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Though orthodoxy had received a bad press, he held that nothing in reality was so dangerous or so exciting. Along the historic path of Christendom there have been open traps of error and exaggeration, to fall into which would have been simple. "There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands." To lapse 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." The ages have seen "dull heresies sprawling and prostrate wild truth reeling but erect."

That work was published some thirteen years before he created a sensation in 1922 by becoming a Roman Catholic—the only church, he concluded, that "dared to go down with me into the depths of myself." For long he had held back, partly in the hope that his wife would join him (she eventually did), partly because he was "much too frightened of that tremendous Reality on the altar." That latter view is an improbable echo of something held by Kierkegaard, a Christian of very different temperament, who said there were "no longer the men living who could bear the pressure and weight of having a personal God."

It is odd to imagine Chesterton, in many ways antinomian and individualistic, "submitting" to Rome. True, he had always had a high respect for tradition, "the democracy of the dead [that] refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about." Whatever the inner conflict and the resultant changes, it made him no less irrepressible. He still evinced an old characteristic and justified it: "What can one be but frivolous about serious things?" he would ask. "Without frivolity they are simply too tremendous."

His prophetic voice was never more clearly seen than during his last years when the British Broadcasting Corporation discovered his aptitude on that medium. In one memorable talk he uttered a warning:

Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which moderns call a dull life, our whole civilisation will be in ruins in about fifteen years. … Unless we can make daybreak and daily bread and the creative secrets of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our civilisation a fatigue which is the one disease from which civilisations do not recover.

Chesterton was continually thankful for the "birthday present of birth," and eagerly embraced the news that ditchwater, far from being dull, "teems with quiet fun." Perhaps he would wish most of all to be remembered for commending to the human race a sense of gratitude. In that at least there was neither profundity nor paradox, but simply:

Give me a little time,
I shall not be able to appreciate them all;
if you open so many doors
And give me so many presents, O Lord God.

This article originally appeared in the May 24, 1974, issue of Christianity Today. At the time, J.D. Douglas was an Editor-at-Large for the magazine.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The American Chesterton Society gives a good introduction to Chesterton and a "basic course" on his works.

Chesterton's writings, including his religious essays, fiction, and poems, are available all over the web.

The Chesterton Photograph and Portrait Page includes good images and descriptions of Chesterton's appearance.

Gilbert! is a magazine devoted to the ideas and orthodoxy of Chesterton. Read sample articles or read its mission statement. (The magazine's site also has an extensive page of links to writings by and about Chsterston)

Last year, Christianity Today's sister publication Books & Culturerevisited Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Christianity Today looked at Christianity's master of irony last September with a series of quotes showing Chesterton's Paradoxical Orthodoxy.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45