But at last Lucy noticed 2 other things. One was that the sky on the east side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an hour ago.

The other was some tiny movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no interest in this. What did it matter? Nothing mattered now! But at last she saw that whatever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stone Table. And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslan's body. She peered closer. They were little grey things.

"Ugh!" said Susan from the other side of the Table. "How beastly! There are horrid little mice crawling over him. Go away, you little beasts." And she raised her hand to frighten them away.

"Wait!" said Lucy, who had been looking at them more closely still. "Can you see what they're doing?"

Both girls bent down & stared.

"I do believe -" said Susan. "But how queer! They're nibbling away at the cords!"

"That's what I thought," said Lucy. "I think they're friendly mice. Poor little things – they don't realize he's dead. They think it'll do some good untying him."

It was quite definitely lighter by now. Each of the girls noticed for the first time the white face of the other. They could see the mice nibbling away; dozens & dozens, even hundreds, of little field mice. And at last, one by one, the ropes were all gnawed through.

The sky in the east was whitish by now & the stars were getting fainter - all except one very big one low down on the eastern horizon. They felt colder than they had been all night. The mice crept away again.

The girls cleared away the remains of the gnawed ropes. Aslan looked more like himself without them. Every moment his dead face looked nobler, as the light grew & they could see it better. In the wood behind them a bird gave a chuckling sound. It had been so still for hours & hours that it startled them. Then another bird answered it. Soon there were birds singing all over the place. It was quite definitely early morning now, not late night.

"I'm so cold," said Lucy.

"So am I," said Susan. "Let's walk about a bit."

They walked to the eastern edge of the hill & looked down. The one big star had almost disappeared. The country all looked dark grey, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to ands fro more times than they could count between the dead Aslan & the eastern ridge, trying to keep warm; & oh, how tired their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out towards they sea & Cair Paravel (which they could now just make out) the red turned to gold along the line where the sea & the sky met & very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise - a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.

"What's that?" said Lucy, clutching Susan's arm.

"I - I feel afraid to turn round," said Susan; "something awful is happening."

"They're doing something worse to Him," said Lucy. "Come on!" And she turned, pulling Susan round with her.

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different - all colours & shadows were changed that for a moment they didn't see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into 2 pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; & there was no Aslan.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the 2 girls, rushing back to the Table.

"Oh, it's too bad," sobbed Lucy; "they might have left the body alone."

"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it magic?"

"Yes!" said a great voice behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

"Aren't you dead then, dear Aslan?" said Lucy.

"Not now," said Aslan.

"You're not - not a - ?" asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn't bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head & licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath & a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

"Do I look it?" he said.

"Oh, you're real, you're real! Oh, Aslan!" cried Lucy, & both girls flung themselves upon him & covered him with kisses.

"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness & the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack & Death itself would start working backwards. And now-"

"Oh yes. Now?" said Lucy, jumping up & clapping her hands.

"Oh, children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!" He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads & landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round & round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge & beautifully velveted paws & catching them again, & now stopping unexpectedly so that all 3 of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur & arms & legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; & whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all 3 finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty.

We must not be surprised if we find some nasty Christians.

We must, therefore, not be surprised if we find among the Christians some people who are still nasty. There is even, when you come to think it over, a reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in

He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive.

greater numbers than nice ones. That was what people objected to about Christ during His life on earth: He seemed to attract "such awful people." That is what people still object to, and always will. Do you not see why? Christ said '"Blessed are the poor" and "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom," and no doubt He primarily meant the economically rich and economically poor. But do not His words also apply to another kind of riches and poverty? One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realise your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now quite plainly, natural gifts carry with them a similar danger. If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. "Why drag God into it?" you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe dial all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognise their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are "rich" in this sense to enter the Kingdom. 
      It is very different for the nasty people-the little, low, timid, warped, thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people. If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them. It is taking up the cross and following-or else despair. They are the lost sheep; He came specially to find them. They are (in one very real and terrible sense) the "poor": He blessed diem. They are the "awful set" he goes about with-and of course the Pharisees say still, as they said from the first, "If there were anything in Christianity those people would not be Christians." 
      There is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us. If you are a nice person-if virtue comes easily to you beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee. 
      But if you are a poor creature-poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels-saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion-nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends-do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all-not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.) 

The Obstinate Toy Soldiers

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. We do not know-anyway, I do not know-how things would have worked if the human race had never rebelled against God and joined the enemy. Perhaps every man would have been "in Christ," would have shared the life of the Son of God, from the moment he was born. Perhaps the Bios or natural life would have been drawn up into the Zoe, the uncreated life, at once and as a matter of course. But that is guesswork. You and I are concerned with the way things work now. 

