Classic Audiobook Collection - G.K. Chesterton in The Open Road by G. K. Chesterton ~ Full Audiobook [religion]

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

G.K. Chesterton in The Open Road by G. K. Chesterton audiobook. Genre: religion In G.K. Chesterton in The Open Road, the great English essayist turns two short book reviews into a brisk, brainy ride through the controversies of his day. Originally published in 1911 in The Open Road, these pieces show Chesterton at his most playful and provocative as he tests fashionable ideas against common sense, history, and the stubborn facts of human nature. In 'The Dulness of New Religions,' he pokes at spiritual movements that promise novelty but often recycle the same old human impulses, asking what a faith is worth if it cannot surprise, challenge, or enlarge the soul. In 'Broken Backed History,' he takes aim at tidy, secondhand versions of the past, arguing that history becomes lifeless when it is reduced to slogans, dates, and convenient moral lessons. Moving with paradox, humor, and sudden seriousness, Chesterton invites listeners to reexamine what they think they know about belief, progress, and the stories societies tell about themselves. This compact collection is ideal for anyone who enjoys sharp criticism, big questions, and a narrator who can turn an argument into entertainment. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:10:32) Chapter 02 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

g k chesterton in the open road by g k chesterton the dullness of new religions it is a quaint feature of modernity that it is always in the newest and crudest churches that one hears the stalest sentiments the old religions are at least paradoxes the new religions seem to consist of nothing but platitude even when the truths they preach are important as for example the brotherhood of men they are truths which should rather be built upon as first principles than thus perpetually dug up as rediscoverys the old special and dogmatic religions whether we believe in one of them or in none enshrined certain really interesting moral theory certain really important historical decisions. Islam decided entirely against wine. Quakers decided entirely against a war. These are challenges which will always interest and perhaps perturb or attract.

Go into a Jewish synagogue and you will hear cogent and unique reasons urged against a Jew marrying a Gentile. Go into a little Roman Catholic church and you will hear a little unimportant priest expounding some really logical distinction between men and animals, or between one kind of drunkenness and another. Buddhist metaphysics and Swinborgian theology are really interesting things. Men have studied a complex problem, have come to certain important conclusions, and they offer those conclusions to the world. And whether I like them as I like Catholicism, or loat them as I loathe

Buddhism, I should always think they were worth listening to. i like to hear a scotch calvinist minister of the old school ingeniously explaining away the text that god is loved he may be hardening his heart but at least he is not also softening his head holding a certain view he has the courage to hold its consequences all these special doctrines or at least the results of some kind of thinking and even where they are to be denounced as deadly errors they will sometimes serve truth by comparison real theologies are at the noblest inspiring in the average interesting at the worst amusing but the new religions the universal fellowships the true christian brotherhood o gods of slumber and the underworld o sleep it is a gentle thing beloved from pole to pole to the veiled goddess of the new religions the praise to be given she sent that gentle sleep from heaven that slid into my soul. A higher and truer faith unfettered by dogma in sacradotalism founded not on creeds and forms, but on the spirit of love and truth, faith in the universal, spiritual, eternal, fundamental unity of all in each. Faith that you and we, and they, and all things are not separate,

are not solitary, are not disconnected items, or unconjoined individuals, but are one in love, one in purity one in brotherhood one in truth-seeking one in true social fellowship one above all in service one in that upward striving of the all which and so on for hours and hours the priests in such a temple ought to wear night-caps instead of mitres and put up bedroom candles for altar lights after half an hour of a new religion in a new tin chapel i feel inclined like the man in the story to put my boots outside the pew so that they may be cleaned in the morning. The new religions profess to be new, but they never really venture beyond the most ancient and general maxims about the unity of God and the fellowship of mankind. They profess to be bold and innovating,

but in truth they are too timid to trust themselves beyond the most grandmotherly truisms. They profess to be skeptical in inquiry, but in fact they never venture to ask any of the controversial questions, any of the questions on which men have disagreed and might disagree again. Can suicide be noble? May sex be abnormal? It's the will free. Can the soul be lost? They follow everywhere the line of least resistance and are as anxious to avoid a scene as a snobbish political hostess. That anyone should really prefer one thing to another, that anyone would really prefer one thing to another, that anyone should think one solution right, the other solution wrong, seems to them a violation of good taste. To say, I regret the reformation, or I dislike Christian science, sounds to them like a guest

criticizing the wine or cursing the servants, and they end where good taste always ends in literal tastelessness. The situation is, among other things, a curious and direct tribute to the organic change made in man by Christianity. For the old pagans who lived before that change did manage to have a number of little local religions which were not dull even when they were diabolical. But then they did not worship the unity or the all, the tiresome god of the pantheists who turns up everywhere, like a snob at garden parties. They worshipped a thing of some kind, a river, or a statue, or a star, or some horrible insect. They showed their sense, for if you begin to at this end, you do really find a certain flow of ideas and images coming from the special thing upon which

