Chesterton: one is real and the other not

Saturday, March 7, 2020
    Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203
Meditation:
    Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
    —Revelation 7:16-17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Those who call these cults “religions,” and “compare” them with the certitude and challenge of the Church have much less appreciation than we have of what made heathenism human, or of why classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song. It is no very human tenderness for the hungry to prove that hunger is the same as food. It is no very genial understanding of youth to argue that hope destroys the need for happiness.
    And it is utterly unreal to argue that these images in the mind, admired entirely in the abstract, were even in the same world with a living man and a living polity that were worshipped because they were concrete... They are only different because one is real and the other is not. I do not mean merely that I myself believe that one is true and the other is not. I mean that one was never meant to be true in the same sense as the other.
    ... Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), The Everlasting Man, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925, Wilder Publications, 2008, p. 68 (see the book)
    See also 2 Pet. 1:16; Acts 17:30; 1 John 5:19; Rev. 7:16-17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, place Your words in my mouth, that I may be a witness for You to this generation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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