Simple Gifts John and Jenny Wise

THE EVERLASTING MAN by Gilbert Kyle Chesterton

Part Two: On The Man Called Christ

Chapter One: The God in the Cave

Gilbert Kyle Chesterton remains one of the great voices of Christian faith in the last century, and it is a tragedy that more Christians are not familiar with his work. C. S. Lewis credits Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, with displaying the rationality of the Christian worldview par excellence to him, though it was not one work alone that changed his mind, but a progressive development away from atheism and toward God, that Lewis discusses.

”I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.”

While in the army in WWI:

”It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton’s essays.... nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some ”second cause” of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love. I was by now a sufficiently experienced reader to distinguish liking from agreement. I did not need to accept what Chesterton said in order to enjoy it.... For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or ”paradoxical” I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. Moreover, strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. I have never felt the dislike of goodness which seems to be quite common in better men than me.... It was a matter of taste: I felt the ”charm” of goodness as a man feels the charm of a woman he has no intention of marrying. It is, indeed, at that distance that its ”charm” is most apparent.”

It seems as though Lewis himself took up this ”charm” when he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia years later, introducing the real-world content of the Gospel message in a digestible form for those who might not wish to taste it full strength, and thus avoiding the censor.

”In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--”Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,” as Herbert says, ”fine nets and stratagems.” God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

This is a point that motivates ALL of our work here on Simple Gifts ... ALL of God’s creation, and thus all of man’s best creative efforts, when properly understood point us to the Creator. For Lewis, one work in particular was the proverbial ”straw”:

”Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive ”apart from his Christianity”. Now, I veritably believe, I thought--I didn’t of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense--that Christianity itself was very sensible ”apart from its Christianity”.”

We present here this text with the hope that the effect might be reproduced in others, too.

Enjoy!

#christianapologetics #gkchesterton #chesterton #orthodoxy #westerncivilisation #theeverlastingman #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #humani

”This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks.”

This first line of Longfellow’s poem has rung down across time, as his poem was meant to do. He wrote it in blank dactylic hexameter, reminiscent of Homer and Latin heroic verse. It was his most famous poem during his lifetime.

The first three stanzas of the poem (”the Prelude”) tell the story in precis. The French-speaking settlers of what today is Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and part of Maine, known as Acadia, were forcibly expelled from their land by the British, deported and exiled during the French and Indian wars. The Cajuns and Creoles in Louisiana today are their descendants in the US.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

The last four lines here allude to the story woven on this historical backdrop. The love-story of Evangeline and Gabriel, separated in the evacuation, spending their lives in search of one another. Listen with us as we experience this lovely sad tale of lost love.

As an elementary school student, I remember reading for the first time Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. I was captivated by Crusoe’s solitary ingenuity on the island, his trips back and forth to the foundered ship, his reconstruction of civilized life from the fundaments. It awakened in me a lifetime love of survival narratives, and a fascination with survival strategies and skills. If today I can forage for wild foods, start a bow-drill fire, build a deadfall, construct a survival shelter and know a great deal more about our natural environment than most people do, it is in no small part a result of reading this book, which has been called the first English novel. It well-rewards the time spent in its reading. Enjoy!

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Having not taught Plato’s Gorgias since graduate school in the ’90’s, I had forgotten how rich and important this dialogue is to the Western tradition. Having now recorded the whole dialogue for Simple Gifts, I am delighted to share it with you.

Gorgias was one of the most famous Sophists in the time of Classical Greece. He was one of a number of traveling teachers of the discipline of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. The ability to persuade others to agree with you, regardless of the truth of what you are persuading them of, has given us our modern understanding of the term ”sophistry” as persuasive, clever speech that is nevertheless dishonest and misleading. Obviously, this ability is most valuable for two professions, lawyers and politicians. Socrates (and by extension Plato) thinks that the true purpose of speech and dialogue is the discovery of truth, not persuasion. Philosophy, then, is a true art, whereas rhetoric is, as Socrates declares, a sort of flattery.

In much of the dialogue, Gorgias is rather a passive listener to the discussion than an active participant, but those who are Socrates’ persistent interlocutors (Polus and Callicles) are most definitely maintaining the Sophist position. The dialogue is set in the house of Callicles.

Enjoy!

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Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay to appear anonymously in New York papers under the pseudonym ”Publius” in 1787 and 1788, the Federalist Papers aimed to rally public support for the proposed Constitution of the United States. As such, it is one of the most important sources for understanding the original intent of the US Constitution by those who participated in its construction.

In Federalist number one Alexander Hamilton sets forth the ambition of arguing the following positions in favor of the adoption of the Constitution:

”I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:

THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION

THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT

THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly,

THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY.”

Articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym ”Publius” to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

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THE EVERLASTING MAN by Gilbert Kyle Chesterton

Part One: On The Creature Called Man

Chapter Eight: The End of the World

Gilbert Kyle Chesterton remains one of the great voices of Christian faith in the last century, and it is a tragedy that more Christians are not familiar with his work. C. S. Lewis credits Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, with displaying the rationality of the Christian worldview par excellence to him, though it was not one work alone that changed his mind, but a progressive development away from atheism and toward God, that Lewis discusses.

”I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.”

While in the army in WWI:

”It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton’s essays.... nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some ”second cause” of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love. I was by now a sufficiently experienced reader to distinguish liking from agreement. I did not need to accept what Chesterton said in order to enjoy it.... For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or ”paradoxical” I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. Moreover, strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. I have never felt the dislike of goodness which seems to be quite common in better men than me.... It was a matter of taste: I felt the ”charm” of goodness as a man feels the charm of a woman he has no intention of marrying. It is, indeed, at that distance that its ”charm” is most apparent.”

It seems as though Lewis himself took up this ”charm” when he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia years later, introducing the real-world content of the Gospel message in a digestible form for those who might not wish to taste it full strength, and thus avoiding the censor.

”In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--”Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,” as Herbert says, ”fine nets and stratagems.” God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

This is a point that motivates ALL of our work here on Simple Gifts ... ALL of God’s creation, and thus all of man’s best creative efforts, when properly understood point us to the Creator. For Lewis, one work in particular was the proverbial ”straw”:

”Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive ”apart from his Christianity”. Now, I veritably believe, I thought--I didn’t of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense--that Christianity itself was very sensible ”apart from its Christianity”.”

We present here this text with the hope that the effect might be reproduced in others, too.

Enjoy!

#christianapologetics #gkchesterton #chesterton #orthodoxy #westerncivilisation #theeverlastingman #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #h