Chesterton's Anglican Reaction

to Modernism
Ian Boyd, C . S . B .

IAN BOYD, C.S.B.. is the author of The Novels of G . K . Chesterton (London,

1975), and the Editor of The Chesterton Review.

Chesterton's Anglican reaction to theological Modernism can be

found in the scattered comments which he made about it in his early
uncollected journalism. Three such representative comments are
worthy of particular note, for they sum up fairly accurately the range
of his thinking about the subject. They were written during those
early years of the century when the Modernist controversy was tak-
ing place within the Roman Catholic Church, and when the young
Chesterton was attempting to evaluate it from the vantage-point of a
detached but keenly interested Anglo-Catholic observer. The first
comment is found in a review that he wrote for the Bookman in 1906.
This review examines an Italian Modernist novel which was then
becoming a literary sensation throughout Europe. His second sig-
nificant comment touching on the subject is found in some letters
to the Editor of the Nation in 1907; and, though these letters do not
deal directly with the theological movement of Modernism, they do
throw light on Chesterton's thinking about the development of doc-
trine, an issue that was central to the Modernist controversy. The
Nation, an influential Liberal weekly, was edited by W . H . Mas-
singham,' who had just taken over the editorship of the magazine
earlier in 1907. Massingham shared Chesterton's strong pro-Boer
political views, but he had little sympathy for Chesterton's ardent
High Church religious sentiments. The third and much more sub-
stantial comment is found in some pieces that Chesterton wrote for
the Church SociaHst Quarterly in 1909. This obscure weekly was
the journal of the Church Socialist League, the most radical of the

Chesterton at the time of the Modernist crisis, c. 1903.

5
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

Anglican groups committed to a Socialist programme of reform and

a group which contained a number of people sympathetic to the
views of the theological Modernists. Chesterton's contributions to the
magazine—two articles and a letter—were part of a controversy that
he carried on with Robert Dell, a journalist who happened to be
both a Roman Catholic Modernist and a Fabian Socialist.
In some ways, Chesterton's 1906 review of Antonio Fogazzaro's^
novel, // Santo or The Saint, represents his most interesting com-
ment on the Modernist debate. The interest derives, partly at least,
f r o m Chesterton's seeming uncertainty about how to evaluate M o d -
ernism and a Modernist novel. The novel had been published in Italy
the previous year, and had been placed on the Index of Forbidden
Books on April 5, 1906, only a few months before Chesterton's
review appeared in the July number of the Bookman. It is clear that
Chesterton is puzzled by Fogazzaro's novel. He describes it as "the
story of a revolt in the very heart of Catholicism"; and, although he
is aware that the book has been officially condemned by Roman
authorities, he nonetheless senses within it a basic sympathy towards
the Church, and he implies that the book will do good if it convinces
English Protestant readers that true variety of religious opinion does
exist among Catholics. In fact, Fogazzaro's reputation as a radical
Democrat seems to have recommended him to Chesterton, who
always claimed that the quarrel between the Church and the Revolu-
tion was largely an historical accident based on a misunderstanding.
And, indeed, there is some evidence to support Chesterton's guess
that the author of the leading Modernist work of fiction was no true
religious rebel and had no fundamental quarrel with the Church.
Michael de la Bedoyere, the cautiously orthodox biographer of
Baron von Hügel, claims that Fogazzaro's novel "could hardly be
said to offend against doctrine or morals"; that, had it been written
at any other time, it would never have been put on the Index; and
that Fogazzaro himself was, like von Hügel, essentially on what de la
Bedoyere calls, in an odd phrase, "the sound Catholic side of the
Modernist movement."^ And, it is true that Fogazzaro, in obedience
to the papal decree, did—with reluctance—eventually abandon M o d -
ernist ideas.
Chesterton's view of the novel is also important in another way.
It illustrates his ability to recognise those books that were likely to
have a significant influence on contemporary readers. It was as
though he were gifted with a special inner sense that enabled him to

6
Chesterton's ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

evaluate the precise power and the potential influence of each of the
vast number of books that he read. Admittedly, in this particular
instance, it would not have required unusual sensitivity to under-
stand that the book would be an influential one. It was said that, the
novel was the event of the season in both Italy and France in the
winter of 1905-1906. Its popularity was such that, in Italy, in a single
month, 30,000 copies had been sold; in England and America, the
English translation was also selHng at the rate of a thousand copies a
day. 4 Nor is it difficult to understand why the novel was so popular
in this new liberal age of mass journalism, known for its hungry
curiosity about new religious ideas and for its love of sensation. And,
among the Protestant readers for whom Chesterton was writing,
both the subject of the book and its condemnation by distant
Roman Catholic authorities would only have added to its glamour.
The novel tells the story of a modern religious revival brought about
by the coming of a controversial and sadly misunderstood "new
saint." On the face of it, that romantic theme was likely to appeal to
Chesterton himself: Benedetto, the hero of the novel, appears to be a
romantic Chestertonian hero. He resembles Adam Wayne in The
Napoleon of Notting Hill; or, more precisely, Maclan in The Ball
and the Cross; or, to cite a parallel that Chesterton suggests in the
review itself, a figure from Italian history about whom he would
later try to write a book—Savonarola. Yet, with regard to larger
issues that lie behind the book, there is never any doubt about how
the division between Chesterton's liberal and religious sympathies
would be resolved. His final comment about the novel would seem
to indicate that, however divided his feelings, his fundamental sym-
pathies are with the cautiously rational authorities who restrain reli-
gious enthusiasts rather than with the enthusiasts who are restrained.
The text of Chesterton's review reads as follows:
First we must realise this: that in judging anything con-
cerned with Catholicism, we are dealing with an enormous
and miscellaneous civilisation, very old, very varied—certainly
much more varied than the British Empire, probably much
more varied even than the Roman Empire. As the author of
the introduction to "The Saint" suggestively says of the work
in question, "the Jesuits have had it put on the Index; the
Christian Democrats have accepted it as their gospel: yet
Jesuits and Christian Democrats both profess to be Catholic."
We in England do not realise this Catholic differentiation in

7
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

philosophy; because we in England have almost entirely lost

all interest in philosophy. But we have not lost our interest
(for instance) in pictorial art; we still retain a real tradition
from Ruskin and Walter Pater on that point. And in pictorial
art we do realise this differentiation in Catholicism. Ruskin
has taught us to believe that nothing could be more distinct
from another thing than is the happy timidity of Giotto and
the early draughtsmen from the desolate violence of Michael
Angelo. Yet Giotto and Michael Angelo were both Catholics,
were both devout Catholics. Ruskin has taught us to take as
opposites the strict lines of Gothic drawing, as in Cimabue,
and the opulence of Venice as expressed in Titian. But
Cimabue and Titan were both Catholics. The first and chief
kind of good which a book like "The Saint" may do is to
induce us to realise that there is and has always been in
Catholicism a degree of intellectual variety similar to its artis-
tic variety. The author of the book, Antonio Fogazzaro, is
described as one of the most convinced and prominent of the
Catholic laymen of Italy; and he is engaged, like his hero in
the book, in a living philosophical struggle with other Cathol-
ics. This is the first thing to be borne in mind in estimating the
book, both by way of asserting and moderating its impor-
tance. Catholicism has many strands, and this is only one of
them.
This, then, is the second thing to remember about "The
Saint." It marks a sort of Catholicism to which we English are
more perilously prone: that of sentiment, colours, and per-
fumes, an atmosphere, an emotion. This goes along with lib-
erty, for one can feel when one is too free and easy to think.
The old Liberal idea of a sympathy between the love of liberty
in England and the love of liberty in Italy was not a maudlin
mistake: it was sound sense, like most of the old ideas of Lib-
erals, especially before they began to listen to unscientific
rubbish about Teutons and Latins. But this affinity may be
almost misleading. A n Englishman reading "The Saint" will
be constantly reminded of the drifting and dreamy, and yet
noble religious sentiment of England—especially of the cul-
tured Nonconformist. But it would be a mistake to call this
Catholicism; it is Italy. He will feel near to Italy, as were all
very robust Englishmen. Chaucer was near to Italy. Browning
was near to Italy.
The story of Benedetto, the "Saint," which is told in this
dreamy and sympathetic and very Italian tale, is typical of
both these truths. It is the story of a revolt in the very heart of

