The Spider's Web of Deceit That Paralyzes the Spirit

In Richard Reinsch's excellent article on Whittaker Chambers "Still Witnessing: The Enduring Relevance of Whittaker Chambers" he highlights this paragraph from Chambers' autobiography Witness, p. 83.

"What I had been fell from me like dirty rags. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind—the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul and its birthright in that mystery on which mere knowledge falters and shatters at every step. If I had rejected only Communism, I would have rejected only one political expression of the modern mind, the most logical because the most brutal in enforcing the myth of man’s material perfectibility."

Chambers' is exposing the spiritual roots of the rebellion called "Modernity," which go deeper than the rational, historical, philosophical or political roots.