The Dregs of Puritanism

By: G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: John Paton

In 1917, G.K. Chesterton published an essay in response to an English minister’s objection to people sending cigarettes to British soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I, titled "The Dregs of Puritanism".

He writes that a large number of young men were being hurt by shells, bullets, fever, hunger and horror of hope deferred. The “good reverend”, however, was anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes. Chesterton asked the clergyman who would try to enforce the prevention of cigarettes being sent to the front. He added that historically, some Puritans could read well, think clearly, and write great literature, for example John Milton, but that modern Puritans could do none of the above.

He stated that modern Puritans could mention Milton and good literary translations of the Bible, but that none of the modern Puritans had read any of those titles. He blasted the minister’s lack of imaginative proportion as “a sort of towering blasphemy.”

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