8
Chesterton s AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

Catholicism, a revolt conducted by earnest Catholics. Such a

rebellion may sound stranger than it really is to Englishmen
who have formed a quite exaggerated impression of the coer-
cion and cohesion of Catholicism; but such rebellions have
not only been frequent; they have been almost continuous,
ever since Catholics were Catholics. They have also one
marked trait, which is also to be found in the struggle and
sentiment of Benedetto. I mean that "The Saint." though
regarded by some as almost a heretic, really is a "saint"; rather
too much of a saint; too austere, too ethereal, too watchful of
himself. This has always been so. The Catholics who rebelled
against Catholic discipline have scarcely ever been the lax
Catholics. Those who rebelled against the discipline were
always the severe Catholics. It was always the too lax author-
ity against the too harsh individual; the almost epicurean
Pope against the almost Puritan Savonarola. And where the
central authority at Rome has suppressed particular develop-
ments of religion in Italy, it has sometimes been an act of
brutal cynicism and sometimes an act of human common
sense; but it has always been on the side of the reasonable as
against the enthusiastic. The enthusiasm all comes from
below. Catholicism is an hierarchic policy, but it is a popular
religion.
Benedetto has also the other trait, the trait of sentiment:
it is here that he is most interesting, and yet in a manner it is
here that he is most weak. His attack on the routine of his
religion is rather a thing of the emotions than of the intellect.
There is a good argumentative case for discipline always: it is
only our feelings that can tell us when it has gone too far.
Nevertheless, this gives the book a quality that can only be
called inconclusive; with all its poetry and delicacy: we have
clouds around us at the end. I f the author has any ultimate
quarrel with Rome (which he would probably deny), it is not
because Rome is mystical or sacramental or supernatural or
ascetic, but because Rome is appallingly logical. Yes. appall-
ingly scientific.
G.K. Chesterton
The Bookman, July 1906.

More precise evidence of Chesterton's own theological thinking

at the time of the Modernist crisis is found in his letters to the
Nation. The chief importance of these letters consists in what they
reveal about Chesterton's understanding of what is called the devel-
opment of doctrine. This idea was much discussed by some of the

9
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

Modernist writers, who sometimes claimed that they were being pun-
ished for expressing views about doctrinal development that had
been regarded as acceptable when they were expressed by Newman.
In his dispute with Massingham, who also Hnks "modern Roman
theology" to Newman's ideas about development, Chesterton makes
the claim that he has read most of Newman's books and that both
he and Newman share the conviction that there can be no true
development unless there is first a "cast-iron creed." In his only
direct reference to the Modernist controversy, Chesterton emphasises
the ambivalence of his feeling, making the surprising comment that
he neither knows nor cares whether the Catholic Church "is just now
passing through one of its numberless periods of undue repression
and silence." But, in his attempt to put forward his own position
about development, he makes use of a favourite image, which is also
a biblical one, the image of the tree. The Christian Church, he sug-
gests, is "the ancient and living tree." Years later, shortly before his
death, he again uses the same image in order to express the dif-
ference between evolutionary change and true development. There is
such a thing as a philosophy of the Cloud and a philosophy of the
Tree:
I mean that a tree goes on growing, and therefore goes
on changing; but always in the fringes surrounding something
unchangeable. The innermost rings of the tree are still the
same as when it was a sapling; they have ceased to be seen,
but they have not ceased to be central. When the tree grows a
branch at the top, it does not break away from the roots at
the bottom; on the contrary, it needs to hold more strongly by
its roots the higher it rises with its branches. That is the true
image of the vigorous and healthy progress of a man, a city,
or a whole species. But when the evolutionists I speak of talk
to us about change, they do not mean that. They do not mean
something that produces external changes from a permanent
and organic centre, like a tree; they mean something that
changes completely and entirely in every part, at every min-
ute, like a cloud.

Now, if this merely cloudy and boneless development be

adopted as a philosophy, then there can be no place for the
past and no possibility of a complete culture. Anything may
be here to-day and gone to-morrow; even to-morrow. But I
do not accept that everlasting evolution, which merely means
everlasting chaos. As I only accept the organic and orderly

10
Chesterton s ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

development of a thing according to its own design and

nature, there is for me such a thing as a human culture that is
reasonably complete. Only the modern, advanced, progres-
sive, scientific culture is unreasonably incomplete. ^
Chesterton is at his most persuasive when he writes as the true
seer who speaks in such parables. Two points of interest regarding
these letters are that they were written in December, 1907, the same
year that Pope Pius X's Pascendi appeared, and that they define
Chesterton's religious position as an Anglican shortly before the pub-
lication of Orthodoxy in September of 1908. Orthodoxy might be
described as his greatest religious argument presented in parable. But
the letters are also important as examples of Chesterton's concern to
maintain his friendships with political colleagues who were unable to
understand the seriousness of religious controversy, but who could
understand the need for consistent principles in politics. Chesterton
appeals to Massingham as to a fellow Liberal who shares Chester-
ton's aversion for those Liberal Imperialists such as Lord Rosebery^
who, in Chesterton's view, were developing Liberal principles right
out of existence, while still clinging on to the Liberal name. Mas-
singham had been forced to resign as Editor of the Daily Chronicle
because of his principled opposition to the South African War; Ches-
terton hopes that that love of political consistency will enable Mas-
singham to understand the view of those who beHeve in the need for
a consistent religious dogma. More than that, Chesterton is emphas-
ising once again his belief that the Liberal and the doctrinally sound
Christian are alHes rather than enemies. What follows is the text of
these letters to the Nation:

The Decline of the O x f o r d Movement

I
Sir,—I trust you will take it as the candid phrase of a
friend if I tell you that the strange irritation which always
attracts you to the discussion of Catholic philosophy will
strike us rather as a tribute to its strength than as any evi-
dence of its decline. We know very well that if the English
Catholic Movement were really dying, you would be glad to
let it die in peace. The truth happens to be exactly the other
way. The controversy has declined, not because the Oxford
Movement has ceased, but because the English people have
largely ceased to object to the Oxford Movement. Of any ten

11
Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis
Chesterton's Anglican Reaction to Modernism

objections to it raised in the time of PuseyJ at least six have

been silently dropped by the time of Dr. Gore.^ Who, except
the quite ignorant, now says that prayers for the dead are
shocking, or that ritual is wrong, or that the Middle Ages
were barbaric? I f you really want to know how far the
Catholic Movement has faded, the test is quite simple. Most
of us, I suppose had Protestant fathers and grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, reaching back perhaps to the time of the
Puritans. Take all the objections that your Puritan ancestor
had to Rome, and compare them with those which you have,
and you will find that you have whittled them down to one or
two. You do not think—as your Puritan ancestor did—that
Rome is anti-Christ because it is opposed to predestination.
You do not think—as your great-grandfather did—that Rome
is wrong because she believes in Purgatory and a progress for
the soul. You do not think—as your grandfather did—that
Rome is wrong because she insults the Deity with art and
music and symbolism. You do not think—as your father
did—that Rome is wrong because Catholic countries do not
encourage the complete industrial freedom of the manufactur-
ing countries. Of all the converging objections to Catholicism
which once rent Europe to its roots, you have only managed
to retain one objection: the objection to a collective authority
in religion. But the more pathetically you cling to this one last
Protestant doctrine, the more we shall be reminded that you
have openly abandoned all the others.
I understand that your objection to Dr. Gore can be
summarised in three sections. First, you say that the Oxford
Movement was a part of the Romantic Movement; and was
(as far as I can understand you) indifferent to historical fact.
Seeing that no English religion ever cared a dump about his-
tory until the Oxford Movement, this is rather a lark; but I
pass on. Secondly, you say that Christianity is, or ought to be,
not a Creed but a devotion to a person. Thirdly, you say that
the best thing about Creeds is that they gradually change their
meaning; a thought much too precious to be commented on
until we get to it.
Your two first and chief points are that Anglo-
Catholicism was Romantic; and that Christianity ought to be
devotion to a person. Now if there is one idea in the world
which I think might fairly be called Romantic and nothing
else, it is the idea of being devoted to a person, quite apart
from what he is or he means or he tells you to believe. But the
moment you introduce what he is or he means or tells you to
believe, you introduce a Creed; something that can be stated
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