you set your thoughts. A sacred river will sanctify the fields through which it flows. The mills which it turns will grind beryly, and he that builds bridges over it shall be Pontifex Maximus. A holy image will have a real town built around it, ringing with hammers and shielded with high walls. The star will guide fissures and plowmen as well as poets and astronomers. The insect will be at home both in the temple and the laboratory. When men worship the sun, they produce something. Gods with bows of gold and epics, snake slaughter, and healing. When men worship the moon, they produce something. Virgins with bows of silver and dim fairy tales of and dimmion. But when men worship the all, they produce nothing, the nothing to which I have listened

for hours from the pulpits and platforms of the new religions. This fresh and childish idolatry of the ancients has become very difficult for us. It is really hard for an honest clerk in Battersea to worship the Thames without embarrassment. I have known few instances of prosperous ladies and gentlemen, even in so loyal a place as Kinsington, being found on their knees before the Albert Memorial. We count the stars, but we cannot adore them. We collect the insects, but we hardly really love them. In an ordinary way, I refuse to admit that the past is dead. I think we could and should re-establish any social or moral system which we really desire. But in this case it may be doubted whether we ever desire the light pagan polytheism, with all the limitations that it must imply.

The Kensington gentleman is prevented, I think, from kneeling before the Albert Memorial by two deep Christian qualities or elements. The first is a certain kind of humor, which is akin to mysticism, and the more emotional and mixed psychology of the Christian life. The second is the Christian thirst for actuality, for the ultimate secret of the universe. the Christian cannot really believe Prince Albert to be a god, and he has lost the faculty of playing at believing it. This sense of inner incongruity, and this thirst for truth, are noble qualities, and I do not think we should wish to give them up even to purchase the varied altars and the spontaneous dances of the heathen. Since therefore Europe became Christendom, and decided to take its

cosmic theory seriously, there have been two attitudes, among Europeans. Strong creative minds got to grips with nature and morality and forced them to yield some tangible result. That is, they went in for what is called dogma. They dealt with the disputable matters, sex and suicide and property and slavery, and produced plain definitions about them, right or wrong. They carried the great ethical commonplaces with which they had begun courageously into all the complications of actuality. They committed that audacious act of which that genial aristocrat, Lord Melbourne, complained saying, no one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have, but when it comes to its interfering in private life, they created the great

and humane science of Kizuistry. They really tried to find an answer for every riddle, to hammer out a key for every lock. But from time to time this incessant and creative violence becomes too much for vaguer people. They are deafened by the dogmatists as by the hammers in some horrible smithy. They ask for a truce from discussions and definitions, and in some age of fatigue they get it. Then in the silence that follows, some half-witted old man has heard murmuring in his sleep, the infantile and obvious truths with which everybody started, that there is only one world and that men should love one another. It is quite true, but he generally says it nine hundred and ninety-nine times,

when he has said it a thousand times it is called a new religion. End of Section 1. Section 2 of G.K. Chesterton in the open road. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. G.K. Chesterton in the Open Road by G.K. Chesterton

Broken-backed history The proposal that English schools should permit the teaching of the history of England is a daring one and open to many objections. The chief difficulty is, is that English history has, so to speak, a broken backbone. It consists of two almost disconnected parts. One begins when the first soldier came from Rome. The second begins when the last papal legate went back to Rome. In practical education, the difference between the two periods is this, that the second part is mainly taught in the wrong sense, but the first part is taught with no sense at all.

Bacali on this Stuart quarrel is like a barrister before a law court. He is staringly on one side, but for all that he is splendidly on the spot. Hallam, on the Middle Ages, is merely like a baby before a Babylonian hieroglyphic. He has not even the remotest notion of what it was all about. Bacali, with his strong legal rhetoric and strong passion for parliaments, might really have played a great part in the scenes of Puritan or Jacobite tumult, he describes. Hallam, in the Middle Ages, would have been put into the care of some specially mild mugs as a hopeless idiot. For the second half of our history, we have at least half of the truth.

For the first half, we have none of it. This curious break in the time of the tutors can be illustrated in anything, in the newest newspaper or magazine. I saw recently a popular encyclopedia issued by one of the great newspaper truss, which we call the yellow press. It contained a series of portraits of all the kings of England. The portrait of Henry VIII was from Holbein's masterpiece, and all the kings afterwards were rendered fairly correctly and credibly, just as if they had been real men. There, however rudely reproduced, was the sensitive stiffness of the great Puritan Charles I, and the lugubrious humor of that very Catholic

skeptic Charles II. There was the apoplectic ardor, starting eyes and peering nose of the poor old idiot, George III. There the flushfulness of the fine looks that made the brief, but real popularity of George IV. All these were live men, drawn well or badly, by other live men. But behind Henry the 8th, there was not only no attempt at accuracy, but no attempt even at imagination. The two kings before Henry the eighth, with their narrow sneering faces, did faintly convey the morbidity of the 15th century, the brave madman Richard III, and the mean madman Henry the 7th. But beyond that everything was not only invention, but invention without an idea. By the common report of friends and foes, Edward VIII was one of the handsomest men in England.