      And the present state of things is this. The two kinds of life are now not only different (they would always have been that) but actually opposed. The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that 
      Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life? Well suppose you could really have brought them to life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it. 
      What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know. But what God did about us was this. The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man-a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman's body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab. 
      The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son. Thus in one instance humanity had, so to speak, arrived: had passed into the life of Christ. And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, "killed," He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn-poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed-killed every day in a sense-the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier-real tin, just like the rest-had come fully and splendidly alive. -- C S Lewis Mere Christianity

A Philosopher’s Journey of Faith

A Philosopher’s  Journey of Faith, from  William Lane Craig's book On Guard

As Jan and I were nearing the completion of my doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in England, our future path was again unclear to us. I had sent out a number of applications for teaching positions in philosophy at American universities but had received no bites. We didn’t know what to do or where to go.

We were sitting one evening at the supper table in our little house in Birmingham, when Jan suddenly said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”

I laughed because I remembered how the Lord had used her question to guide us in the past. I had no trouble responding. “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to Germany and study under Wolfhart Pannenberg.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh, he’s this famous German theologian who’s defended the resurrection of Christ historically,”

I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a historical apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus.”

Well, that just lit a fire under her. The next day while I was away at the university, she slipped off to the library and began to research grants-in-aid for study at German universities. Most of the leads proved to be defunct or otherwise inapplicable to our situation. But she found two grants that were possibilities. You can imagine my surprise when she laid them out before me!

One was from a government agency called the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), which offered scholarships to study at German universities. Unfortunately, the grant amounts were small and not intended to cover all your expenses. The other was from a foundation called the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. This foundation was evidently an effort at Kulturpolitik (cultural politics) aimed at refurbishing Germany’s image in the postwar era. It provided very generous fellowships to bring foreign scientists and other scholars to do research for a year or two at German laboratories and universities.

Reading the literature from the Humboldt-Stiftung just made my mouth water. They would pay for four months of a German refresher course at the Goethe Institute for the scholar and his spouse prior to beginning research, they would help find housing, they would pay for visits to another university if your research required it, they would pay for conferences, they would send pocket money from time to time, they would send you on a cruise down the Rhine—it was unbelievable! They even permitted recipients to submit the results of their research as a doctoral dissertation toward a degree from the German university at which they were working.

The literature sent by the Humboldt-Stiftung made it evident that the vast majority of their fellows were natural scientists—physicists, chemists, biologists, and so on. But it did say that applicants in any field were welcome.

So we decided to apply in the field of theology and to propose as my research topic an examination of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus!

We decided to go for the doctoral degree in theology at the same time.

We then began to pray morning and night that God would give us this fellowship. Sometimes I could believe God for such a thing; but then I would think of this panel of eighty German scientists in Bonn evaluating the applications and coming to this proposal on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and my heart would just sink!

It would take about nine months for the Humboldt-Stiftung to evaluate the applications, and in the meantime our lease was expiring, so we needed to move out of our house in Birmingham. So I said to Jan, “Honey, you’ve sacrificed a lot for me during my studies. Let’s do something that you’d like to do. What would you really like to do?”

She said, “I’ve always wanted to learn French. I had to drop my French class in college because I got sick, and I’ve always felt bad I didn’t get to learn French.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s go to France and enroll in a French language school!”

So we began to look into the possibilities. The obvious one was the Alliance Française, which is the official language school in France. But the far more interesting option was the Centre Missionnaire in Albertville, a Christian language school nestled in the French Alps for training foreign missionaries to French-speaking countries. They emphasized learning to really speak French, with as little foreign accent as possible, as well as to read and write it, along with all the biblical and theological vocabulary only a Christian school would provide.

So we wrote to the Centre Missionnaire, asking if we could study there.

To our dismay, they wrote back informing us that applicants have to be missionaries officially with a mission board and, moreover, the course would cost several thousand dollars. Well, we didn’t have that kind of money. We had spent just about all of the money given to us by the businessman to do our doctoral studies in Birmingham.

So I wrote back to the Centre Missionnaire explaining our financial situation. I also explained that while we weren’t officially missionaries, we did want to serve the Lord, and I included a letter of commendation from one of the elders at the Brethren church we were attending in Birmingham. Then I basically forgot about it.

Time passed, and none of my other efforts to find a job had materialized. We had shipped all of our belongings back to my parents’ home in Illinois. In one week we had to move out of our house in Birmingham, and we had nowhere to go.

I remember walking despondently out to the mailbox that day and finding there a letter from the Centre Missionnaire. I opened it halfheartedly and began to read. And then—my eyes suddenly grew wide, as I read the words: “It doesn’t really matter to us whether you are missionaries as long as you want to serve the Lord. And as for the money, you just pay what you can, and we’ll trust God for the rest.” Unbelievable!

Once again we felt as though God had just miraculously plucked us up and transported us to another country to do His will. We later learned that the Centre had actually turned down paying missionaries and accepted us instead. We went to France with a deep sense of divine commissioning and so threw ourselves into our language studies. It was unbelievably rigorous, with drills and constant repetition and not a few tears, but by the end of our six months I was preaching in French at our small church, and Jan had the joy of leading our French neighbors to faith in Christ.

