an
about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human
about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was
merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in
it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in
their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to
think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not
merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints
might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the
saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this
point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr
and the suicide. In that matter there had been this combination between
two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. This
was just such another contradiction; and this I had already found to be
true. This was exactly one of the paradoxes in which sceptics found the
creed wrong; and in this I had found it right. Madly as Christians might
love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt these passions more
madly than I had felt them long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then
the most difficult and interesting part of the mental process opened,
and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts
of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching the
optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise,
but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.
Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind
the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in
orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that
Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a
being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once
and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this
notion as I found it.

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one
may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns
have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution which
seeks to destroy the [Greek: meson] or balance of Aristotle. They seem to
suggest that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating
larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. But the g