‘I felt in my bones, first, that this world could not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false.
Second, I came to feel as if magic must have meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it. There was something personal in the world—as in a work of art—and whatever it meant, it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite if its defects—such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint—we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed also an obedience to whatever made us.
And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe had save his goods—he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt, and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.’
(GK Chesterton: Orthodoxy p.102 – Unicorn Books 1939)