No one will gather this fact from the picture. It will at once be replied that portraiture was in a primitive stage, and that in some cases no medieval portraits exist. This is true, but even what is known is never used. On seals and coins and such things, the medieval artists with admirable prudence generally represent. the king with his visor down. The identity was shown as it was shown in battle on the shield or crown or crest or cornet. That is, the artist used the art of heraldry, which was then in its prime, and not the art of portraiture, which was then in its infancy. I should not have blamed the compilers of this encyclopedia if they had imitated Mr. E. V. Lucas and the Wisdom While You Wait series. Mr. Lucas exhibited some seven or eight eminent statesmen, all looking exactly alike in mortar caps, coats, and goggles. I should not have blamed the encyclopedists if they had shown all the medieval kings looking exactly alike with their helmets shut. Nor should I have blamed them if they had

reproduced a few of the painful and imperfect profiles drawn at that period. Nor should I have blamed them, nay, I should have rejoiced with them, if they had tried to make up the medieval kings intelligently out of their own heads, if they had tried to suggest the bony hulking height of Edward I, or the restless bristly bullethead of Henry II, as they are quite vividly conveyed in the contemporary chronicles and traditions. But they have done none of these things. In stepping into the Middle Ages, they step, as they feel, into a world of unreality and impotence, and they have simply done nothing to all. They have, pictures of medieval kings are not ancient effigies or modern fantasies or tortured traditions or wild reconstructions they are simply nothing at all not even lies

i will give only one instance of the difference in the treatment of the two periods suppose the portrait of edward the sixth had shown him in an eton collar and a top hat most readers of the encyclopedia would have known it for an anachronism suppose he had been shown in the attire of two hundred years earlier in a powdered wig and a three-cornered hat most educated people would still have known that this was not the dress of the son of henry the eighth now turn in our popular encyclopedia to the remarkable portrait of king stephen the head of king stephen that very obscure warrior who first broke the simple succession of the norman dukes in england is quite obviously the head of some halberdier at the execution of mary queen of scots he has the burnished and brimmed helmet curving into two horns like a crescent that was one of the latest ornaments of the renaissance he has the grave pointed and well-trimmed beard of the sixteenth century to give a twelfth century fighter like stephen a a helmet and beard like that is much more absurd than giving henry the eighth a billycock it is literally twice as absurd as giving him a three-cornered hat stephen was historically much further off that sort of steel hat than henry was from a modern bowler but the periods and changes between us and henry we feel as vivid and recent things we remember them as we do the female fashions that have passed and perished in our time but the periods and changes between henry and stephen we do not realize at all and in the teaching of most english history we seem quite to forget that a considerable time after all passed between the eleventh century and the sixteenth this part of english history is not taught well or badly it is simply not taught at all there is one very short way of putting the best explanation of this historical imbecility

Through all this earlier period, the history of England was the history of Europe. Now, the modern English always tried to tell the history of England so as to leave Europe out. They say, for instance, that in the American War of Independence, we were conquered by Washington, a very typical English aristocrat. They always leave out the fact that we were conquered by a typical French aristocrat, the Republican Lafayette. Thus they say, truly enough, that Nelson was making magnificent, war on the French at Trafalgar. They always leave out that he was fighting not against the French, but against the French Revolution. They wish to keep out of European politics.

Now the England of the Middle Ages cannot be kept out of European politics because it had no other politics. Told as the story of an island alone in an enormous sea, the story makes no sense. William the Conqueror must be made into a mere pirate, but he was not. the promise made by the confessor the oaths worn by herald the banner blessed by the pope were all parts of a real european feeling that this island should be brought back into the circle of latin civilization richard cuir de leon must be made a mere idler and romantic scallywag like the boy who runs away to the sea but he was not he was simply a soldier going to the front for all christendom was then one country and the enemy was on its borders that he happened to be a better soldier than he would have been a politician was his misfortune and not his fault many of the coldest politicians philip augustus for instance went to the front with him king john must be represented as a mere cringing slave spy and antipatriate when he gives up his crown to the pope but he was not who is merely a statesman using one of the ordinary expedients a contemporary state craft putting his whole case into the hands of the supreme european tribunal then universally acknowledged but in english history as now taught a child must not be allowed to know that france and rome and palestine were important places to his forefathers

we teach history on the principle of what i believe has been called splendid isolation it has already made darkness of the past and it will probably make disaster of the future. End of Section 2. End of G. K. Chesterton in the Open Road by G.K. Chesterton.