"Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break." (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

* * *

The Methuselahite

I saw in a newspaper paragraph the other day the following entertaining anddeeply philosophical incident. A man was enlisting as a soldier atPortsmouth, and some form was put before him to be filled up, common, Isuppose, to all such cases, in which was, among other things, an inquiryabout what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the manwrote down the word "Methuselahite." Whoever looks over such papers must, Ishould imagine, have seen some rum religions in his time; unless the Army isgoing to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he could not"place" Methuselahism among what Bossuet called the variations ofProtestantism. He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and tendenciesof the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The soldier repliedthat it was his religion "to live as long as he could."

Now, considered as an incident in the religious history of Europe, thatanswer of that soldier was worth more than a hundred cartloads of quarterlyand monthly and weekly and daily papers discussing religious problems andreligious books. Every day the daily paper reviews some new philosopher whohas some new religion; and there is not in the whole two thousand words ofthe whole two columns one word as witty or as wise as that word"Methuselahite." The whole meaning of literature is simply to cut a longstory short; and that is why our modern books of philosophy are never literature. That soldier had in him the very soul of literature; he was oneof the great phrase-makers of modern thought, like Victor Hugo or Disraeli.He found one word that defines the paganism of to-day.

Henceforward, when the modern philosophers come to me with their newreligions (and there is always a kind of queue of them waiting all the waydown the street) I shall anticipate their circumlocutions and be able to cutthem short with a single inspired word. One of them will begin, "The NewReligion, which is based upon that Primordial Energy in Nature...""Methuselahite," I shall say sharply; "good morning." "Human Life," anotherwill say, "Human Life, the only ultimate sanctity, freed from creed anddogma..." "Methuselahite!" I shall yell. "Out you go!" "My religion isthe Religion of Joy," a third will explain (a bald old man with a cough andtinted glasses), "the Religion of Physical Pride and Rapture, and my...""Methuselahite!" I shall cry again, and I shall slap him boisterously on theback, and he will fall down. Then a pale young poet with serpentine hairwill come and say to me (as one did only the other day): "Moods andimpressions are the only realities, and these are constantly and whollychanging. I could hardly therefore define my religion..." "I can," Ishould say, somewhat sternly. "Your religion is to live a long time; andif you stop here a moment longer you won't fulfill it."

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.We have had the sophist who defends cruelty, and calls it masculinity. Wehave had the sophist who defends profligacy, and calls it the liberty of theemotions. We have had the sophist who defends idleness, and calls it art.It will almost certainly happen--it can almost certainly be prophesied--thatin this saturnalia of sophistry there will at some time or other arise asophist who desires to idealize cowardice. And when we are once in thisunhealthy world of mere wild words, what a vast deal there would be to sayfor cowardice! "Is not life a lovely thing and worth saving?" the soldierwould say as he ran away. "Should I not prolong the exquisite miracle ofconsciousness?" the housekeeper would say as he hid under the table. "Aslong as there are roses and lilies on the earth shall I not remain there?"would come the voice of the citizen from under the bed. It would be quiteas easy to defend the coward as a kind of poet and mystic as it has been, inmany recent books, to defend the emotionalist as a kind of poet and mystic,or the tyrant as a kind of poet and mystic. When the last grand sophistryand morbidity is preached in a book or on a platform, you may depend upon itthere will be a great stir among the little people who live among books andplatforms. There will be a new great Religion, the Religion ofMethuselahism: with pomps and priest and altars. Its devout crusaders willvow themselves in thousands with a great vow to live long. But there is onecomfort: they won't.

For, indeed, the weakness of this worship of mere natural life (which is acommon enough creed to-day) is that it ignores the paradox of courage andfails in its own aim. As a matter of fact, no men would be killed quickerthan the Methuselahites. The paradox of courage is that a man must be alittle careless of his life even in order to keep it. And in the very caseI have quoted we may see an example of how little the theory ofMethuselahism really inspires our best life. For there is one riddle inthat case which cannot easily be cleared up. If it was the man's religionto live as long as he could, why on earth was he enlisting as a soldier?