in clear philosophical terms. I will take the most obvious of

the hundred opportunities you give me of testing your case.
You say that the Christian must be devoted to a person, but
free apparently in all matters touching belief. I will ask you a
simple question, and I will specially ask you to answer it.
Does the freedom of belief include freedom to doubt the his-
torical existence of the person? Is the True Christian (a very
different person from the Christian) free to doubt that Christ
ever lived? I f he is not free to dispute this fair point, of what
value is his freedom? I f he is free to deny it, to what sort of
Person is he devoted?
Surely the whole point is almost tiresomely plain. You
may be devoted to your mother; but that very devotion
implies certain assertions about your mother, which are a
Creed. It implies (1) that she exists; (2) that she is, in reality,
your mother; (3) that your admiration for her is for her moth-
erly qualities, not at least for her unmotherly ones, for feeding
you, not for poisoning you; (4) that your devotion to her must
take certain definite forms, the optimistic form of helping her
to life with money, not the pessimistic form of helping her to
death with a hatchet. All these things are implied in devotion
to a person; and if Christianity had been founded on devotion
to an old apple woman, it would still have produced a Creed,
because it is a necessity of human thought. Suppose I started
at this moment, inspired by your advice, to be devoted to the
Person. I should want, out of my mere devotion, to know
certain things about Him; notably whether He now exists.
Could you answer that last question without beginning to
make a Creed?
Lastly, I have looked at your last statement, that Creeds
are valuable because they can change their meaning, and I
give it up in despair. I cannot imagine what can be the fun of
having a set of words which means one thing at one time and
one thing at another. I f you have a new meaning, why not get
a new set of words? It would save a great deal of confusion.
Suppose I say on Sunday (as I do), " I like beer." Suppose on
Monday that means "Land's End is in Cornwall," and on
Tuesday, "Napoleon was a Corsican," and on Wednesday,
"twenty shillings make a pound," and on Thursday, "God is
truth"; I really cannot see the pleasure or profit of the process.
The Christian Creeds may have been right or wrong; but they
were set down in black and white simply in order to clear the
human intellect. It has been reserved for you to propose that
they should be used solely in order to cloud and confuse it.—
Yours, & c, G.K. Chesterton, December 7, 1907.
Chestertons ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

[Mr. Chesterton asks us a great many questions—we wiU

retort by asking him another. Is he a member of the Roman
CathoUc Church? If he is, his argument is inteUigible; if not, it
is merely an attack on Protestantism by a disputant deprived
of the right of appeal to the authority that can alone establish
and maintain the set of dogmatic, invariable formulae which
is his idea of the Christian religion. In practice, indeed, Mr.
Chesterton is more obscurantist even than the most distin-
guished professors of the Church to which he does or does not
belong. The belief that humanity continually plays on the per-
sonality and the ideas of Christ, and extracts fresh light from
them, is held by all but the scholastic theologians. Has Mr.
Chesterton ever heard of Newman?—Editor, The Nation.
December 4, 1907.]

II
Sir,—I shall be enraptured to answer any of your ques-
tions, if that will in any way encourage you to answer mine. It
is a good exercise in honesty to answer questions (as in a Law
Court), even when one cannot see any particular sense in
them. You ask me whether I am a member of the Roman
Catholic Church. I am not. I shall not be until you have con-
vinced me that the Church of England is really the muddle-
headed provincial heresy that you make it out. But really
now, between friends, what can that question mean? The
Oxford Movement may or may not have declined; but there
was an Oxford Movement. And the whole point of that
Movement was to maintain that a man in the Church of Eng-
land was not a man "deprived of the right to appeal" to the
authority that can alone maintain dogma. A man who asks
me, when I say I believe in Catholic dogma, "Are you a
Roman Catholic?" is not a man who notices the decline of the
Oxford Movement. He is a man who has never realised its
rise.
You also ask me whether I have ever "heard of New-
man." I seem to know the name. In fact, I have an impression
(erroneous no doubt) that I have read most of his books. And
I can only say that if you think that Newman agreed with you
in this matter; if you suppose that Newman thought the
Catholic Creed could change its meaning or that devotion to a
person was adequate (in the absence of the cosmic philosophy
of the Christian), I can only say, with respect as well as regret,
that I am afraid you have "heard of Newman"—and that is
all.
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

And now, when I have answered your two questions, will

you humour me by answering mine, which I will repeat for
the purpose. First, is your free Christian, devoted to the per-
son of Christ, free to doubt His historical existence? Second,
is he free to doubt His presence in the universe now, as a
person to receive the devotion? Third, is not the affirmation
of these two things a Creed, and (if the devotion is to con-
tinue) an unchangeable creed?—Yours, &c., G.K. Chesterton,
December 14, 1907.
[Rome we know, and Canterbury we think we know; but
what is Mr. Chesterton and to what does he "appeal"? The
gist of modern Roman theology, as initiated by Newman, lies
in the word ''development"; even Anglicanism as interpreted
by Dr. Creight on"^ is declared to be based on "reason and
sound learning." Both positions reject the notion of a cast-
iron creed which Mr. Chesterton thinks he holds. As for his
questions, the answer to all three of them is obviously
"No."—Editor, The Nation.]

Ill
Sir,—One more word and we will embrace and part. You
will be relieved to hear that your mistake belongs to the fruit-
ful, not the fruitless class of mistakes. Your second note to my
second letter really shows up the chief blunder of our time: it
shows it up so clearly that I can hardly believe that you do
not see it yourselves. It is the source not only of the weaken-
ing of Christianity but of the decay of democracy and the
frightful danger of Liberalism.
You have got it into your head that "development" is in
some way opposed to having a "cast-iron creed." Exactly the
opposite is the truth. You cannot possibly have any develop-
ment unless you do have a cast-iron creed. For instance, Euc-
lid has a cast-iron creed, and therefore Euclid develops propo-
sition after proposition, book after book, rider after rider.
Geometry could go on for ever. But you will not help geome-
try to further flights by questioning its axioms. On the con-
trary, question a dot in one of its axioms and Euclid will
break down suddenly and cease in the middle of a proposi-
tion; to the joy of many happy schoolboys.
This is so universally true that I should rather take any
example than that of religion. Take politics. Your True Chris-
tianity perpetually reminds me of True Free Trade; which
dogmatists and coarse fellows call Protection. It reminds me

