G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man with Joseph Pearce 

Great lecture 💚

Very enjoyable and educational

GKC - where to begin? I find it difficult to answer this question as there is so much Chesterton and so many different people. Chesterton said of Catholicism that no two people enter it from the same angle. The same for GKC’s writings. If you love mysteries, beginning with Father Brown may seem like good advice, but there are mystery lovers who haven’t liked Father Brown until they’ve read his apologetics. If you like literature or literary biographies, his works on Dickens or Browning or the Victorian Age are wonderful, but you won’t capture the fullness of GKC’s joy in them. Hagiography lovers may start with his works on St. Francis and St. Aquinas, yet without having studied these Saints well prior to coming to them, the glory a Medieval Philosopher like Etienne Gilson saw in them will be missed, and I would not want a first step into GKC to be in any way discouraging of further exploration. Orthodoxy is wonderful! My daughter read it with a questionmark in her brow, not able to enter into it well. So, strange as it may seem, I think essay books like The Well and the Shallows, All Things Considered, and even weekly material from The Illustrated London News can give more of the flavor of Gilbert’s intoxicating wit, humor, joy, and brilliant snippets of writing that show his personality. For once you meet him, it is so very hard not to love him, that the work it will take in his other volumes will be like deeper conversations with a friend rather than feeling like a task to undertake. Much more like that perambulating walk Pearce described because you are walking with a beloved friend. I read The Everlasting Man because Lewis recommended it, and I saw some value, but was not understanding much of the depth of what Chesterton was saying because I had not yet returned to the Catholicism of my youth. Upon reading Newman and contemplating a return the to Catholic Church, I stumbled across Chesterton’s “The Thing: Why I am a Catholic” in a university library. Certain lines from it struck as answering some of the questions I had at that moment and as I walked out of the library contemplating the verse, I said a quick prayer to God for an answer. I received a miraculous sign from God that I simply could not deny, and I returned to Rome. After immersing myself in the Catechism, receiving the graces of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, asking for intercessory prayers and undergoing the change of mindset that becoming a Catholic entails, I returned to The Everlasting Man and the mythical elements and earthly realities touched in such a way as to break my heart with an overwhelming fear that melted into a joyous laughter through tears at the love of God found in Christ’s Incarnation. Just this week, a conversation touching on this issue of the mythical and the physical realities took place on RU-vid, and I recommend The Everlasting Man in the comments to Dr. Jordan Peterson, who may find himself converted shortly. If interested, here is the video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2rAqVmZwqZM.html

What an exceptional speaker! Thank you again

Great stuff!!!

Chesterton was a genius. A man of men in writing, a noble master of a trade often shamed in his age. Regarding evolution, I suspect there are larger cycles than we know. It is a bit embarrassing or inconvenient like realising the annual cycle effects your dog when it is suddenly in heat. I suspect the missing links are like seasons, on a mesmerising scale. Turtles leave fewer fossils than they ought to have because we have periods when they evolve them quicker. So the 'scientists' read deep history wrongly (as Chesterton rightly warns them) because they don't know it. God is ancient beyond conceiving and still has the mastery over modern humans.

Where can I watch the second lecture, please?

Was secound part of this lecture recorded? If so, when can I find it?

H G Well had a lover named Margaret Sanger.

Renee Girard