The Ball and the Cross
1909
The Ball and the Cross
1909
Two men want to kill each other over God. That is the absurd, magnificent premise of Chesterton's 1909 novel, and it unfolds with the kind of glorious insanity only this writer could pull off. Evan MacIan, a Jacobite Catholic with a sword and absolute certainty, and James Turnbull, an atheist socialist with a newspaper and equally absolute certainty, meet in a moonlit garden and immediately determine to duel to the death over the existence of God. But here is the twist that makes the novel sing: the entire modern world conspires to stop them. Police arrest them, doctors hospitalize them, friends intervene, trains fail to run, and the dull machinery of polite society does everything in its power to prevent two men from fighting over something as embarrassing as religion. As MacIan and Turnbull chase each other across England in increasingly farcical circumstances, something unexpected happens. Their shared obsessions bind them together. They become friends. The Ball and the Cross is Chesterton at his best: laughing at the absurd certainty of ideologues while taking absolutely seriously the questions they pose.
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“The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Why shouldn’t we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren’t important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn’t any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn’t there be a quarrel about a word? If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I””
— G. K. Chesterton
“The cross cannot be defeated. For it is Defeat.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“Then, what," asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower, "what is the difference between Christ and Satan?""It is quite simple," replied the Highlander. "Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it.""Does it make much odds?" asked the free-thinker."It makes all the odds," said the other. "One of them wanted to go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a devil can only be humbled.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were afraid of her.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“I want to be taken to a madhouse,” said Turnbull distinctly, giving the direction with a sort of precision. “I want to go back to exactly the same lunatic asylum from which I came.” “Why?” asked the unknown. “Because I want a little sane and wholesome society,” answered Turnbull.””
— G. K. Chesterton
“For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.””
— G. K. Chesterton
