The Hebdomadal Chesterton

“Believers bump into each other”

cburrell — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:02:44 +0000

The rational human faith must armor itself with prejudice in an age of prejudices, just as it armoured itself with logic in an age of logic. But the difference between the two mental methods is marked and unmistakable. The essential of the difference is this: that prejudices are divergent, whereas creeds are always in collision. Believers bump into each other; whereas bigots keep out of each other’s way. A creed is a collective thing, and even its sins are sociable. A prejudice is a private thing, and even its tolerance is misanthropic. So it is with our existing divisions. They keep out of each other’s way; the Tory paper and the Radical paper do not answer each other; they ignore each other. Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. But if you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slanging or silence. A modern editor must not have that eager ear that goes with the honest tongue. He may be deaf and silent; and that is called dignity. Or he may be deaf and noisy; and that is called slashing journalism. In neither case is there any controversy; for the whole object of modern party combatants is to charge out of earshot.

– What’s Wrong with the World (1910).

The Sword of Surprise

cburrell — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:16:07 +0000

Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.

Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run,
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.

Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes,
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me,
Terrible crystals more incredible
Than all the things they see.

Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave beat;
Till I shall save myself, as I would save
A stranger in the street.

– (1915-22).

“A sane point of view”

cburrell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:40:05 +0000

The abstract philosophies of the modern world have had this queer twist. Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody’s system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody’s sense of reality; to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each (modern philosophy) started with a paradox; a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view.

– St. Thomas Aquinas (1933).

The Wise Men

cburrell — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:50:46 +0000

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three Wise Men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly . . . it has hailed and snowed . . .
With voices low and lanterns lit,
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(. . . We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone . . .)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly; humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

– (1913).

Christmas atmosphere and creed

cburrell — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:46:06 +0000

We must make it clear, then, to those that feel the Nativity as an atmosphere and not a creed that this may at least be demanded of them — that they have the atmosphere. It is quite true that Dickens and the men of a manlier England would have said that they praised the spirit of Christmas and not the letter. But when they praised the spirit, they had it. It was the unmistakable old festivity of Dryden or Chaucer; it smelt and tasted of Christendom. Dickens would have made no doctrinal limitations in it; but there were intrinsic limitations in the nature of the thing. . . We must at least keep either the body or the soul of Christmas; either the central doctrine or else the exact physical observances. If we do not keep either one or the other, it is utterly idle to talk about a Higher Christmas or a New Christmas or an Improved Christmas; there is no sense in using the title at all when no vestige of the thing is left. We must simply say to ourselves, as cheerfully as we may, that there is one colour or smell or virtue the less in the universe.

– The Illustrated London News (7 January 1911).

A Christmas Carol

cburrell — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:41:35 +0000

At Bethlehem, that city blest
Did Our Lady take her rest
Mary, fair and undefiled
There conceived and bore a Child
Mater sanctissima
Ora pro nobis

And Saint Joseph, when he saw
Christ asleep upon the straw,
In great love he worshipped there
Mary and the Child she bore
Ave plena gratia
Ave Rosa Mundi

And the beasts that were around
Knelt upon the holy ground
And in dumb amazement they
Praised the Lord on Christmas Day
Omnia O Opera
Benedicite Dominum

But the ox that kneeled down
Nearest to the manger-throne,
When Our Lady stroked his head,
He the Holy Credo said
“Ex Maria Virgine
Et est Homo Factus”

And the shepherds that had heard
Of the coming of the Word
From the mouth of Gabriel
On their knees before Him fell
Sunt beati pauperi
Quorum Dei Regnum

Then the kings from out the east
Started to the Birthday feast
Came and knelt, and, as is told,
[unfinished]

– (c.1896-98).

Regina Angelorum

cburrell — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:56:30 +0000

Our Lady went into a strange country,
Our Lady, for she was ours,
And had run on the little hills behind the houses
And pulled small flowers;
But she rose up and went into a strange country
With strange thrones and powers.

And there were giants in the land she walked in,
Tall as their toppling towns,
With heads so high in heaven, the constellations
Served them for crowns;
And their feet might have forded like a brook the abysses
Where Babel drowns.

They were girt about with the wings of morning and evening,
Furled and unfurled,
Round the speckled sky where our small spinning planet
Like a top is twirled;
And the swords they waved were the unending comets
That shall end the world.

