day no. 15,886: when pagans still were men

Though I give this land to Our Lady,
That helped me in Athelney,
Though lordlier trees and lustier sod
And happier hills hath no flesh trod          
Than the garden of the Mother of God          
Between Thames side and the sea,

I know that weeds shall grow in it
Faster than men can burn;
And though they scatter now and go,
In some far century, sad and slow,
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.

They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands.

Not with the humour of hunters
Or savage skill in war,
But ordering all things with dead words,
Strings shall they make of beasts and birds,
And wheels of wind and star.

They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred's days,
When pagans still were men.

-- G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Unbelievers and believers used to have more in common. Pagans knew enough to know that they were looking for answers. In that, they and the Christians agreed. Life had a meaning somewhere out there and we are all obligated to obey whoever it turned out to be and whatever it is they wanted from us. They disagreed as to who or what it was, but agreed on the premise that there must be a who and a what in order for everything else to hold together.

C.S Lewis' Christmas Sermon for Pagans emphasizes the same sentiment as Chesterton does here. Give me a good ol' fashioned pagan any day compared to what we have now. The intelligentsia of the enlightened modern man refuses to look up for answers. While the old fashioned unbelievers saw animals in the stars, they at least were looking in the right direction. Modern unbelief doesn't only refuse to believe in the one, true God, but fails to believe or take the time to consciously concoct an alternative. That doesn't mean they don't have a belief system, but highlights the fact that they don't know that they even hold to one.

"The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas." 

-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

The problem with modern man isn't that he has become modern, but that he is no longer a man.