Our French language training was to end in August, and as of July we still hadn’t heard a decision from the Humboldt-Stiftung. We were getting nervous. (Jan has since formulated a saying that aptly describes our lives:

(“The Lord is always almost late!”) Then one day we received a letter from the Humboldt-Stiftung. The only problem was: It was in German, and my rusty high school German wasn’t up to the task of figuring it out!

So we grabbed the letter and rushed into the village to a small bookstore, where we found a French-German dictionary. As we stood there slowly translating the letter into French, hoping against hope, we could scarcely contain our excitement. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been granted a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus under the direction of Professor Dr. Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich.” So for the next two years the German government paid me to study the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus! Incredible! Absolutely incredible!

Jan and I arrived in Germany on a cold January day to begin our language studies at the Goethe Institute in Göttingen, a small university town near the East German border. We had chosen Göttingen because “high German” is spoken by the ordinary people in that region, as opposed to a local dialect.

It’s amazing how much you can learn in four months when you’re immersed in the language. With my postdoctoral studies in Munich looming, we were supermotivated to learn German. We hired a university student named Heidi to help us with our pronunciation. After a couple of months we determined to speak only German with each other until 8:00 p.m., when we’d revert to English. It’s funny, but even when you know the meaning of the words, “Ich liebe dich” just doesn’t convey the same feeling as “I love you” to a native English speaker!

By the end of our four months I had finished the advanced class with the highest grade of “1,” and Jan, whose knowledge of German when we started didn’t extend beyond “eins, zwei, drei,” was able to converse freely with the shopkeepers and people in our town. One evening during dinner at the Goethe Institute she astonished me. There’s a German proverb, “Ohne Fleiss, kein Preis!” (“Without effort, no reward!”) So during the meal Jan asked the Turkish fellow next to her (in German) to pass the meat. But he showed her the empty serving dish and offered her the bowl of rice instead. To which she instantly retorted, “Danke, nein! Ohne Fleisch, kein Reis!” (“No thanks! Without meat, no rice!”) I about split! Here she was already punning in German!

I must confess that it had seemed a little nutty to spend nine months learning French just before going off to do postdoctoral studies in Germany. But the Lord’s providence is amazing. The first day I showed up at the theology department at the University of Munich to confer with Prof. Dr. Pannenberg, he took me into the departmental library and pulled three books off the shelf and said, “Why don’t you get started with these?” To my amazement, two of the three were in French! I thought to myself, Praise You, Lord! I could never have said to Pannenberg that I didn’t read French. That would have been equivalent to saying that I wasn’t qualified to do the research! God knew what He was doing.

Doing my doctorate in theology under Prof. Dr. Pannenberg was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I even had to pass a Latin qualifying exam to get the degree, which necessitated my taking Latin in German! But by the end of our time in Munich I’d learned so much about the resurrection of Jesus that I was worlds away from where I’d been when we first came. As a Christian, I of course believed in Jesus’ resurrection, and I was familiar with popular apologetics for it, but I was quite surprised to discover as a result of my research how solid a historical case can be made for the resurrection. Three books came out of that research, one of which served as the dissertation for my second doctorate, this time in theology from the University of Munich.

Since that time I’ve had the opportunity to debate some of the world’s leading skeptical New Testament scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Gerd Lüdemann, and Bart Ehrman, as well as best-selling popularizers like John Shelby Spong, on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.

In all objectivity, I have to say I’ve been shocked at how impotent these eminent scholars are when it comes to refuting the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. (You can read or listen to these debates yourself and form your own opinion—just go to www.reasonablefaith.org.)

Very often, and I mean, very often, it will be philosophical considerations, not historical considerations, that lie at the root of their skepticism. But, of course, these men aren’t trained in philosophy and so make amateurish blunders which a trained philosopher can easily spot. I’m so thankful that the Lord in His providence led us first to do doctoral work in philosophy before turning to a study of Jesus’ resurrection, for it is really philosophy and not history that undergirds the skepticism of radical critics.

I wonder very much...

I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do-I can do precious little-I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us." There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly dear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?
      It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?
      Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and 1 do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently "Love your neighbour" does not mean "feel fond of him" or "find him attractive." I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do 1 think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it, is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
      For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
      The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, "Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that," or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything-God and our friends and ourselves included-as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
      Now a step further. Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment-even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting "Thou shalt not kill." There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major-what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight-the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause-is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semipacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage- a kind of gaity and wholeheartedness.
   

I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first world war, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it. 

What is Britain? Where is Britain? There is no such place. There never was a nation of Britain; there never was a King of Britain; unless perhaps Vortigern or Uther Pendragon had a taste for the title. G K Chesterton in 'All Things Considered' 

 ...this is, for us, a love of England, Wales, Scotland, or Ulster. Only foreigners and politicians talk about "Britain". C S Lewis in 'The Four Loves'.

