Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal.
When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay;
Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns, the way
Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in palm and side,
The vinegar-heavy sponge, the flowers by Kedron stream.
The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all.
Shall it be a religion or shall it be Christ? Shall it be churchianity or shall it be Jesus Christ? Shall it be pride or shall it be humility in Jesus Christ?
I have come to deal with principles. I have only to preach that God comes again and again, and that He came in India as Krishna, Rama, and Buddha, and that He will come again. It can almost be demonstrated that after each 500 years the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ.
Buddha called himself 'The Enlightened One' and Jesus called himself 'The Son of God'. To me the term 'World-Teacher' is of as little importance as 'The Son of God' or 'The Enlightened One'.
A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.
One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. ... I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.
I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity.
The greatest gift a church can receive is to have a group of families who take their responsibilitie s with such Christian seriousness that they are willing to completely alter their lifestyle to raise up disciples for Jesus Christ.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.
It is regrettable that a Dostoyevsky did not live near this most interesting of all decadents (Jesus Christ) - I mean someone who would have known how to sense the very stirring charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the sickly, and the childlike.
We are all making a crown for Jesus out of these daily lives of ours, either a crown of golden, divine love, studded with gems of sacrifice and adoration, or a thorny crown, filled with the cruel briars of unbelief, or selfishness, and sin.