The way and the light

"Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. . . .  How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages?  The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them."

     G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy:  the romance of faith (New York:  Image, Doubleday, 1990 [1908]), 147 ("IX.  Authority and the adventurer").