fe itself is as bright as the diamond, but as
brittle as the window-pane."

From all this it is but a step to the consideration of dogma and the
orthodox Christian creed. Mr. Chesterton is at war to the knife with
vague modernism in all its forms. The eternal verities which produce
great convictions are incomparably the most important things for human
nature. No "inner light" will serve man's turn, but some outer light,
and that only and always. "Christianity came into the world, firstly in
order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards,
but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a
divine company and a divine captain." This again is human nature. No man
can live his life out fully without being mastered by convictions that
he cannot challenge, and for whose origin he is not responsible. The
most essentially human thing is the sense that these, the supreme
conditions of life, are not of man's own arranging, but have been and
are imposed upon him.

At almost every point this system may be disputed. Mr. Chesterton, who
never shrinks from pressing his theories to their utmost length, scoffs
at the modern habit of "saying that such-and-such a creed can be held in
one age, but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was
credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth.
You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on
Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a
view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not
suitable to half-past four." That is precisely what many of us do say.
Our powers of dogmatising vary to some extent with our moods, and to a
still greater extent with the reception of new light. There are many
days on which the dogmas of early morning are impossible and even absurd
when considered in the light of evening.

But it is not our task to criticise Mr. Chesterton's faith nor his way
of dealing with it. Were we to do so, most of us would probably strike a
balance. We would find many of his views and statements unconvincing;
and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mind
to see fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The main
point in his orthodoxy is unquestionably a most valuable contribution to
the general faith of his time and country. That point is the adventure
which he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in