ily coal merchant, as seen from the dining-room window. He slipped on
a piece of orange-peel, the child had explained. "And what happened
then?" "Why, mummy, he sat down on the pavement and talked about God."
Chesterton (and he is not alone in this respect) behaves exactly like
this coal-heaver. When he is at a loss, he talks about God. In each case
one is given to suspect that the invocation is due to a temporarily
overworked imagination.

This leads us to _The Ball and the Cross_ (1906). In _The Man who was
Thursday_, when the author had tired of his story, he brought in the
universe at large. But its successor is dominated by God, and
discussions on him by beings celestial, terrestrial, and merely
infernal. And yet _The Ball and the Cross_ is in many respects
Chesterton's greatest novel. The first few chapters are things of joy.
There is much said in them about religion, but it is all sincere and
bracing. The first chapter consists, in the main, of a dialogue on
religion, between Professor Lucifer, the inventor and the driver of an
eccentric airship, and Father Michael, a theologian acquired by the
Professor in Western Bulgaria. As the airship dives into the ball and
the cross of Saint Paul's Cathedral, its passengers naturally find
themselves taking a deep interest in the cross, considered as symbol and
anchor. Lucifer plumps for the ball, the symbol of all that is rational
and united. The cross

"is the conflict of two hostile lines, of
irreconcilable direction. . . . The very shape
of it is a contradiction in terms." Michael
replies, "But we like contradictions in terms. Man
is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose
superiority to other beasts consists in having
fallen."

Defeated on points, Lucifer leaves the Father clinging literally to the
cross and flies away. Michael meets a policeman on the upper gallery
and is conducted downwards. The scene changes to Ludgate Circus, but
Michael is no longer in the centre of it. A Scot named Turnbull keeps a
shop here, apparently in the endeavour to counterbalance the influence
of St. Paul's across the way. He is an atheist, selling atheist
literature, editing an atheist paper. Another Scot arrives, young Evan
MacIan, straight from the Highlands. Unlike the habitual Londoner,
MacIan takes the little shop seriously. In its window he sees a copy of
The Atheist, the leading article of which contains an i