Dale Alquist is back with us today. He is head of the Chesterton Society and a renowned expert on all things

Chestertonian. There is a new edition of Chesterton's book, The Everlasting Man, which Dale has

edited and introduced, is here to explain. Welcome. Welcome, Dale. We're on a first name basis now.

Welcome, Dale. God bless you, Mark. Thank you. Great to be with you.

Now, you call this book Chestrace's masterpiece. How is it relative to his other works in the corpus?

Well, one of the points I make in the book is that he had more than one masterpiece. Right.

He had several masterpieces,

and so we could have said a guide to one of G.K. Chesterton's masterpieces, but that,

it just doesn't have the same ring to it, Mark. True. But it is a masterful study.

It is indeed. A hefty book. You give the book a primaryful study. It is indeed.

A hefty book.

You give the book a primary intention, and that is to get people, quote, to see Christianity for the first time.

What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what comes with Chesterton's opening chapter that too many people are too close to Christianity to see it, and they have to back up far enough away from it to see it.

It's as if he makes the comparison to the hills in England that have big chalk drawings on them that are

ancient and they can't really be seen except from a distance if you're right on top of the chalk

drawing you don't you don't see the figure that you're sitting on and so his point about

Christianity is too many people are too close to it and all they know about it is the one thing that affects them that they're close to, and they don't see Christianity in its entirety.

And they're reacting against that one thing, and they are usually rejected Christianity because of the only close contact they have with it.

So what Chesterner does in the book is he gets us to back up

way back to see not only all of Christianity, but the whole history of the world. He takes us through

B.C. and A.D. All right. Give us the genesis of the book.

When, where, and why did Chesterton write it?

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