at of the grown-ups, Chesterton clings to his childhood's neat little
universe and weeps pathetically when anybody mentions Herbert Spencer,
and makes faces when he hears the word Newton. He insists on a fair dole
of surprises. "Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their
stockings gifts of toys and sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa
Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?"

Now this fairyland business is frankly overdone. Chesterton conceives of
God, having carried the Creation as far as this world, sitting down to
look at the new universe in a sort of ecstasy. "And God saw every thing
that he had made, and, behold it was very good." He enjoyed His new toy
immensely, and as He sent the earth spinning round the sun, His pleasure
increased. So He said "Do it again" every time the sun had completed its
course, and laughed prodigiously, and behaved like a happy child. And
so He has gone on to this day saying "Do it again" to the sun and the
moon and the stars, to the animal creation, and the trees, and every
living thing. So Chesterton pictures God, giving His name to what
others, including Christians, call natural law, or the laws of God, or
the laws of gravitation, conservation of energy, and so on, but always
laws. For which reason, one is compelled to assume that in his opinion
God is now [1915] saying to Himself, "There's another bloody war, do it
again, sun," and gurgling with delight. It is dangerous to wander in
fairyland, as Chesterton has himself demonstrated, "one might meet a
fairy." It is not safe to try to look God in the face. A prophet in
Israel saw the glory of Jehovah, and though He was but the God of a
small nation, the prophet's face shone, and, so great was the vitality
he absorbed from the great Source that he "was an hundred and twenty
years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force
abated." That is the reverent Hebrew manner of conveying the glory of
God. But Chesterton, cheerfully playing toss halfpenny among the
fairies, sees an idiot child, and calls it God.

Fortunately for the argument, Chesterton has no more to say about his
excursion in Fairyland after his return. He goes on to talk about the
substitutes which people have invented for Christianity. The Inner Light
theory has vitriol sprayed upon it. Marcus Aurelius, it is explained,
acted according to the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the morning,
just as our own aristocrats lea