IF I HAD ONLY ONE SERMON TO PREACH

IF I HAD ONLY ONE SERMON TO PREACH

If I had only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against Pride.  The more I see of existence, and especially of modern practical and experimental existence, the more I am convinced of the reality of the old religious thesis; that all evil began with some attempt at superiority; some moment when, as we might say, the very skies were cracked across like a mirror, because there was a sneer in Heaven.

Now the first fact to note about this notion is a rather curious one.  Of all such notions, it is the one most generally dismissed in theory and most universally accepted in practice.  Modern men imagine that such a theological idea is quite remote from them; and, stated as a theological idea, it probably is remote from them.  But, as a matter of fact, it is too close to them to be recognised.  It is so completely a part of their minds and morals and instincts, I might almost say of their bodies, that they take it for granted and act on it even before they think of it.  It is actually the most popular of all moral ideas; and yet it is almost entirely unknown as a moral idea.  No truth is now so unfamiliar as a truth, or so familiar as a fact.

Let us put the fact to a trifling but not unpleasing test.  Let us suppose that the reader, or (preferably) the writer, is going into a public-house or some public place of social intercourse; a public tube or tram might do as well, except that it seldom allows of such long and philosophical intercourse as did the old public house.  Anyhow, let us suppose any place where men of motley but ordinary types assemble; mostly poor because the majority is poor some moderately comfortable but rather what is snobbishly called common; an average handful of human beings.  Let us suppose that the enquirer, politely approaching this group, opens the conversation in a chatty way by saying, “Theologians are of opinion that it was one of the superior angelic intelligences seeking to become the supreme object of worship, instead of finding his natural joy in worshipping, which dislocated the providential design and frustrated the full joy and completion of the cosmos”.  After making these remarks the enquirer will gaze round brightly and expectantly at the company for corroboration, at the same time ordering such refreshments as may be ritually fitted to the place or time, or perhaps merely offering cigarettes or cigars to the whole company, to fortify them against the strain.  In any case, we may well admit that such a company will find it something of a strain to accept the formula in the above form.  Their comments will probably be disjointed and detached; whether they take the form of “Lorlumme” (a beautiful thought slurred somewhat in pronunciation), or even “Gorblimme” (an image more sombre but fortunately more obscure), or merely the unaffected form of “Garn”; a statement quite free from doctrinal and denominational teaching, like our State compulsory education.  In short, he who shall attempt to state this theory as a theory to the average crowd of the populace will doubtless find that he is talking in an unfamiliar language.  Even if he states the matter in the simplified form, that Pride is the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins, he will only produce a vague and rather unfavourable impression that he is preaching.  But he is only preaching what everybody else is practising; or at least is wanting everybody else to practise.

Let the scientific enquirer continue to cultivate the patience of science.  Let him linger — at any rate let me linger — in the place of popular entertainment whatever it may be, and take very careful note (if necessary in a note-book) of the way in which ordinary human beings do really talk about each other.  As he is a scientific enquirer with a note-book, it is very likely that he never saw any ordinary human beings before.  But if he will listen carefully, he will observe a certain tone taken towards friends, foes and acquaintances; a tone which is, on the whole, creditably genial and considerate, though not without strong likes and dislikes.  He will hear abundant if sometimes bewildering allusion to the well-known weaknesses of Old George; but many excuses also, and a certain generous pride in conceding that Old George is quite the gentleman when drunk, or that he told the policeman off proper.  Some celebrated idiot, who is always spotting winners that never win, will be treated with almost tender derision; and, especially among the poorest, there will be a true Christian pathos in the reference to those who have been “in trouble” for habits like burglary and petty larceny.  And as all these queer types are called up like ghosts by the incantation of gossip, the enquirer will gradually form the impression that there is one kind of man, probably only one kind of man, perhaps, only one man, who is really disliked.  The voices take on quite a different tone in speaking of him; there is a hardening and solidification of disapproval and a new coldness in the air.  And this will be all the more curious because, by the current modern theories of social or anti-social action, it will not be at all easy to say why he should be such a monster; or what exactly is the matter with him.  It will be hinted at only in singular figures of speech, about a gentleman who is mistakenly convinced that he owns the street; or sometimes that be owns the earth.  Then one of the social critics will say, “’E comes in ’ere and ’e thinks ’e’s Gawd Almighty.” Then the scientific enquirer will shut his note-book with a snap and retire from the scene, possibly after paying for any drinks he may have consumed in the cause of social science.  He has got what he wanted.  He has been intellectually justified.  The man in the pub has precisely repeated, word for word, the theological formula about Satan.

