Ahlquist & GKC - Last Words

GKC handing on the Tradition

Last words from Dale Ahlquist's distillation of G. K. Chesterton:

ONLY THE CHURCH can cure the ills that now face this civilization. Those who have abandoned the Church have in effect cut themselves off from something much greater than they realize. They cannot cure the ills. As Chesterton said:

The severed hand does not heal the whole body.

But not only does the world stubbornly refuse the Church's help, some people even make themselves enemies of the Church and try to prevent it from having any influence in society. they try to discredit the Church by making all kinds of sensational charges against it. Chesterton shows how contradictory this is.

When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem to entirely forgetg that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious: but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

Chesterton said that the earnest freethinkers, who are so worried about the persecutions of the past, are quite blind to what would happen in the world if their own ideas prevailed. In one of his most chilling prophecies he said:

Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant, we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

Perhaps better than any other twentieth-century writer, Chesterton showed that the faith is the only thing that really makes sense. And though he wrote millions of words, he summed up his defense of the faith in only a few words:

The only argument against losing faith is that you also lose hope - and generally charity.