The Church of God
“...The members of some Eastern sect or secret society or other
seemed to have made a scene somewhere; nobody could imagine why. The
incident occurred once or twice again and began to arouse irritation out of
proportion to its insignificance. It was not exactly what these provincials said;
though of course it sounded queer enough. They seemed to be saying that God
was dead and that they themselves had seen him die. This might be one of the
many manias produced by the despair of the age; only they did not seem
particularly despairing. They seem quite unnaturally joyful about it, and gave
the reason that the death of God had allowed them to eat him and drink his
blood. According to other accounts God was not exactly dead after all; there
trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of
the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the
dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun. But
it was not the strange story to which anybody paid any particular attention;
people in that world had seen queer religions enough to fill a madhouse. It was
something in the tone of the madmen and their type of formation. They were a
scratch company of barbarians and slaves and poor and unimportant people; but their formation was military; they moved together and were very absolute
about who and what was really a part of their little system; and about what
they said. However mildly, there was a ring like iron. Men used to many
mythologies and moralities could make no analysis of the mystery, except the
curious conjecture that they meant what they said. All attempts to make them
see reason in the perfectly simple matter of the Emperor's statue seemed to be
spoken to deaf men. It was as if a new meteoric metal had fallen on the earth;
it was a difference of substance to the touch. Those who touched their
foundation fancied they had struck a rock.
With a strange rapidity, like the changes of a dream, the proportions of things seemed to change in their presence. Before most men knew what had happened, these few men were palpably present. They were important enough to be ignored. People became suddenly silent about them and walked stiffly past them. We see a new scene, in which the world has drawn its skirts away from these men and women and they stand in the centre of a great space like lepers. The scene changes again and the great space where they stand is overhung on every side with a cloud of witnesses, interminable terraces full of faces looking down towards them intently; for strange things are happening to them. New tortures have been invented for the madmen who have brought good news. That sad and weary society seems almost to find a new energy in establishing its first religious persecution. Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.”
~G. K. Chesterton
With a strange rapidity, like the changes of a dream, the proportions of things seemed to change in their presence. Before most men knew what had happened, these few men were palpably present. They were important enough to be ignored. People became suddenly silent about them and walked stiffly past them. We see a new scene, in which the world has drawn its skirts away from these men and women and they stand in the centre of a great space like lepers. The scene changes again and the great space where they stand is overhung on every side with a cloud of witnesses, interminable terraces full of faces looking down towards them intently; for strange things are happening to them. New tortures have been invented for the madmen who have brought good news. That sad and weary society seems almost to find a new energy in establishing its first religious persecution. Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.”
~G. K. Chesterton
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