Pride is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues; it even poisons the other vices.  This is what is felt by the poor men in the public tavern, when they tolerate the tippler or the tipster or even the thief, but feel something fiendishly wrong with the man who bears so close a resemblance to God Almighty.  And we all do in fact know that the primary sin of pride has this, curiously freezing and hardening effect upon the other sins.  A man may be very susceptible and in sex matters rather loose; he may waste himself on passing and unworthy passions, to the hurt of his soul; and yet always retain something which makes friendship with his own sex at least possible, and even faithful and satisfying.  But once let that sort of man regard his own weakness as a strength, and you have somebody entirely different.  You have the Lady-Killer; the most beastly of all possible bounders; the man whom his own sex almost always has the healthy instinct to hate and despise.  A man may be naturally slothful and rather irresponsible; he may neglect many duties through carelessness, and his friends may still understand him, so long as it is really a careless carelessness.  But it is the devil and all when it becomes a careful carelessness.  It is the devil and all when he becomes a deliberate and self-conscious Bohemian, sponging on principle, preying on society in the name of his own genius (or rather of his own belief in his own genius) taxing the world like a king on the plea that he is a poet, and despising better men than himself who work that he may waste.  It is no metaphor to say that it is the devil and all.  By the same fine old original religious formula, it is all of the devil.  We could go through any number of social types illustrating the same spiritual truth.  It would be easy to point out that even the miser, who is half-ashamed of his madness, is a more human and sympathetic type than the millionaire who brags and boasts of his avarice and calls it sanity and simplicity and the strenuous life.  It would be easy to point out that even cowardice, as a mere collapse of the nerves, is better than cowardice as an ideal and theory of the intellect; and that a really imaginative person will have more sympathy with men who, like cattle, yield to what they know is panic, than with a certain particular type of prig who preaches something that he calls peace.  Men hate priggishness because it is the driest form of pride.

Thus there is a paradox in the whole position.  The spiritual idea of the evil of pride, especially spiritual pride, was dismissed as a piece of mysticism not needed by modern morality, which is to be purely social and practical.  And, as a fact, it is very specially needed because the morality is social and practical.  On the assumption that we need care for nothing except making other human beings happy, this is quite certainly the thing that will make them unhappy.  The practical case against pride, as a mere source of social discomfort and discord, is if possible even more self-evident than the more mystical case against it, as a setting up of the self against the soul of the world.  And yet though we see this thing on every side in modern life, we really hear very little about it in modern literature and ethical theory.  Indeed, a great deal of modern literature and ethics might be meant specially for the encouragement of spiritual pride.  Scores of scribes and sages are busy writing about the importance of self-culture and self-realisation; about how every child is to be taught to develop his personality (whatever that may be); about how every man must devote himself to success, and every successful man must devote himself to developing a magnetic and compelling personality; about how every man may become a superman (by taking Our Correspondence Course) or, in the more sophisticated and artistic type of fiction, how one specially superior superman can learn to look down on the mere mob of ordinary supermen, who form the population of that peculiar world.  Modern theory, as a whole, is rather encouraging egoism.  But we need not be alarmed about that.  Modern practice, being exactly like ancient practice, is still heartily discouraging it.  The man with the strong magnetic personality is still the man whom those who know him best desire most warmly to kick out of the club.  The man in a really acute stage of self-realisation is a no more pleasing object in the club than in the pub.  Even the most enlightened and scientific sort of club can see through the superman; and see that he has become a bore.  It is in practice that the philosophy of pride breaks down; by the test of the moral instincts of man wherever two or three are gathered together; and it is the mere experience of modern humanity that answers the modern heresy.

There is indeed another practical experience, known to us all, even more pungent and vivid than the actual unpopularity of the bully or the bumptious fool.  We all know that there is a thing called egoism that is much deeper than egotism.  Of all spiritual diseases it is the most intangible and the most intolerable.  It is said to be allied to hysteria; it sometimes looks as if it were allied to diabolic possession.  It is that condition in which the victim does a thousand varying things from one unvarying motive of a devouring vanity; and sulks or smiles, slanders or praises, conspires and intrigues or sits still and does nothing, all in one unsleeping vigilance over the social effect of one single person.  It is amazing to me that in the modern world, that chatters perpetually about psychology and sociology, about the tyranny with which we are threatened by a few feeble-minded infants, about alcoholic poisoning and the treatment of neurotics, about half a hundred things that are near the subject and never on the spot — it is amazing that these moderns really have so very little to say about the cause and cure of a moral condition that poisons nearly every family and every circle of friends.  There is hardly a practical psychologist who has anything to say about it that is half so illuminating as the literal exactitude of the old maxim of the priest; that pride is from hell.  For there is something awfully vivid and appallingly fixed, about this madness at its worst, that makes that short and antiquated word seem much more apt than any other.  And then, as I say, the learned go wandering away into discourses about drink or tobacco, about the wickedness of wine glasses or the incredible character of public-houses.  The wickedest work in this world is symbolised not by a wine glass but by a looking-glass; and it is not done in public-houses;, but in the most private of all private houses which is a house of mirrors.

