stianity is just now
passing through one of its numberless periods of undue repression and
silence. But I do know this, that when the great Powers break forth
again, the new epics and the new arts, they will break out on the
ancient and living tree. They cannot break out upon the little shrubs
that you are always pulling up by the roots to see if they are
growing.

Against R. J. Campbell he showed in a lecture on "Christianity and
Social Reform" how belief in sin as well as in goodness was more
favourable to social reform than was the rather woolly optimism that
refused to recognize evil. "The nigger-driver will be delighted to
hear that God is immanent in him. . . . The sweater that . . . he has
not in any way become divided from the supreme perfection of the
universe." If the New Theology would not lead to social reform, the
social Utopia to which the philosophy of Wells and of Shaw was
pointing seemed to Chesterton not a heaven on earth to be desired,
but a kind of final hell to be avoided, since it banished all freedom
and human responsibility. Arguing with them was again highly
fruitful, and two subjects he chose for speeches are suggestive--"The
Terror of Tendencies" and "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable?"

In the _New Age_ Shaw wrote about Belloc and Chesterton and so did
Wells, while Chesterton wrote about Wells and Shaw, till the
Philistines grew angry, called it self-advertisement and log-rolling
and urged that a Bill for the abolition of Shaw and Chesterton should
be introduced into Parliament. But G.K. had no need for advertisement
of himself or his ideas just then: he had a platform, he had an eager
audience. Every week he wrote in the _Illustrated London News_,
beginning in 1905 to do "Our Notebook" (this continued till his death
in 1936). He was still writing every Saturday in the _Daily News_.
Publishers were disputing for each of his books. Yet he rushed into
every religious controversy that was going on, because thereby he
could clarify and develop his ideas.

The most important of all these was the controversy with Blatchford,
Editor of the _Clarion_, who had written a rationalist Credo,
entitled _God and My Neighbour_. In 1903-4, he had the generosity and
the wisdom to throw open the _Clarion_ to the freest possible
discussion of his views. The Christian attack was made by a group of
which Chesterton was the outstanding figure, and was afterwards
gathered into a paper volume call