16

I
Chesterton s AngHcan Reaction to Modernism

even more of the way in which Lord Rosebery and the Liberal
Imperialists tried to nobble Liberalism just before the South
African War. You and I (who were, I hope, pro-Boers) were
always being asked to "develop" LiberaHsm. Lord Rosebery
said to us exactly what you say to Catholics; that we had
antiquated doctrines and wore "phylacteries." And you and I
answered Lord Rosebery exactly as I answer you. "We are
quite willing to develop Liberalism, but, hang it all, there is
some Liberalism to develop." According to Lord Rosebery
and the rest the next development of Liberalism was to cease
to be a Liberal. So, according to you, the next step in Cathol-
icism is to cease to be a Catholic.
It is a pleasant thought that most of the people on this
paper took the Catholic view of Liberalism, while Lord
Rosebery took the Modernist view of it. He thought that the
Liberal creed could change its meaning. He thought that
being a Liberal might some day mean being an ImperiaHst,
just as you think that being a believer may some day mean
being an unbeliever. We believed, for instance, in national
self-government, but we admitted that we had only recently
learnt to apply it to Irishmen and to Boers. The Liberal Imper-
ialist idea of progress was expressed in doubting Nationalism
itself and wondering whether all the imperial oppressors had
not been right from the time of Xerxes.
In everything, in short, there are two opposite kinds of
progress. We wanted to go on and fulfil our ideals. Lord
Rosebery wanted to go back and question them. Anyone is
free to use this second method with regard to anything; he can
call it development, or he can call it apple dumplings, if he
likes. But he must not use the name of Newman or the name
of Euclid. He must not apply it to democracy or apply it to
Catholicism. A man who is always going back and picking to
pieces his own first principles may be having an amusing time;
but he is not developing as Newman understood development.
Newman meant that if you wanted a tree to grow you must
plant it firmly in some definite spot. It may be (I do not know
and I do not care) that Catholic Christianity is just now pass-
ing through one of its numberless periods of undue repression
and silence. But I do know this, that when the great flowers
break forth again, the new epics and the new arts, they will
break out on the ancient and living tree. They cannot break
out upon the little shrubs that you are always pulling up by
the roots to see how they are growing.

17
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

The plain mental fact for us here is that you cannot

develop any ideas except from fixed axioms, which must not
change their meaning. But in conclusion 1 cannot help
expressing my mystification at your strange answer to my
third question. You take an alleged Syrian thaumaturgist in
the time of Tiberius, and you affirm that this man is still liv-
ing and conscious in the universe and important enough to
receive all our devotions. And then you say that this is not a
creed. Surely the test is quite simple. Go out into the street
and ask the first good, jolly Agnostic you meet what he would
call it.—Yours, & c, G.K. Chesterton, December 21, 1907.
P.S.—Touching what Anglo-Catholics "appeal to," you can
find it in the earlier works of Newman (of whom you may
have heard), and in the whole literature of the Oxford Move-
ment, which you were supposed to be criticising. It is about
Councils.
[ We are glad that Mr. Chesterton at last shows some appreci-
ation of the idea of development in religion, though he must
surely be aware that no proper comparison lies between the
development of Euclid's propositions from the axioms and the
development of Christianity from its earliest forms and
records. — Editor, The Nation.]
Chesterton's controversy with Robert Dell'^ in 1909 is important
in a different way. It represents Chesterton's first direct intellectual
confrontation with a writer deeply involved in the Modernist crisis.
Dell, was a friend of Father Tyrrell; and, although he was never
regarded as one of the leading Modernists, he was at the centre of
various Modernist intrigues. In the words of Dr. Alex V i d i e r , a n
Historian of Modernism, he was "something of a busy-body." Yet
there are certain strange parallels between Dell's career and Chester-
ton's own career. I n Jungian terms, Dell might be described as a sort
of Chesterton shadow. Like one of the antithetical characters that
Chesterton was fond of including in his novels, Dell represents quali-
ties that are the opposite of Chesterton's. Like Chesterton, but much
earlier than he, Dell was a convert to Catholicism. Educated at
Oxford in the 1880s, he shared Chesterton's interest in art, and even-
tually became an art critic and the curator of a Parisian art gallery.
Like Chesterton, he was also a journalist, but a journalist of a more
cosmopolitan kind: he became a foreign correspondent for the Man-
chester Guardian, and he lived in Paris and Geneva, and eventually
in New York. He also resembled Chesterton in being a well-known

18
Chesterton's AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

controversialist. And it is here that the differences between the two

writers become most obvious. Chesterton held strong and even radi-
cal political and religious views, but he did so without losing the
friendship of the people with whom he disagreed. Dell, on the other
hand, held strong and increasingly radical views, but he did so in a
way that isolated him and alienated his friends.
Temperamentally, Dell was an extremist; and, over the years,
his political and religious thinking became increasingly extreme. At
the time of the Boer War, Chesterton remembered Dell as "terribly
Tory and Imperialist"; but, a few years later, at the time of the Mod-
ernist crisis, he had become a prominent Fabian Socialist; and, by
the time of the First World War, when he took a strongly pro-
German line, his political thinking had become equally extreme and
he was calling for a social revolution that would introduce a dicta-
torship of the proletariat. In 1918, he was expelled from France; and
Dell's book about France, My Second Country (1920), was regarded
as violently Socialist. His religious views were equally erratic. He
seemed unable to rest in any religious position. The son of an Angli-
can clergyman, he was first a convert to Roman Catholicism. He
then espoused a particularly intemperate Modernism, and was
constantly urging his better-known Modernist associates to take
increasingly aggressive action. Eventually, he abandoned religious
belief of any kind; and he remained a convinced agnostic until the
time of his death.
Chesterton's controversy with Dell took place in the pages of
The Church SociaUst Quarterly, a High Church Anglican magazine
which had sympathies both with the theological Modernists and with
the Marxian Socialists.'2 The controversy began with an apparently
uncontroversial article by Chesterton, entitled "Of Sentimentalism
and the Head and H e a r t . " I n this article, Chesterton argued that
one of the signs of "the Church that is of God" is a concern for
social justice. In reply, Dell wrote an article entitled "Is Pity an
Orthodox Virtue?" In this article, Dell writes that pity is far from
being a peculiarly orthodox virtue. The "awakening of the social
conscience" and "the spread of the sentiment of compassion," he
claims, were the achievement not of the Church, but of the French
Revolution, which had to fight the Church. He also ridicules the
social teaching of the modern popes, and describes the Catholic
Church as "the chief reactionary force in every country in Europe."

19
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

John Henry Newman

20
Chesterton s ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

He then launches a bitter attack on Pope Pius X; and, after some

irrelevant catering to familiar Protestant prejudices, he advocates the
total destruction of what he calls "the papal Church."
In answer to Dell, Chesterton offers no point-by-point refuta-
tion of his Modernist theological position. Instead, he simply asserts
that "the world of modern enlightenment and inquiry" in which Dell
believes, is bringing the world back to heathenism. For Chesterton,
the struggle between Rome and Paris is basically a misunderstand-
ing; the real struggle is that between the Christian Church and the
modern spirit. Yet Chesterton does acknowledge that French Catholics
have good reasons for distrusting the modern French Republic: he
makes a clear reference to the persecution of the French Church and
to the expulsion of the CathoHc religious communities from French
schools (and from France) which was taking place at that time. At
the end of his article, Chesterton wryly admits the present uncer-
tainty of his own reHgious position; but, in a significant avowal of
his debt to Anglicanism, he points out that he agrees far more with
the high AngHcans than he does with the Roman CathoHc Modern-
ists. There is tragic irony in this debate between a Roman CathoHc
who attacks the CathoHc Church and an AngHcan who defends it.
There is a further sad irony of which Chesterton was unaware. Dell's
abusive writing about the papacy had brought Chesterton himself
closer to the Church at the very moment that Dell is about to leave
it. What follows is the text of Chesterton's article, "The Staleness of
Modernism":
It is always a pleasure to withdraw any epithet that
appears to give pain; and since Mr. Dell seems distressed that
I called him and his friends "Modernist," I am glad that after
reading his article I can heartily take back the word. Mr. Dell
does not seem to me modern in the least, but on the contrary
exceedingly antiquated. And since it is as well to get to the
important fact first, I may remark at once that for me this is
the whole mystery of the matter. I cannot understand (and
when I say this I do not mean it as a rhetorical flourish, but as
a sincere fact), I cannot understand why a man like Mr. Dell,
who has some detailed quarrel with the Vatican, is forced to
fall back upon the ragtag-and-bobtail of Nonconformist non-
sense which he must have out-lived when he was twenty. Why
is Modernism so shaHow and so stale? Why is it that Mr. Dell
cannot become a new-fashioned Catholic without immediately
becoming an old-fashioned Protestant? Why cannot he argue

