Words Worth Noting - January 19, 2025

“We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of man. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.”

G.K. Chesterton in “The God in the Cave” in The Everlasting Man, quoted in “GKC on Scripture • Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023).