G.K.Chesterton

I've been sitting on one of the best quotations from Os Guinness because I meant to write a column on G.K.Chesterton. But time keeps flowing on... So perhaps I'd better just quote him.

"At least five times, " G.K.Chesterton noted, "the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died."

G.K.Chesterton

I think I first bumped into Chesterton while reading C.S.Lewis. But so many of my favorite authors quote him. (He's so quotable!) I think my favorite is this excerpt from Jean Staker Garton's "Who Broke the Baby?"

"An imbecile habit" was the way G.K.Chesterton described the contemporary view which believes that a creed held in one age cannot be held in another... In contradiction Chesterton argued:

"'You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends on his philosophy, not on the clock or the century. If a man believes in an unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracles in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe any miracle in any age... Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question.'"