t the Pope, not because
the police-magistrate is a more frivolous subject, but, on the
contrary, because the police-magistrate is a more serious subject than
the Pope. The Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in this realm of
England; whereas the police-magistrate may bring his solemnity to bear
quite suddenly upon us. Men make jokes about old scientific
professors, even more than they make them about bishops--not because
science is lighter than religion, but because science is always by its
nature more solemn and austere than religion. It is not I; it is not
even a particular class of journalists or jesters who make jokes about
the matters which are of most awful import; it is the whole human race.
If there is one thing more than another which any one will admit who
has the smallest knowledge of the world, it is that men are always
speaking gravely and earnestly and with the utmost possible care about
the things that are not important, but always talking frivolously about
the things that are. Men talk for hours with the faces of a college of
cardinals about things like golf, or tobacco, or waistcoats, or party
politics. But all the most grave and dreadful things in the world are
the oldest jokes in the world--being married; being hanged.

One gentleman, however, Mr. McCabe, has in this matter made to me
something that almost amounts to a personal appeal; and as he happens
to be a man for whose sincerity and intellectual virtue I have a high
respect, I do not feel inclined to let it pass without some attempt to
satisfy my critic in the matter. Mr. McCabe devotes a considerable part
of the last essay in the collection called "Christianity and
Rationalism on Trial" to an objection, not to my thesis, but to my
method, and a very friendly and dignified appeal to me to alter it. I
am much inclined to defend myself in this matter out of mere respect
for Mr. McCabe, and still more so out of mere respect for the truth
which is, I think, in danger by his error, not only in this question,
but in others. In order that there may be no injustice done in the
matter, I will quote Mr. McCabe himself. "But before I follow Mr.
Chesterton in some detail I would make a general observation on his
method. He is as serious as I am in his ultimate purpose, and I respect
him for that. He knows, as I do, that humanity stands at a solemn
parting of the ways. Towards some unknown goal it presses through the
ages, impelled by an overmastering d