21
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

with the Pope without playing to the No-Popery gallery? Let

him by all means be a Modernist Catholic; it is no affair of
mine. But why should he use those very thoughtless and
threadbare arguments which he must have seen through even
to become a Catholic at all? It is exactly as if Mr. Dell had a
quarrel with the Executive of the Fabian Society and began
immediately to write in the Daily Mail^^ that Socialism was
robbery and was impossible until you "altered human nature,"
that Mr. Mallock's'^ book was crushing and unanswerable,
and that all Labour leaders were atheists and free-thinkers.
For instance, he says that a man becoming a Catholic
"leaves his responsibility on the threshold," and is converted
to be saved "the trouble of thinking." Why, quite so, and the
"Mass is a Mummery," and the Pope is the Beast in Revela-
tions, and Papists can swear anything for the good of the
Church, and Home Rule is Rome Rule, and Maria Monk'^
has been walled up for chastity, and Dr. C l i f f o r d h a s saved
England from Bloody Mary, and there is a Jesuit in the cup-
board and a Dominican under the bed, and please to
remember the fifth of November. . . .'^ I would not have
believed, by any other test but my own eyes, that a man like
Mr. Dell could have sunk so low as that phrase about a
Catholic being "saved the trouble of thinking." Unless Mod-
ernism has some strange and softening influence on the brain,
Mr. Dell must know better. He must know whether men like
Newman and Brunetiere^o left off thinking when they joined
the Roman Church. Moreover, because he is a man of lucid
and active mind, he must know that the whole phrase about
being saved the trouble of thinking is a boyish fallacy. Euclid
does not save geometricians the trouble of thinking when he
insists on absolute definitions and unalterable axioms. On the
contrary, he gives them the great trouble of thinking logically.
The dogma of the Church Hmits thought about as much as the
dogma of the solar system limits physical science. It is not an
arrest of thought, but a fertile basis and constant provocation
of thought. But, of course, Mr. Dell really knows this as well
as I do. He has merely fallen back (in that mixture of fatigue
and hurry in which all fads are made) upon some journalistic
phrases. He cannot really think that men join the most fight-
ing army upon earth merely to find rest. It is on a par with the
old Protestant fiction that monks decided to be ascetic
because they wanted to be luxurious. I should keep out of a
monastery from exactly the same motives that prevent me
from going into the mountains to shoot bears. I am not active
enough for a monastery.

22

I
Chesterton s ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

I wish to give these instances rapidly, so as to get on to

something more refreshing; but here is another of them. Mr.
Dell says that the modern man "finds that theological belief
has little or no influence for good upon personal character."
Incidentally, of course, the modern man finds nothing of the
kind; as can be rapidly discovered if you try to force on a
Protestant family a Roman Catholic governess. But I mention
the phrase in order to draw attention to this curious quality of
staleness, of used-up Protestant platitude, which marks Mr.
Dell's position. That "creeds" do not affect deeds, that it is no
matter what you think if your 'eart be only true (as the song
says), this is a view which we all heard respectfully from our
great-uncles when they were old and near to God; because we
knew that in them it only meant that they had never been able
to see much difference between twenty silly English sects. But
in philosophy the thing is either a frantic paradox or a folly.
Whatever else it is, it is an insult to the human reason. What
could be more degrading to the dignity of the mind than to
say that its most vast conclusions do not affect life? I detest
bigotry and obscurantism quite as much as Mr. Dell does.
And when shall we find any curse or torture so black with
obscurantism as the idea that our bodily habits and social
routine will be pretty much the same whatever our reason tells
us is the truth about the world? I can conceive no more horri-
ble notion than this, that a man's intellect is locked up like a
chartered lunatic inside his skull, and can play what antics it
pleases, so long as it does not once move the mouth to speak
or the land to strike. I f theology is really impotent in conduct
it can only mean that thought is impotent in human life.
Then Mr. Dell says that though Catholics are extraordi-
narily kind to the poor, their kindness is "tainted" with a
desire to save their souls. I wish they would taint some other
people. This sneer about the soul, again, is one of the old
platform tricks of Secularism. The trick consists in implying
that the goodness which we practise on earth is different from
that goodness which will make the happiness of heaven, and
that therefore one is a mere task and the other a mere reward.
Being merciful is only doing your lessons, and receiving mercy
is only receiving a school prize. But that is not, and never has
been, the doctrine of the Christian Church. To be saved is to
be finally attached to the nature of God; the nature of God is
goodness and is, among other things, mercy. Therefore to say
that a man is only merciful because he wishes to save his soul
is really only saying that he is merciful because he wishes

23
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

to remain merciful; to have part in the only enduring life of

mercy. It cannot be selfish to wish to be eternally unselfish.
Why does Mr. Dell throw these very old eggs, unless it is to
please a prejudice which he must despise? Why does he go out
of his way to say that Jesuits have no conscience "of any
kind," unless it is to please those who think that the Noncon-
formist Conscience is the only king? Really it is not necessary
to trouble a man of Mr. Dell's mentality and attainments in
such work; I can get that kind of thing whenever I want it
from Mr. Joseph Hocking. 21 As to the notion that the desire
to renew your own life, to cleanse your own intellect, to
strengthen your own heart, is shocking because it is "selfish," I
need fall back on no ancient creeds against the Modernist
when he talks that sort of sentimentalism. I can leave him to
Ibsen or to Bernard Shaw.
In the same paragraph he gives a fourth example of the
staleness of sentiment, talking about almsgiving as at best a
base and degrading necessity, in implied comparison with
more official or coercive remedies. Now of all the mean
pedantries invented for the oppression of the poor since the
Reformation took the tramp out of the guest-house and put
him in the stocks, the meanest has been this modern notion
that spontaneous help between man and man is degrading;
that nobody must do a kindness unless he signs a paper or
calls a policeman, or gives some large sum to some large
institution—as, for instance, the State. I f I am suddenly sorry
for a total stranger in the street, I am for the moment his
friend; there is an emotion which covers and humanises his
dependence. But that he should stand before ten total
strangers in arm-chairs, who, when they have insulted his
great-grandmother, give him sixpence and tell him not to get
drunk on it; this is degradation, if you like; and this is modern
civilisation. The modern organisation of social effort is a
hypocritical way of avoiding being bothered by beggars. We
talk of people who make a virtue of necessity. But the modern
English make a virtue of luxury—for instance, they make a
virtue of soap. By the way, I wonder why Mr. Dell omitted
that good old oligarchic taunt. There is a great deal of sound
Protestant rhetoric to be got out of soap.
I wish to summarise this impression before I end with
some remarks on the main quarrel. Writers in this magazine
are quite mistaken when they suggest that I am primarily
opposed to Modernism. I call myself both Catholic and
Democrat; and if there were a specially democratic wing of