The phrase would probably be misunderstood; but I should begin my sermon by telling people not to enjoy themselves.  I should tell them to enjoy dances and theatres and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; to enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if they can enjoy nothing better; to enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to this other alternative; but never to learn to enjoy themselves.  Human beings are happy so long as they retain the receptive power and the power of reaction in surprise and gratitude to something outside.  So long as they have this they have as the greatest minds have always declared, a something that is present in childhood and which can still preserve and invigorate manhood.  The moment the self within is consciously felt as something superior to any of the gifts that can be brought to it, or any of the adventures that it may enjoy, there has appeared a sort of self-devouring fastidiousness and a disenchantment in advance, which fulfils all the Tartarean emblems of thirst and of despair.

Difficulties can easily be raised, of course, in any such debate by the accident of words being used in different senses; and sometimes in quite contrary senses.  For instance, when we speak of somebody being “proud of” something, as of a man being proud of his wife or a people proud of its heroes, we really mean something that is the very opposite of pride.  For it implies that the man thinks that something outside himself is needed to give him great glory; and such a glory is really acknowledged as a gift.  In the same way, the word will certainly be found misleading, if I say that the worst and most depressing element in the mixed elements of the present and the immediate future, seems to me to be an element of impudence.  For there is a kind of impudence that we all find either amusing or bracing; as in the impudence of the guttersnipe.  But there again the circumstances disarm the thing of its real evil.  The quality commonly called “cheek” is not an assertion of superiority; but rather a bold attempt to balance inferiority.  When you walk up to a very wealthy and powerful nobleman and playfully tip his hat over his eyes (as is your custom) you are not suggesting that you yourself are above all human follies, but rather that you are capable of them, and that he also ought to have a wider and richer experience of them.  When you dig a Royal Duke in the waistcoat, in your playful manner, you are not taking yourself too seriously, but only, perhaps, not taking him so seriously as is usually thought correct.  This sort of impudence may be open to criticism, as it is certainly subject to dangers.  But there is a sort of hard intellectual impudence, which really treats itself as intangible to retort or judgment; and there are a certain number among the new generations and social movements, who fall into this fundamental weakness.  It is a weakness; for it is simply settling down permanently to believe what even the vain and foolish can only believe by fits and starts, but what all men wish to believe and are often found weak enough to believe; that they themselves constitute the supreme standard of things.  Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making the truth the test.  It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look well, according to a real test.  It is pride to think that a thing looks ill, because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.  Now in the general clouding of clear and abstract standards, there is a real tendency today for a young man (and even possibly a young woman) to fall back on that personal test, simply for lack of any trustworthy impersonal test.  No standard being sufficiently secure for the self to be moulded to suit it, all standards may be moulded to suit the self.  But the self as a self is a very small thing and something very like an accident.  Hence arises a new kind of narrowness; which exists especially in those who boast of breadth.  The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.  There is produced also a sort of subconscious ossification; which hardens the mind not only against the traditions of the past, but even against the surprises of the future.  Nil admirari becomes the motto of all nihilists; and it ends, in the most complete and exact sense, in nothing.

If I had only one sermon to preach, I certainly could not end it in honour, without testifying to what is in my knowledge the salt and preservative of all these things.  This is but one of a thousand things in which I have found the Catholic Church to be right, when the whole world is perpetually tending to be wrong; and without its witness, I believe that this secret, at once a sanity and a subtlety, would be almost entirely forgotten among men.  I know that I for one had hardly heard of positive humility until I came within the range of Catholic influence; and even the things that I love most, such as liberty and the island poetry of England, had in this matter lost the way, and were in a fog of self-deception.  Indeed there is no better example of the definition of pride than the definition of patriotism.  It is the noblest of all natural affections, exactly so long as it consists of saying, “May I be worthy of England.” It is the beginning of one of the blindest forms of Pharisaism when the patriot is content to say, “I am an Englishman.” And I cannot count it an accident that the patriot has generally seen the flag as a flame of vision, beyond and better than himself, in countries of the Catholic tradition, like France and Poland and Ireland; and has hardened into this heresy of admiring merely his own breed and bone and inherited type, and himself as a part of it, in the places most remote from that religion, whether in Berlin or Belfast.  In short, if I had only one sermon to preach, it would be one that would profoundly annoy the congregation, by bringing to their attention the permanent challenge of the Church.  If I had only one sermon to preach, I should feel specially confident that I should not be asked to preach another.
G K Chesterton in 'The Common Man'

But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.

Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out.  It is often a great bore.  But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.  The latter is what we commonly call culture and enlightenment today.  But man is always influenced by thought of some kind, his own or somebody else’s; that of somebody he trusts or that of somebody he never heard of, thought at first, second or third hand; thought from exploded legends or unverified rumours; but always something with the shadow of a system of values and a reason for preference.  A man does test everything by something.  The question here is whether he has ever tested the test.

