Conclusion

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! ROMANS 11:33

We have covered a good deal of ground in fifteen short chapters, and it might seem that Chesterton was a man of many subjects. He was. He wrote about fairy tales and madmen, about paradox and tradition, about the cave painters and the shepherds of Bethlehem, about St Francis and the common man, and he wrote about all of them in essays, novels, detective stories, poems, plays, biographies and books of argument. But beneath the variety lay a single astonishment, which he first felt as a young man on the edge of despair and never lost. It was that the world is a gift; that a gift implies a Giver; and that the Giver has come into His world, in Jesus Christ, to rescue it.

One thread

Look back over the chapters and the thread appears. The wonder he learned in the nursery was wonder at a world that need not have been. The madman’s closed circle and the thought that stops thought were what happens to a mind that will not receive the world as a gift. Cosmic patriotism was the loyalty of a creature to the home his Father made. The furious opposites and the romance of orthodoxy were the shape of the truth about the God-Man, held without compromise. Joy was the secret at the root of it all. Tradition was the faith handed down by those who had received it before us; humility was the posture of a creature before his Maker; the dignity of ordinary things was the glory of a world in which God Himself had worked at a carpenter’s bench. The man in the cave was the creature made in God’s image; the God in the cave was that Creator made flesh. The strangest story in the world was His life, death and rising. The five deaths of the faith were the echoes of His resurrection in His church, and St Francis was one man who saw it all and was glad.

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. ROMANS 11:36

What to do with it

Chesterton is one of the most enjoyable writers who ever lived, and that is both his gift and his danger. It is possible to read him for the pleasure of his paradoxes and his jokes and to come away merely entertained. He would have thought that a failure. He did not write Orthodoxy to be admired; he wrote it because he believed it was true, and because he wanted his readers to believe it too.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. JAMES 1:22

So here is the plainest counsel this book can give. Go back to the chapter that challenged you most, and act on its points for reflection, one at a time, over the coming weeks. Then open Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man in the Ochorus library and read Chesterton for yourself, slowly, enjoying him. And then go past him, to the Scriptures from which every true thing he wrote was drawn, and to the Lord whom he loved.

Two things to carry

Carry away, first, the habit of gratitude. Chesterton held on to his sanity, and found his way to Christ, by a thread of thanks. You can do the same. Every morning brings a new sun, every meal is a gift, every person you meet is an image of God. Say grace over all of it, as he did, and you will find that thanksgiving opens the eyes.

Carry away, second, the joy of the faith. Christianity is not a burden to be carried or a theory to be defended with a grim face. It is the best news a human being can hear: that God made the world, that God loves it, that God has entered it, and that God has risen from its grave. If you believe that, you may be sad about many things, but you cannot be sad at the root.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:16–18

A last word about the man

We have tried to be honest in these pages. Chesterton came to believe in the authority of the Roman Church, in the invocation of Mary and the saints and in the Catholic sacraments, and evangelical readers will differ from him there. He held economic and political opinions, distributism among them, that are opinions and not doctrines. He wrote, in some places, about the Jewish people with a prejudice that was wrong and that his own principles condemn; and though he stood early and firmly against the Nazi persecution, the pages remain, and a fair companion must say so.

None of this has been raised to diminish him. It has been raised because it is true, and because the Christian faith he defended is a religion of truth-telling and of repentance. Generations of believers of every tradition have found in Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man a joyful, fearless and faithful defence of the faith they share, and they have been right to do so. They have also been right to read him with their Bibles open.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

Chesterton died on the fourteenth of June, 1936, at his home in Beaconsfield. Near the end he said that the issue was now clear, between light and darkness, and that everyone must choose his side. He had chosen his long before. He had spent his life telling a sceptical world that the light is real, that it has come into the world, and that the darkness has not overcome it. The right response to him is not admiration but thanks — to God for the gift of the man, and to God for the gift of the light.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Return to the chapter of this book that most challenged you. Read it again, and act on the first of its points this week.

2. Begin reading Orthodoxy in the Ochorus library this month, a chapter at a sitting.

3. Start the habit of grace before ordinary things: before work, before a walk, before opening a book.

4. Ask God to show you any prejudice in your own heart against any group of people, and repent of it.

5. Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16–24 aloud, and end in thanksgiving.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You made the world out of nothing, and You have come into it in Jesus Christ to make it new.

Thank You for the servant whose life and words we have been considering, and for the many who have found their way to You through him.

Do not let me stop at enjoying him. Bring me to the Christ he served, and make me a doer of Your word.

Give me eyes full of wonder, a heart full of thanks and a tongue full of charity, until the gigantic secret is a secret no longer, and I see You face to face. Amen.