The Everlasting Man

2014 Reprint of Original 1925 edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The Everlasting Man is a work of Christian apologetics first published in 1925. Chesterton intended it to some extent as a deliberate rebuttal to H. G. Wells The Outline of History disputing Wells portrayals of human life and civilization as a seamless development from animal life and of Jesus Christ as merely another charismatic figure. Whereas Orthodoxy detailed Chestertons own spiritual journey in this book he tries to illustrate the spiritual journey of humanity or at least of Western civilization. C. S. Lewis credited The Everlasting Man with baptizing his intellect much as George MacDonalds writings had baptized his imagination so as to make him more than half-converted well before he could bring himself to embrace Christianity. In a 1950 letter to Sheldon Vanauken Lewis calls the book the best popular apologetic I know and in 1947 he wrote to Rhonda Bodle: the [very] best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chestertons The Everlasting Man. The book was also cited by The Christian Century in a list of 10 books that most shaped [Lewis] vocational attitude and philosophy of life.