I will take one example out of a thousand that might be taken.  What is the attitude of an ordinary man on being told of an extraordinary event: a miracle? I mean the sort of thing that is loosely called supernatural, but should more properly be called preternatural.  For the word supernatural applies only to what is higher than man; and a good many modern miracles look as if they came from what is considerably lower.  Anyhow, what do modern men say when apparently confronted with something that cannot, in the cant phrase, be naturally explained? Well, most modern men immediately talk nonsense.  When such a thing is currently mentioned, in novels or newspapers or magazine stories, the first comment is always something like, “But my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century!” It is worth having a little training in philosophy if only to avoid looking so ghastly a fool as that.  It has on the whole rather less sense or meaning than saying, “

But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.” If miracles cannot happen, they cannot happen in the twentieth century or in the twelfth.  If they can happen, nobody can prove that there is a time when they cannot happen.  The best that can be said for the sceptic is that he cannot say what he means, and therefore, whatever else he means, he cannot mean what he says.  But if he only means that miracles can be believed in the twelfth century, but cannot be believed in the twentieth, then he is wrong again, both in theory and in fact.  He is wrong in theory, because an intelligent recognition of possibilities does not depend on a date but on a philosophy. 
Full text: http://bit.ly/15wfEXI

The sincere love of books has nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity any more than any other sincere love. It is a quality of character, a freshness, a power of pleasure, a power of faith.

Religion is a very terrible thing

"Religion is a very terrible thing; that it is truly a raging fire, and that Authority is often quite as much needed to restrain it as to impose it... when Religion would have maddened men, Theology kept them sane."-- G K Chesterton in 'Aquinas'

Tin Soldier of the Danish army

When the English romantics wanted to find the folk-tale spirit still alive, they found it in the small country of one of those small kings, with whom the folk-tales are almost comically crowded. There they found what we call an original writer, who was nevertheless the image of the origins. They found a whole fairyland in one head and under one nineteenth-century top hat. Those of the English who were then children owe to Hans Andersen more than to any of their own writers...

These things, alas, were an allegory. When Prussia, finding her crimes unpunished, afterwards carried them into France as well as Denmark, Carlyle and his school made some effort to justify their Germanism, by pitting what they called the piety and simplicity of Germany against what they called the cynicism and ribaldry of France. But nobody could possibly pretend that Bismarck was more pious and simple than Hans Andersen; yet the Carlyleans looked on with silence or approval while the innocent toy kingdom was broken like a toy. Here again, it is enormously probable that England would have struck upon the right side, if the English people had been the English Government. Among other coincidences, the Danish princess who had married the English heir was something very like a fairy princess to the English crowd. The national poet had hailed her as a daughter of the sea-kings; and she was, and indeed still is, the most popular royal figure in England. But whatever our people may have been like, our politicians were on the very tamest level of timidity and the fear of force to which they have ever sunk. The Tin Soldier of the Danish army and the paper boat of the Danish navy, as in the story, were swept away down the great gutter, down that colossal 'cloaca' that leads to the vast cesspool of Berlin. --  G K Chesterton in The Crimes of England 1916 Read the entire text here:

VIEWS THAT SELF-DESTRUCT

VIEWS THAT SELF-DESTRUCT

When statements fail to meet their own criteria of validity, they are self-refuting. Even when they seem true at first glance (and many do), they still prove themselves false. The minute the words are uttered, they fail. Here are some conspicuous examples I have encountered over the years:

• “There is no truth.” (Is this statement true?)
• “There are no absolutes.” (Is this an absolute?)
• “No one can know any truth about religion.” (And how, precisely,
did you come to know that truth about religion?)
• “You can’t know anything for sure.” (Are you sure about that?)
• “Talking about God is meaningless.” (What does this statement
about God mean?)
• “You can only know truth through experience.” (What experience
taught you that truth?)
• “Never take anyone’s advice on that issue.” (Should I take your
advice on that?)

...the law of noncontradiction. This law reflects the commonsense notion that contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time.
All suicidal views either express or entail contradictions. They make two different claims that are at odds with each other: “A” is the case and “A” is not the case. Obvious contradictions are often funny because we see the absurdity built into them:


• “I used to believe in reincarnation. But that was in a former life.” (I don’t believe in reincarnation. I do believe in reincarnation.)
• “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” (It’s not crowded. It is crowded.)
• “I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.” (I don’t know the answer to that question. I know the answer to that question.)
• “I really didn’t say everything I said.”4 (I did not say it. I did say it.)
• “I never, never, repeat a word. Never.” (I don’t repeat a word. But I just did repeat a word.)
• “This page intentionally left blank.” (This page is blank. This page is not blank.)
• “You’re in rare form, as usual.” (Your performance is rare. Your performance is not rare.)
• “These terrorists have technology we don’t even know about.” (We know about things we don’t know about.)

When an idea or objection violates the law of noncontradiction in a straightforward fashion, I call it “Formal Suicide.”
To recognize if a view has suicidal tendencies, first, pay attention to the basic idea, premise, conviction, or claim. Try to identify it. Next, ask if the claim applies to itself. If so, is there a conflict?