24

I
Chesterton's AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

Catholicism, I should be with that wing. My only trouble was

wondering what Modernism was; and now I think I know. As
far as one convert is concerned, Mr. Dell's crusade has been
peculiarly successful. He has decided me finally against the
movement that he represents. On every one of those four most
fascinating problems I have mentioned, he has nothing but
old Protestant clap-trap; he is not using his own admirable
brains at all. It was the conventional Victorian thing to say
that belief is an escape from thinking; a little real free-thought
will show that belief is the only possible starting-point for
thinking. It was the conventional Victorian thing to say that
the creed makes no difference to the conduct; free-thought
would show that this is nonsense, unless the mind makes no
difference to the body. It was the conventional thing to say
that alms-giving was a mistake; free-thought would show that
this only meant that it was a nuisance. It was conventional to
say that it is selfish to save one's soul; free-thought would
show that this is an idle play upon the word "self; there must
be a self even in order to be unselfish. I can imagine no four
questions which a really advanced and incentive school of
young Catholic thinkers might more fruitfully discuss. But on
all five the "Modernist" cannot see an inch further than did
the owlish eyes of Herbert Spencer.22

Having made this protest against the spirit of Mr. Dell's

attack, I will deal briefly with the attack itself. A great deal of
it can be answered by repeating what it is that I maintain. I
never said or thought that Pagans had no pity; I never said or
heard of any Catholic in any age who did say or think so. I
never said that no social reforms had ever begun outside the
Church: though Mr. Dell does actually suggest the monstrous
misstatement that none have begun inside the Church. I never
said that the Church on earth is never found on the wrong
side of a purely political question; it often was and is. I never
said that the French Republic has no ground of complaint
against Catholics: though Mr. Dell, as I shall show, is
unconsciously guilty of a gigantic suppressio veri in that mat-
ter. I never suggested that heretics or heathens are empty of
ethical responsibility. In short, it is not I who say of my reli-
gious opponents that they have no consciences "of any kind."
The thing I do maintain, and am quite ready to maintain
for any length of time or against any number of opponents, is
this: That the Catholic creed is committed to the three great
rational and eternal roots of altruistic energy; and that none
of the other creeds now disputing its throne are committed to

25
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

them, while most are committed against them. The three

eternal intellectual roots of altruistic energy are these: First,
the principle of justice; that there is a moral law before which
men are equal, so that I ought to help my neighbour to his
rights. Second, the principle of charity; that I owe infinite
tenderness to any shape or kind of man, however unworthy or
useless to the State. Third, the principle of freewill; that I can
really decide to help my neighbour and am truly disgraced if I
do not do so. To this may be added the idea of a definite
judgment; that is, that the action will at some time terribly
matter to the helper and the helped. How, it is not necessary
to say, because it is self-evident that evolutionists or material-
ists as such are never pledged to these particular things and
generally pledged against them. An evolutionist, according to
many evolutionists, cannot believe in eternal justice; it is at
least perfectly plain that he need not believe in it. If a Catholic
ceases to believe in eternal justice, he ceases to be a Catholic.
A materialist, according to most materialists, cannot believe
in spiritual freedom and responsibility; it is at least perfectly
plain that he need not believe in it. I f a Catholic ceases to
believe in spiritual responsibility he ceases to be a Catholic. A
rationalist, according to most rationalists, cannot believe that
his justice or injustice will be definitely judged by justice itself;
at any rate, it is plain that he need not believe. I f a Catholic
does not believe he ceases to be a Catholic. An evolutionist
who calls on the superman to tread down pity like a weed,
does not in any way cease to be an evolutionist, he only ceases
to be a nice evolutionist. A materialist who declares all men
morally doomed and irresponsible, may be a little more of a
madman, but he is not an inch less of a materialist. I f an
evolutionist is just it is because he is a just man, but you can
demand some justice even from an unjust Catholic. The
Church does not assert that she has got better people than are
to be found elsewhere, but that such as they are, she has got
them. I do not say that free-thinkers are bound to be scoun-
drels; I say they are not bound to be anything. I do not say
that the Catholic lamb of mercy is more white or woolly or
energetic than many evolutionist lambs; I say it is in the ark.
And I say that the evolutionist lambs are being drowned vis-
ibly before my eyes. I am looking ahead; I am thinking of
how all this chaotic morality will turn out. I know what is
safe. I f the Church exists ten million years hence, amid alien
costumes and incredible architecture, I know that it will still
put the oppression of the poor among the five sins, crying
aloud for vengeance.
Chesterton s ÄngUcan Reaction to Modernism

That is the real chasm between Mr. Dell and me, and it is
too large to survey now; he thinks that humanitarianism and
equality, all that was good, in fact, in the French Revolution
is advancing at present; I think, or rather I know, that it is
dying. What we are looking at now is the back-wash of the
Revolution into every form of heathen pride and fear,
empires, race-wars, industrial slavery, and great tracts of pop-
ular pessimism. The struggle is not between Rome and Paris;
that is in comparison only a misunderstanding. The real
struggle is between that great European tradition of piety and
pity of which both Rome and Paris are centres, and that other
outer spirit of which Berlin is rather the centre, that which is
called the modern spirit with its idolatry of force, its material-
istic politics, and its open praise of evil. We are simply watch-
ing all that part of Europe which has gone back to heathen-
ism, rebuilding all the things which are natural to the heathen,
a talk of blood and heredity, a division by tribes and castes,
an Eastern conception of conquest, and a nightmare vision of
the universe. Only a savage, for instance, could talk as Zola^^
did about the hereditary doom of families; Christians and civ-
ilised men feel more free. I could give Mr. Dell twenty or
thirty examples of this modern relapse into chaos and old
night. I would refer him to his own favourite French rational-
ist, and ask him to read Le Crime de Sylvester Bonnard,
written at the beginning of a man's life, and then read the He
des Pingouins, at the crown and close of it. Heaven be with
you, Mr. Dell, it is not the Pope who disbelieves in the
Republic; it is the Republicans. I believe that the democratic
effort was worth while; but Anatole France does not, and I
have my doubts about Clemenceau.^^ Some people feel pity
for the poor; but that is not democracy. Many people feel a
dislike of authority; but that is not democracy. I hardly know
four men now alive who do like democracy, and most of them
are Catholics. I know one atheist who does not dislike the
populace. But this quarrel is much too big to settle systemati-
cally; and I think the shortest way of dealing with it will be to
take two sentences from Mr. Dell's article. Luckily they cover
two great sources of our growing hatred of democracy, the
pride of the artist and the pride of the scientist. Both use the
word "popular" as a term of abuse.
Now the first significant fragment is that in which Mr.
Dell says that I'm haunted by Nietzsche.26 I can imagine no
more depressing condition, and I hasten to assure Mr. Dell
that I am not haunted by Nietzsche. He seems to be an ordi-

27
Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis
Chesterton's AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

nary German Protestant Sophist, with a considerable literary

talent. It is not I , but the whole modern world that is haunted
with Nietzsche. Nietzsche kicks the Socialists; but the Social-
ists cling to Nietzsche. Every issue of The New Age, the best
SociaHst weekly paper, is fuH of SociaHsts adoring Nietzsche
or tenderly reproaching Nietzsche, or respectfully venturing to
differ from Nietzsche, or wildly entreating Nietzsche to alter
his opinions after the poor old boy is dead. I can say with
confidence that in the whole of that world which Mr. Dell
praises, the world of free-thought and sociological revolt, it
would be hard to find a club or a coterie or even an evening-
party in which Nietzsche is not mentioned with respect. And
win you kindly tell me any other society in the whole history
of Christendom in which a man who taught what Nietzsche
taught would be mentioned with respect? Nietzsche taught
that it was right to be hard, that it was holy to feel contempt,
that the weak must perish, "and people must help them," that
the sight of the mass of men is and ought to be disgusting,
and, above all, that Christianity was vile, not because (as Mr.
Dell fancies) it did not love the people, but because it did. The
practice of tyranny has been a national temptation to all men,
religious and irreligious. But what recorded race of men
would ever have taken this theory of tyranny in their mouths
and not spat it out again? Would the Jewish Sultan, would
the Roman stoic, would the mediaeval knight, or even the
southern slaveowner, have tolerated the bald creed that bru-
tality itself is good and misfortune a reason for destruction?
There have been many worlds in which tyranny was practised,
and some in which it was cynically palliated. But there is only
one world in which tyranny can be lyrically praised, praised
with delight merely because it is tyranny, and that is Mr.
Dell's world of modern enlightenment and inquiry.
That is the first example of how utterly their old human-
itarianism was given away among the heathen; and it
happens, by a most fortunate accident, that Mr. Dell has
given me the other case that clinches it. He has solemnly
referred me to Huxley'severlastingly quoted lecture on Evo-
lution and Ethics. He earnestly assures me that Huxley did
not approve of all men tearing each other like wild beasts. I
always felt this to be as comic a thing in a quiet way as has
occurred in the history of philosophy; that it really should
have been thought important, and not to say portentous, that
a nice old gentleman said that (after careful consideration) he
had come to the conclusion that evolution did not necessitate

