Monday, August 07, 2017

GK Chesterton on Modernity and Christianity

Ran across this fine quote from Chesterton from his book, The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare.
"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it."
There is brilliant insight here I think. That modernity creates things that are inherently temporary and ephemeral. I suspect this is true.