who
brought me back to Orthodox theology." His supernaturalism, which he
identifies with orthodox Christianity, I should prefer to call the
Romance of Christianity--Romance implying not falsity, but the
desirable and the ideal. He deliberately takes that which he and other
people _admire_ or _want_ as the standard of truth. "I want to love my
neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I." "The
_heart_ of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much
more _satisfied_ by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the
Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well
as justice...." Mr. Chesterton defends what he calls Christianity not
so much on the ground that it is credible, but on the ground that it is
satisfying, that it is agreeable.

I say "what he calls Christianity," for his argument is prone to fall
into a vicious circle; he arbitrarily calls all that is satisfying to
him by the name of Christianity. It endorses, he says, a "first
loyalty to things" and enjoins the "reform of things;" it commands a
man "not only to look inwards, but to look outwards." God is a part of
the cosmos, and yet he is distinct from it and from us, or we could
not worship him. Christianity commands us to desire to live, and it
commands us to be glad to die (and this contradiction, he says, like
all the others, is human, just as the virtue of courage is human; for
does not courage mean "a strong desire to live taking the form of a
readiness to die?"). It is against compromise, against the "dilution
of two things" neither of which "is present in its full strength or
contributes its full colour;" it endorses the extremes of pride and
humility, anger and love, mercy and severity. It is full-blooded,
allowing place for every human emotion, directing anger against the
crime, and love towards the criminal. And he draws a fanciful and
grotesque picture of the Christian Church as a "heavenly chariot"
whirling through the ages "fierce and fast with any war-horse,"
swerving "to left and right, so as exactly to avoid enormous
obstacles."

I shall not examine this fanciful picture. The Christian Church may
have indulged every extreme in human life, but the Christianity of the
Bible takes sides more definitely. And as for the Catholic Church,
embracing as it did so many seemingly contradictory elements, it is
nevertheless true that at one time it failed to satisfy human nature
because it