29
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

his being a blackguard. He patiently explained that there was

a loophole; there was a point of view from which Darwin's
doctrine did not involve us in immediate oppression and
infamy. I am quite content to leave the case between Mr. Dell
and myself to the test he has himself invoked. I f you want to
judge how deep into all modern souls had been sunk the stain
of evolutionary cruelty, if you want to feel to what frightful
lengths millions were in their minds developing the Darwinian
thought, it ought to be enough to remember that Huxley's
decent defence of common morals was considered startling. It
was regarded by every one (including Mr. Dell) as a challenge,
and by many as a recantation. In what other society of men
born of women would it have been thought extraordinary that
a good old man should say that mercy and justice may be
retained? These two facts, selected by Mr. Dell himself, are
final for me. We live in an age without shape or parallel. We
are alone among men; for us mercy is a thing that one philo-
sopher dares to attack and which another philosopher only
just dares to defend.
Mr. Dell might differ from me about the degree and
danger of this collapse in the inner foundations of kindness.
But I do not think he would deny the thing altogether. I
think, with his sharp eye and ear, he must have felt the fifty
thousand forces which are introducing impudence, cruelty, or
craven panic into our literature and life. Since he knows this,
is it quite fair to offer, so carefully cut out in cardboard, one
half of the map of modern France? I dare say he has provoca-
tion; doubtless French Catholics, like other men, talk a great
deal of nonsense. I think as he does that the breach between
the Church and the Republic is tragic. I regret, as he does,
that clerics have played with royalism; though it is surely
nobler, like those Catholic clerics, to worship a king in exile
than like our Protestant clerics to worship only a king in
power. In any case, the French Republic is a splendid thing,
and I only wish that Mr. Dell were as keen for an English
Republic as he is for the French one. But knowing what he
knows (what every one knows who knows France), can he call
it just or even decent to talk to English Protestants as if the
French affair meant nothing but wicked priests oppressing
noble Republicans, each with one God and one wife? Will he
dare to deny that the Church speaks so far the plain truth
when she says that among her enemies are every lust and
every anarchist sophistry? Dare he print for Protestants one in
ten of the articles which he praises to Protestants? Dr. Hor-

30
Chesterton s AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

ton28 is to have the full fragrance of the anti-clerical move-

ment; why should Dr. Horton be deprived of the rich colours
and details of the anti-clerical caricatures? Dr. Clifford is told
that the French have driven the priests out of the schools; why
should he not hear that they have (in their own words) hunted
Jesus Christ out of the schools, as . . . you know what they
said. But no, you don't, of course; I was thinking for the
moment that we had a free press. I will concede that the
Church is used by landlords and political loungers; will Mr.
Dell say in cold blood that the Republic is not used by blas-
phemous pornographers and cosmopolitan usurers and spies?
If the Church stands, I will not say for Christianity, but for
chastity and chivalry and the historic home of man, will Mr.
Dell tell me that she has no reason to distrust the Revolution-
ists of modern France? I know that he will not.
That we shall be right in the long run if we feel the roots
of mercy inside Catholicism, and wrong in the long run if we
look for them outside, all history and reason convinces me.
Mr. Dell positively has to go back to the destruction of Jerus-
alem before he can find a real case of the Divine tradition
being improved by being departed from. He is far too well
educated to suppose that any of the heresies have ultimately
improved the Church. About the seat of this Catholic author-
ity I do not disguise from any one that I am still in some
doubt; and I agree much more with the high Anglicans than
the Roman Modernists. Nevertheless, I never felt so near to
Mr. Dell's communion as after I had read his attack on it.
And since, despite Mr. Dell's perverse ways, one cannot doubt
his fidelity to his Church, it will certainly be a great pleasure
to him to think that he has, even unconsciously, brought any
lamb so near his fold.
The remaining references to Modernism in Chesterton's uncol-
lected journalism require little detailed comment. His chief ire is
reserved for Modernist clerics within Anglicanism such as Dean
Inge29 and the appalling Bishop Barnes^o who were promoting the
eugenicist ideas which Chesterton had so long opposed. Much of his
other criticism of theological Modernism merges into criticism of cul-
tural modernity as such. After his reception into the Church in 1922,
he does make a final and summarising comment about the theologi-
cal Modernists in his Preface to Francis Woodlock's 1925 book.
Modernism and the Christian Church. Chesterton writes:
The Modernist has to be always talking about schools of
thought and stages of enlightenment, about people who have

31
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

read this and studied that, about understanding this, that and
the other in a particular sense, until we lose the very notion of
bringing his "simplified" theology to anybody as news, let
alone good news. Our complex theology is only complex
when we study it; it is simple when we see it. It can be seen as
a whole and loved like a person. The plainest peasant in the
smallest church sees it as a single thing, and the greatest
Catholic scholar still sees it as the same thing. But a hundred
straws split in a hundred ways are not one thing and never
will be; and are no more like it because some people thought
that a straw showed how the wind blew. The wind has already
changed.
But at the time that the Modernist crisis was winding to its end,
Chesterton was still an Anglican, and his final word on the subject is
found in the talk that he gave to a group of University students at
Cambridge in 1911.3» I n answer to a question about Father Tyrrell's
excommunication, Chesterton pointed out that he himself was a
member of the National Liberal Club, but " i f he continued to make
speeches which were inconsistent with Liberal principles, he could
have no objection in the abstract i f he were requested to resign his
membership." Being Chesterton, however, he does not end the matter
on that defensive note. His last word is one of ringing praise for the
papacy. " I can assure you," he tells the Cambridge students, "and I
would prove it to you if I had time, that the Popes have done a
hundred times more for Liberty than any of the Protestant Churches
ever have." Such is Chesterton's final comment as an Anglican about
Modernism.

1 William Henry Massingham (1860-1924) was successively Editor of the

Daily Chronicle, the Daily News and the Nation. He resigned the editorship of the
Daily Chronicle because of his opposition to the Boer War. During his brief edi-
torship of the Daily News in 1901, he recruited Chesterton, Belloc, and Bentley as
writers for that newspaper. In March 1907, he became the first Editor of the
Nation, a magazine that replaced the Speaker, a journal in which much of Chester-
ton's early writing had appeared.
2 Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911) was a popular Italian novelist and man of
letters. He was known for an idealistic rather than reaHstic portrayal of Hfe, and
for his satires of the Italian clerical world. A disciple of Antonio Rosmini, Fogaz-
zaro was, for a time, caught up in the Modernist movement, but he eventually
abandoned it.
3 Michael de la Bedoyere, The Life of Baron von Hügel (London, 1951),
p. 182.
4 Michael de la Bedoyere, The Life of Baron von Hügel, p. 182.

