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INTELLECTUAL SOMERSAULTERS,

Mr. Hilairo Belloo and Mr. C. F. G. Masterman aro the subjects of a spirited article by Mr. B. Mathews in tho August number of tho "Young Man." In discussing tho "intellectual soinersaulters" in Fleet Street, Mr. _ Chesterton is, naturally, drawn into tho article, and the religious attitude of the trio is thus outlined:— "Ch-ostertan, Bolloc, and Masterman all belong to the Church militant. Belloo and Chesterton aro riotously, happily religious, tho living incarnation of Stevenson's belief that— The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure wo should all b'o as happy as kings. Those two galloped into a world in which a conspicuously wooden-headed atheism and a dull and immoral decadence had terrified tho religious and made the Churches tromble. Christianity was cautiously on tho defensive. But they boisterously charged on tho materialist army, with fountain pons couched as lances, shouting and laughing sheer into tho ranks of the enemy. If they win, 'Glory bo to God'; and if they go down— well, they go down singing." Mr. Masterman, however, will havo none of tho Toseato optimism of his two friends, and though ho shares their liato of the dull decencies and conventionalities of religion, religion is to him "a tiling of ardours and agonies, rather than of joio de vivro. To him 'tlio ultimate' tragedy of history, at which tho sun veiled his face, and the pillars of tho earth were shaken, was necessary in order that humanity might bo able to cherish for nineteen disordered centuries tho desperate . hope that God is Love.' Ho cries out on the cruel callousness of civilisation, declaring, as ho did in ono of his brilliant speeches at tho PanAnglican Congross, that 'fifteen per cent, is very agreeable, but it is of tho naturo of sin.'" And that Mr. Masterman's pessimism extends to subjects other than religious may bo inferred from the statement that ho is "fascinated by the awful tragedy which ho foreseos aa tho inevitable ond of tho modorn city,"

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19080919.2.76

Bibliographic details

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 306, 19 September 1908, Page 12

Word Count
336

INTELLECTUAL SOMERSAULTERS, Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 306, 19 September 1908, Page 12

INTELLECTUAL SOMERSAULTERS, Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 306, 19 September 1908, Page 12

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