The Ball and the Cross – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The story begins with a theological discussion in an airship, whose owner, Lucifer, nearly runs it against the ball and the cross which surmount St. Paul’s, London. Here he leaves the other occupant of the ship, an old hermit, who appears again at the end of the story. Then the reader begins to follow the adventures of two Scotchmen, Maclan, the romantic highlander and Catholic, and Turnbull, the rational lowlander and atheist. Because the latter has spoken disrespectfully of the Virgin, the former challenges him to fight, and the story becomes the record of their attempt to do so, in spite of the interference of a world which is too indifferent to either religion or atheism to allow a conflict for such causes.
The Ball and the Cross
Format: Paperback
The Ball and the Cross.
ISBN: 9783849678449
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Summary of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (from Wikipedia):
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936), better known as G. K. Chesterton, was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is often referred to as the “prince of paradox”. Time magazine has observed of his writing style: “Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.”
Chesterton is well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an “orthodox” Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, his “friendly enemy”, said of him, “He was a man of colossal genius.” Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.
(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)
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