32

I
Chesterton s AngHcan Reaction to Modernism

5 G.K. Chesterton, "Of Sentimentalism and the Head and Heart," The
Church Socialist Quarterlv, January, 1909, pp. 12-15, and reprinted in the May,
1988 issue of the Chesterton Review, pp. 183-185.
6 Archibald Philip Primrose, Fifth Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929) was For-
eign Secretary in 1885 and Prime Minister in 1894-1895. Although he began
his political career as a Gladstonian Liberal, he later tried to combine the old
Liberalism with the new Imperialist ideas, and consequently broke with Glad-
stone.
7 Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), an Anglican theologian who, like John
Keble (1792-1866) and John Henry Newman (1801-1890), was a leader of the
Oxford Movement.
8 Charles Gore (1853-1932), one of the leaders of the Anglo-Catholic Move-
ment, was successively Bishop of Worcester, of Birmingham, and of Oxford.
Keenly interested in social theology, he was one of the founders, in 1889, of the
immensely influential Christian Social Union to which Chesterton belonged. In the
same year he published a highly controversial collection of essays under the title.
Lux Mundi. His own contribution to the book, entitled "The Holy Spirit and
Inspiration" was the most controversial of all the essays. Although Bishop Gore
was essentially orthodox, his essay presented views which seemed to be tinged with
Modernism.
9 Mandell Creighton (1834-1901) was an Anglican Bishop, first of Peter-
borough and then of London, and a noted historian whose best known work was
History of the Papacy (1887). He regarded the "appeal to sound learning" as the
distinctive mark of Anglicanism.
10 Robert Dell (1865-1940) was a journalist and controversialist in the Modern-
ist movement. A l l of the information about Dell mentioned in this article is
derived from his obituary in The Times of July 22, 1940. and from Alex R.
Vidler's A Variety of CathoHc Modernists (Cambridge, 1970).
11 Alex R. Vidier, A Variety of Catholic Modernists, p. 167.
12 The Church Socialist Quarterly was the journal of the Church Socialist
League founded in 1906 by radical Anglo-Catholics who regarded Henry Scott
Holland's Christian Social Union as insufficiently radical and the Guild of St.
Matthew as excessively Anglo-Catholic. After 1912. the journal returned to its old
name, which had been The Optimist, and became an organ of the Guild Socialist
Movement.
13 G.K. Chesterton, "Of Sentimentalism and the Head and Heart," The
Church Socialist Quarterly, January, 1909, pp. 12-15; reprinted in iht Chesterton
Review, May, 1988, pp. 183-185
14 Robert Dell, "Is Pity an Orthodox Virtue?" The Church Socialist Quarterlv,
April, 1909, pp. 109-116.
15 The Daily Mail was a popular daily newspaper, founded in 1896 by Alfred
Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) who in 1908 purchased The Times. Chester-
ton regarded Harmsworth with contempt and his papers as the vehicle for a man
who essentially had no ideas of his own.
16 William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923) was an anti-Socialist author of satires
and novels of discussion. He was a leading spokesman for Conservative ideas and
argued against undogmatic belief. He had family connections with the Oxford
Movement through his great-uncle, Hurrell Froude, who was a close friend of
Newman. Mallock died a Roman Catholic.

33
 Chesterton & The Modernist Crisis

17 Maria Monk (1817-1850) was a woman who achieved notoriety for a book
describing the life that she allegedly lived in a Quebec convent from which she
claimed to have escaped. The fraud was exposed by William Leete Stone (1790¬
1844) in a book entitled The Lying Nun (1836). The name, Maria Monk, has
become synonymous with anti-Catholic bigotry. Chesterton, in a phrase which
Maisie Ward cites as an example of his terrible, but rarely used, power of invec-
tive, called her "a dirty half-wit."
18 November 5, 1605 was the date supposed to have been set for the alleged
"Gunpowder Plot." Guy Fawkes and a group of Roman Catholics were accused of
planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
19 Dr. Clifford was the leader of the Nonconformists during Chesterton's early
journalistic career. He led the opposition to the new Education Bill of 1902. and
Chesterton disputed with him about it in the Daily News. In Biography for
Beginners (1901), Chesterton writes of him as follows:
Dr. Clifford
And 1 have differed
He disapproves of gin:
1 disapprove of sin.

20 Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906) was a well-known French critic and his-

torian of literature who was also a controversialist. In 1894 he became Editor of
the influential Revue des Deux Mondes. It was said that his fundamental outlook
altered as a result of an audience with Pope Leo X I I I in 1894. Although, strictly
speaking, never an apologist for Catholicism, after this meeting with the Pope,
Brunetiere did speak in support of Catholic ideas. Like Chesterton, he defended a
Church of which he was not yet a member. He did become a Catholic on his death
bed.
21 Joseph Hocking (1860-1937) was a Methodist minister and author of popu-
lar religious fiction some of which had a decidedly anti-Catholic flavour.
22 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was an English philosopher who argued for an
extreme form of economic and social individualism. He advocated a naturalistic
and "scientific" view of the universe in opposition to a religious one. In The Victor-
ian Age in Literature, Chesterton writes of "an indefinable greatness" about him
"in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations." Chesterton also said of him,
"[Spencer's] simplicity expressed itself in politics, in carrying the Victorian worship
of liberty to almost ridiculous lengths. . . . He tried to solve the problem of the
State by eliminating the State from it."
23 Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the most popular novelist in France in the late
nineteenth century. He is the exponent of naturalism in its extreme form. In his
1898 Taccuse, he defended Captain Dreyfus who had been falsely convicted of
treason.
24 Anatole France, pseudonym of Anatole Francois Thibeault (1844-1924),
was a novelist and literary critic who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1921. His writings are noted for their pervasive religious scepticism and for their
subversive social criticism. The novels Chesterton refers to, Le Crime de Sylvester
Bonnard and LTle des Pingouins were published in 1881 and 1908. Anatole France
gave an oration at the funeral of Emile Zola.

34
Chesterton's AngUcan Reaction to Modernism

25 Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) was a French politician who led the

extreme Left in the Chamber of Deputies. He was Premier of France from 1906 to
1909, and again at the close of the First World War and at the time of the Ver-
sailles Peace Conference, 1917-1919. During the persecution of the Church, early
in the century, Clemenceau supported Emile Combes and his anti-Catholic
measures.
26 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a German philosopher whose most popular
work was Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1884). His ideas were promoted in Eng-
land through A.R. Orage's influential Socialist weekly. The New Age.
27 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was a writer who was said to have had a
decisive influence on modern English thought. Huxley, more than Darwin, was the
popularizer of the theory of evolution. His Romanes Lecture, "Ethics and Evolu-
tion" was given in 1893.
28 Robert Forman Horton (1855-1934) was a prominent and highly respected
leader of the Nonconformists. He was a Congregationalist minister and author,
educated at New College, Oxford. In 1888, he published a book entitled Inspira-
tion and the Bible.
29 William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) was an English theologian and Dean of St.
Paul's. He was known for such scholarly works as Christian Mysticism (1899) and
The Philosophy of Plotinus (1918). Chesterton frequently criticised Inge's Modern-
ist theological views and his support for eugenics.
30 Ernest William Barnes (1874-1953) was the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham
and a leader in the Modernist movement. He was a fierce opponent of Catholic
ideas within Anglicanism and he aggressively promoted eugenics in its ugliest
forms. His book. The Rise of Christianity (1947) was condemned by the Arch-
bishops of Canterbury and of York. When Bishop Barnes described St. Francis of
Assisi as dirty and verminous, Chesterton wrote in reply his verse entitled "A
Broad Minded Bishop Rebukes the Verminous St. Francis":
If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea
There still seems need of such strange charity.
Seeing he is, for all his gay goodwill.
Bitten by funny little creatures still.
31 G.K. Chesterton's address to the Cambridge Heretics Club, entitled "The
Future of Religion" and printed in the Chesterton Review, August, 1986, p. 298.

35