coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it

is rather like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right

angles, and is in the pattern of the cross.

So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of

the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true

that the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight;

and it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and

those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means

that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its

Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for so

many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good

in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy

being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was

to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other.

They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples

of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead

of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured

out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity

of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run

the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to

run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James

Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure

gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their

juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in

the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But

remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is

constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that

when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like.

But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the

lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the

lion eating the lamb. The real problem is -- Can the lion lie down

with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the

problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.

This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities

of life. This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not

in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round,

but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected

the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it

foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that

it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every

one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe

-- THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no

one wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one.

Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor

quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable

without making it impossible to be quite happy -- that was a

discovery in psychology. Any one might say, "Neither swagger nor

grovel"; and it would have been a limit. But to say, "Here you can

swagger and there you can grovel" -- that was an emancipation.

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery

of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble,

upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like

a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its

pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences

exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand

years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but

they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and

fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in

Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt

under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the

combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while

the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold.

It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire,

who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold

next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man's body

as in Becket's; the balance was often distributed over the whole

body of Christendom. Because a man prayed and fasted on the

Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the

Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of

Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England.

This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and

so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens

Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon.

If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the

curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a

unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a

perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis

against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would

have said, "You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let

the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less

experimental and swift." But the instinct of Christian Europe

says, "Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman

may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an

equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany

shall correct the insanity called France."

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains

what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history

of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of

theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It

was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you

are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's

breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring

experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become

less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It

was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a

herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring

doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false

religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in

specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea

of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of

the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are

ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into

something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop

by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral

pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the north.

Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards.

Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made

in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A

sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have

broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions

might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or

break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within

strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human

liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world

might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have

fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something

heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or

so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more

dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind

madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that,

yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the

accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce

and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say

that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism.

She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous

obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism,

buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too

worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an

orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox

Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the

orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier

to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have

been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into

the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman:

it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have

its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always

easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen

into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which

fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic

path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is

always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which

one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any

one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed

have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been

one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot

flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and

prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.