"Right in the middle of all these things stands up an enormous exception... It is nothing less that the loud assertion that this mysterious maker of the world has visited his world in person. It declares that really and even recently, or right in the middle of historic times, there did walk into the world this original invisible being; about whom the thinkers make theories and the mythologists hand down myths; the Man Who Made the World. That such a higher personality exists behind all things had indeed always been implied by the best thinkers, as well as by all the most beautiful legends. But nothing of this sort had ever been implied in any of them. It is simply false to say that the other sagas and heroes had claimed to be the mysterious master and maker, of whom the world had dreamed and disputed. Not one of them had ever claimed to be anything of the sort. The most that any religious prophet had said was that he was the true servant of such a being. The most that any primitive myth had ever suggested was that the Creator was present at Creation. But that the Creator was present... in the daily life of the Roman Empire -- that is something utterly unlike anything else in nature ... it makes nothing but dust and nonsense of comparative religion."
~ G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Image above of Jesus healing the bleeding woman, depicted on the wall of a Roman catacomb. Courtesy Wikipedia.
~ G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Image above of Jesus healing the bleeding woman, depicted on the wall of a Roman catacomb. Courtesy Wikipedia.
Comments