And moving in innocence and in accident,
She turned the face
That none has ever looked on without loving
On the Lords of Space;
And one hailed her with her name in our own country
That is full of grace.

Our Lady went into a strange country
And they crowned her queen,
For she needed never to be stayed or questioned
But only seen;
And they were broken down under unbearable beauty
As we have been.

But ever she walked till away in the last high places,
One great light shone
From the pillared throne of the king of all the country
Who sat thereon;
And she cried aloud as she cried under the gibbet
For she saw her son.

Our Lady wears a crown in a strange country,
The crown he gave,
But she has not forgotten to call to her old companions
To call and crave;
And to hear her calling a man might arise and thunder
On the doors of the grave.

– (1925).

“One very vile habit”

cburrell — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:21:45 +0000

There is one very vile habit that the pedants have, and that is explaining to a man why he does a thing when the man himself can explain quite well — and quite differently. If I go down on all-fours to find sixpence, it annoys me to be told by a passing biologist that I am really doing it because my remote ancestors were quadrupeds. I concede that he knows all about biology, or even a great deal about my ancestors; but I know he is wrong, because he does not know about the sixpence. If I climb a tree after a stray cat, I am unconvinced when a stray anthropologist tells me that I am doing it because I am essentially arboreal and barbaric. I happen to know why I am doing it; and I know it is because I am amiable and somewhat over-civilised. Scientists will talk to a man on general guess-work about things that they know no more about than about his pocket-money or his pet cat. Religion is one of them, and all the festivals and formalities that are rooted in religion. Thus a man will tell me that in keeping Christmas I am not keeping a Christmas feast, but a pagan feast. This is exactly as if he told me that I was not feeling furiously angry, but only a little sad. I know how I am feeling all right; and why I am feeling it. I know this in the case of cats, sixpences, anger, and Christmas Day. When a learned man tells me that on the 25th of December I am really astronomically worshipping the sun, I answer that I am not. I am practicing a particular personal religion, the pleasures of which (right or wrong) are not in the least astronomical. If he says that the cult of Christianity and the cult of Apollo are the same, I answer that they are utterly different; and I ought to know for I have held both of them. I believed in Apollo when I was quite little; and I believe in Christmas now that I am very, very big.

– Illustrated London News, 1 January 1910.

Jealousy

cburrell — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:33:10 +0000

The Roman Catholic Church has never forgiven us for converting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from his agnosticism; when men like Mr Dennis Bradley can no longer be content with the old faith, a spirit of jealousy is naturally roused.

– A Spiritualist Paper

She sat upon her Seven Hills;
She rent her scarlet robes about her,
Nor yet in her two thousand years
Had ever grieved that men should doubt her;
But what new horror shakes the mind,
Making her moan and mutter madly?
Lo, Rome’s high heart is broke at last:
Her foes have borrowed Dennis Bradley.

If she must lean on lesser props
Of earthly fame or ancient art,
Make shift with Raphael and Racine,
Put up with Dante or Descartes,
Not wholly can she mask her grief,
But touch the wound and murmur sadly,
“These lesser things are theirs to love
Who lose the love of Mr. Bradley.”

She saw great Origen depart
And Photius rend the world asunder,
Her cry to all the East rolled back
In Islam its ironic thunder,
She lost Jerusalem and the North
Accepting these arrangements gladly
Until it came to be a case
Of Conan Doyle and Dennis Bradley.

O fond and foolish hopes that still
In broken hearts unbroken burn,
What if, grown weary of new ways,
The precious wanderer should return
The Trumpet whose uncertain sound
Has just been cracking rather badly
May yet within her courts remain
His Trumpet — blown by Dennis Bradley.

His and her Trumpet blown before
The battle where the good cause wins
Louder than all the Irish harps
Or the Italian violins
When, armed and mounted like St. Joan
She meets the mad world riding madly
Under the Oriflamme of old
Crying “Montjoie St. Dennis Bradley!”

But in this hour she sorrows still,
Though all anew the generations
Rise up and call her blessed, claim
Her name upon the new-born nations
But still she mourns the only thing
She ever really wanted badly:
The sympathy of Conan Doyle
The patronage of Dennis Bradley.

A Hymn

cburrell — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:00:38 +0000

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honor, and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.

– (1907).