Orthodoxy

THIS book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the
positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of
the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticised current
philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is
an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and
therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back
upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing
his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be
sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both
cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an
explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of
how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore
arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It
deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations
and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly
satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting
to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated
and surprising coincidence. Gilbert K. Chesterton.