The Everlasting Man

Just as prehistory began in a cave, so post-Christ history “also begins in a cave” (330)—in dark cavern of a stable in Bethlehem. The moment when the divine “hands that had made the sun and stars” were shrunk down to those of a baby “too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle” (331) put an end to all mythology.

The Christian system that sprang from this was greater than any that had ever come before—a broad philosophy that embraced all philosophies that had come before it. The Catholic creed was universal, though it came into being at a time of darkness, for “demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion” (355). Against these powers of darkness, however, “the Church from its beginnings, and perhaps especially in its beginnings, was not so much a principality as a revolution against the prince of the world” (357).

For Chesterton, Christianity was a paradox: a complete novelty that proclaimed timeless and age-old truths. In the contemporary world, the novelty has been lost. Chesterton hopes to present the story anew, assuming that hearing it with fresh ears would necessitate conversion: “a really impartial reading of that kind would lead, if not immediately to belief, at least to a bewilderment of which there is really no solution except in belief” (367).