How do we respond to modernity?

Probably my favorite Chesterton novel is the hilarious and pointed The Flying Inn, a book replete with doggerel, bits of poetry strung together by the characters as they run amuck through England, bearing the last pub on its wild crusade against the sober influence of modernity. Among those poems is The Rolling English Road, a wonderful ditty with a poignant final verse, all the more poignant in the context of the book. Today I’d like to pull ideas out of the final verse, as I see them, and lay them out before you in answer to the question of: how do we respond to modernity?

Verse 4 begins with this couplet:

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

The world the singer faces is the world of modernity, of strict insanity, of rational mysticism, of joylessness which knows only pleasure and at its best eschews even that. Against this, we have a temptation to retreat back down the years, to pull up the old doctrines and dust off the old chants. Often, these have power still. Yet, all too easily we find ourselves merely aping that “ancient rage,” and we realize that all the follies which were of old still cling to the old, a shame to our age. Those were the mistakes which gave us this world we rail against, and so we, with the singer, must look on….

Mere conservation has failed, an ancient rage and a new shame, a thing our foe is already inoculated against, being its rebellious son. The next couplet presents the alternative:

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

We cannot simply turn back; nor, when it comes down to it, can we turn our backs on what has passed, not completely as modernity does, as sin’s rebellion does, whether by denying or by perverting it. We still must walk a singular path; we still must seek out the good and wholesome things. Even death itself, the final transition, must be to us known in light of where we come from. The past is not the answer in full; it has failed that test already. It is, however, where we come from, and it presents us with great value to carry forward.

Rather than mere conservation, we must choose to clear out our eyes and our ears, making certain our understanding of what came before and what will come in future and what we face right now. We must determine what of the past we preserve and what we reform and what we destroy. We must abhor illusion and falsehood, however pleasant; all ‘drugs,’ chemical and theological, will be deadly to our work. We cannot revive the ancient joy as it was (not that it ever quite died), but we can walk again the path which leads to it (to God).

But, if you note, the speaker makes clear the destination ahead: “the decent inn of death.” Death is not here to be feared, but a final couplet remains which sets that relationship in context, for death, however much a turn towards rest (for the Christian), is not our goal. The final lines read:

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green

The world is not so bleak as modernity makes it, nor is the struggle hopeless. We have still victory before us, though some do not see it, though some find their path ends quickly at that decent inn, at the home beyond. And all of us, if we stay the course (the course of faith in God, mind you), eventually find Paradise “by way of Kensal Green,” a cemetery of the period. But along the way, we have much to do and much to rejoice in. The grass is green; our blood is red; His sword rises triumphant. And so I’ll turn to a different and even greater poet for conclusion:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;  whom shall I fear?...
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27:1,13-14

God bless