It is thus that he treats the question of faith all along the line.  If you are going to be a Christian, or even fairly to judge Christianity, you must accept the whole of Christ’s teaching, with all its contradictions, paradoxes, and the rest.  Some men select his charity, others his social teaching, others his moral relentlessness, and so on, and reject all else.  Each one of these aspects of the Christian faith is doubtless very interesting, but none of them by itself is an adequate representation of Christ.  “They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness.  They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.”

The characteristic word for Mr. Chesterton and his attitude to life is vitality.  He has been seeking for human nature, and he has found it at last in Christian idealism.  But having found it, he will allow no compromise in its acceptance.  It is life he wants, in such wholeness as to embrace every element of human nature.  And he finds that Christianity has quickened and intensified life all along the line.  It is the great source of vitality, come that men might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.  He finds an essential joy and riot in creation, a “tense and secret festivity.”  And Christianity corresponds to that riot.  “The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”  It has let loose the wandering, masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or another of them shall run wild, but all of them together.  The ideal of wholeness which Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass of theories, but a world of living things.  Christ will put a check on none of the really genuine elements in human nature.  In Him there is no compromise.  His love and His wrath are both burning.  All the separate elements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimate way of peace and safety.  The various colours of life must not be mixed but kept distinct.  The red and white of passion and purity must not be blended into the insipid pink of a compromising and consistent respectability.  They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazing Cross of St. George on its shield of white.

Chaucer’s “Daisy” is one of the greatest conceptions in all poetry.  It has stood for centuries as the emblem of pure and priceless womanhood, with its petals of snowy white and its heart of gold.  Mr. Chesterton once made a discovery that sent him wild with joy—­

     “Then waxed I like the wind because of this,
       And ran like gospel and apocalypse
       From door to door, with wild, anarchic lips,
     Crying the very blasphemy of bliss.”