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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Chesterton contrast pantheism and action?
(a) Pantheism looks only at the world; action looks also at the supernatural.
(b) Pantheism is completely inactive and therefore opposes action.
(c) Pantheism says one thing is as good as another; action chooses one thing as best.
(d) Pantheism entails all possibilities; action is exclusive in its choice.

2. What does Chesterton call the worst religion of all?
(a) The religion that worships multiple gods.
(b) The religion that debases a man.
(c) The religion that worships the god inside.
(d) The religion of the Christian God.

3. Why does Chesterton say that a man is bewildered when asked to summarize his belief in something?
(a) If everything he knows supports that belief.
(b) If he must defend it to people who oppose him.
(c) If he has only scattered evidence for that belief.
(d) If he has no evidence for his belief other than his desire to believe.

4. Chesterton notes a startling difference between Christian and Buddhist art. What is this difference?
(a) Whether the people are predominantly young or old.
(b) Whether the scene is set indoors or outdoors.
(c) Whether the people's eyes are open or shut.
(d) Whether the colors are bright or dim.

5. Why does Chesterton call suicide the greatest sin?
(a) Because it cuts off the future.
(b) Because man is acting like God.
(c) Because it takes a life God had given.
(d) Because, in the eyes of one man, it kills the whole world.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Chesterton's early progression through religious mindsets?

2. Chesterton names four standards by which people try to establish the ideals of equality and inequality. What is his opinion of the fourth standard?

3. What people, in their interactions with women, does Chesterton call stupid?

4. How has western religion interacted with the idea of social organisms?

5. Why did a typical nineteenth-century man not believe in Christ's resurrection, according to Chesterton?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is it better to be a progressive, according to Chesterton's understanding of the term? Why should man rebel against the new rather than against the old?

2. What is the first time that Chesterton felt he had stumbled onto a path that was familiar to some? How did Christianity mirror his own thoughts?

3. Why are liberals not free thinkers? What argument is made in Chapter VIII, The Romance of Orthodoxy, about confusion within language?

4. The Church holds to some strict doctrines regarding man and his actions. Why is she so strict? Is it possible for her to swerve in her beliefs?

5. As Chesterton shows in Chapter VI, The Paradoxes of Christianity, what is Christianity's view of man? How can it hold to this argument?

6. If Nature does improve man through impersonal means, as Chesterton claims, what must happen? What is happening in reality?

7. Christianity holds that any man who depends on a luxurious life is fallen and corrupt. What effect does this belief have on the believer, according to Chesterton?

8. Why does Chesterton detest the religion of the Inner Light, of looking within oneself for God? What relation does this abhorrence have to Christianity?

9. What does Chesterton say is the most sensible ideal for nature? Is this a valid ideal? Why or why not?

10. As Chesterton argues, why does love seek individuality and personality? Is this true only in relation to man or also in relation to God?

(see the answer keys)

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