Does the statement itself fail to live up to its own standards? Can it be stated in the form “A” is the case and “A” is not the case? If so, it commits suicide.
Here’s another way of looking at it: If exactly the same reasons in favor of another’s view (or against your own) defeat the reasons themselves, then the view is self-defeating.

http://www.amazon.com/Tactics-Game-Discussing-Christian-Convictions/dp/0310282926

Refined use of the word, 'Gentleman'.

Far deeper objections may be felt-and have been expressed- against my use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity. People ask: "Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?" or "May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?" Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every amiable quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another, and very much less important, word. 

The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone "a gentleman" you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not "a gentleman" you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said-so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully-"Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than John?" 

      They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man "a gentleman" in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is "a gentleman" becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object. (A "nice" meal only means a meal the speaker likes.) 
      A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose. 
      Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say "deepening," the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. 
      It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served. 
      We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to "the disciples," to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were "far closer to the spirit of Christ" than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological, or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.  -- C.S.Lewis. Mere Christianity

Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in this last book. They all say "the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion." I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means "the science of God," and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children? 
In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the RA.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, "I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!" 
Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. 
In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. 
In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America. 
Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. 
You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. 
Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. 
In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In Ac old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones—bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression—like believing the earth is fiat. 
For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took his advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical importance at all. 

The Dregs Of Puritanism

G K Chesterton

One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that his slightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbs or prepositions, as well as in what he says, which is generally bad enough. Thus I see that a Nonconformist pastor in Bromley has been talking about the pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common soldiers. This is how he talks about it. He is reported as having said, "By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped." How one could write a volume on that sentence, a great thick volume called "The Decline of the English Middle Class." In taste, in style, in philosophy, in feeling, in political project, the horrors of it are as unfathomable as hell.

First, to begin with the trifle, note something slipshod and vague in the mere verbiage, typical of those who prefer a catchword to a creed. "This cigarette business" might mean anything. It might mean Messrs. Salmon and Gluckstein's business. But the pastor at Bromley will not interfere with that, for the indignation of his school of thought, even when it is sincere, always instinctively and unconsciously swerves aside from anything that is rich and powerful like the partners in a big business, and strikes instead something that is poor and nameless like the soldiers in a trench. Nor does the expression make clear who "they" are--whether the inhabitants of Britain or the inhabitants of Bromley, or the inhabitants of this one crazy tabernacle in Bromley; nor is it evident how it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it. All these things are trifles compared to the more terrible offences of the phrase; but they are not without their social and historical interest. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the wealthy Puritan class, generally the class of the employers of labour, took a line of argument which was narrow, but not nonsensical. They saw the relation of rich and poor quite coldly as a contract, but they saw that a contract holds both ways. The Puritans of the middle class, in short, did in some sense start talking and thinking for themselves. They are still talking. They have long ago left off thinking. They talk about the loyalty of workmen to their employers, and God knows what rubbish; and the first small certainty about the reverend gentleman whose sentence I have quoted is that his brain stopped working as a clock stops, years and years ago.

Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These people are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why, then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser; and so he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe that anyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyon straddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like that about a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the whole company of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of the Chivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flaming patience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped. Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone to that a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?

Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, which rises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live young men are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever and hunger and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword blades and bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (I think that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found in the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for the health is a very tenable opinion to which the minister is quite entitled. If he happens to think that the youth of Bromley smoke too many cigarettes, and that he has any influence in urging on them the unhealthiness of the habit, I should not blame him if he gave sermons or lectures about it (with magic-lantern slides), so long as it was in Bromley and about Bromley. Cigarettes may be bad for the health: bombs and bayonets and even barbed wire are not good for the health. I never met a doctor who recommended any of them. But the trouble with this sort of man is that he cannot adjust himself to the scale of things. He would do very good service if he would go among the rich aristocratic ladies and tell them not to take drugs in a chronic sense, as people take opium in China. But he would be doing very bad service if he were to go among the doctors and nurses on the field and tell them not to give drugs, as they give morphia in a hospital. But it is the whole hypothesis of war, it is its very nature and first principle, that the man in the trench is almost as much a suffering and abnormal person as the man in the hospital. Hit or unhit, conqueror or conquered, he is, by nature of the case, having less pleasure than is proper and natural to a man.

Fourth (for I need not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that can regard beer or tobacco as in some way evil and unseemly in themselves), there is the most important element in this strange outbreak; at least, the most dangerous and the most important for us. There is that main feature in the degradation of the old middle class: the utter disappearance of its old appetite for liberty. Here there is no question of whether the men are to smoke cigarettes, or the women choose to send cigarettes, or even that the officers or doctors choose to allow cigarettes. The thing is to cease, and we may note one of the most recurrent ideas of the servile State: it is mentioned in the passive mood. It must be stopped, and we must not even ask who has stopped it!