Mr. H. G. Wells brought out some time ago an Outline of History, the object of which was to deny the Christian religion.
I examined this production for the benefit of my co-religionists in the columns of certain Catholic papers. I did full justice to Mr. Wells’s talents as a writer, but I exposed his ill acquaintance with modern work on Biology, with early Christian writing and tradition, with Christian doctrine itself: and, in general, his incompetence.
Stung by this exposure, Mr. Wells has just brought out against me a small pamphlet, under the title of Mr. Belloc Objects to the “Outline of History.” It is an excited, popular, crude attack, full of personal insult and brawling, and ample proof that he is hit. But it is singularly weak in argument, confused in reply, and, as I shall show in a moment, shirks nine-tenths of the very damaging criticism which I directed against his book.
That book denies a creative God. There is no God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. The Incarnation is a myth; the Resurrection a falsehood; the Eucharist a mummery.
Probably Mr. Wells is thus infuriated, not only at being exposed, but also because he cannot understand how such an assault upon religious truth should possibly provoke resentment; yet I think I can explain the thing to him by a parable.
Supposing (it is mere hypothesis) that a man were to attack the Royal Family, and His Majesty in particular, jeering at the functions which monarchy performs for the State and holding up the King of England to contempt.
Mr. Wells would be the first to admit that a man so misbehaving himself would receive very hard knocks indeed. He would be called severely to account on all sides. It would be said that his spite arose from some personal grievance against the Great; that he thus relieved his soreness at feeling himself socially neglected, and so on. He might justify himself as a martyr in the cause of political duty, but he would be a fool if he did not look out for squalls.
Now the great and fundamental truths of the Christian religion are still sacred to quite a number of Mr. Wells’s fellow-citizens, including myself. Our attachment to them is at least as strong as the loyalty of the average Englishman to the Royal Family; and if he attacks them by way of History—making out that History disproves the Christian religion—then it is not, as he seems to imagine, an outrage; but, on the contrary, a natural and inevitable consequence that he should be taken to task, and his competence for writing history severely examined.
I propose to reply in this pamphlet, not because I have any intention of being drawn into a slanging match with a writer who is my superior in this form of art, but because no challenge to Truth must be allowed to pass unheeded. So far from imitating Mr. Wells, I shall take care when I publish—as I do in a few weeks—my whole book, entitled A Companion to Mr. Wells’s “Outline of History,” to go carefully over my text and to cut out anything which could be construed into mere personal attack; though I shall preserve, of course, and even add to, the due and often severe criticism which Mr. Wells deserves for pretending to teach others on the basis of his own most insufficient instruction.
I should, no doubt, greatly increase the circulation of this little pamphlet of mine were I to season it with those offensive references to personal habits and appearance which are now fashionable between contemporaries. But I do not aim at any large circulation, beyond that reasonable amount which will secure my being heard by the people whose attention is worth having.