Christ-likeness

“ Because the one point of unlikeness destroys the whole to you. Just so when any Christian presents himself before Christ it is not the points of likeness, supposing there are any, which strike his conscience—it is the remaining points of difference that inevitably strike him, and so he is urged on and on from one degree of proficiency to another until the process is completed, because there is no point at which a man has made a sufficient attainment in the likeness of Christ. ”

“ And the transformation is to be into His likeness who is the pattern of all perfection. We must be moulded after the same type. There are two types possible for us: this world; Jesus Christ. We have to make our choice which is to be the headline after which we are to try to write. ‘They that make them are like unto them.’ Men resemble their gods; men become more or less like their idols. What you conceive to be desirable you will more and more assimilate yourselves to. Christ is the Christian man's pattern ”

“ And through the millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect, and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and the likeness to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite Beauty. ”

“ And I could but answer No—for to be a Christian is to be Christ-like.
"As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." This is the divine standard. "Ye must be born again," leaves to us no latitude of interpretation. There must be a death of the old, natural, selfish loves, and a new birth of spiritual affections. As a man feels, so will he act. ”

“ Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, to take upon himself the form of a servant, to be made in the likeness of men, to be found in fashion as a man, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with himself. ”

“ Christ's primary idea, His means of saving the world, is, after all, personality. The face, the character, the life of Jesus is to be seen in men and women. This is the bridge to the seething masses who believe in nothing, who hate religion, who cry 'Down with Jesus Christ!' What sympathy I felt with them as I listened to their angry cries against something which they had never really seen or known. ”

“ There is as little weariness of Jesus Christ as there is of nature, of the world revealed to us by the eye and the ear. After many disenchantments, multiplying with the years of our life, these two objects, Jesus and nature, retain their charm unabated, growing rather as old age steals on. What is true of the individual Christian is not less true of Christendom at large. ”

“ Or supposing it were admitted, for the sake of argument, that, so far as we had the means of judging, there has occasionally appeared, without faith in Christ, a certain product of character, apparently as pure, lofty, self-denying, loving, and devoted to God as any which ever professed to owe its origin to Jesus Christ; yet, where has there been on earth such a body of living persons as those Christians who, within the bosom of the universal Church, during eighteen centuries, have manifested that kind of character which all men profess to admire and reverence? ”

“ How little do all earthly unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our eyes, when the real bond of our common faith is discerned clearly! There is indeed neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian eyes, would it not also, by degrees, impress us at other times, and begin to form something of our habitual temper and regard towards them? ”

“ Every Christian loves Christ as his ideal and feels himself united with all other Christians by the tie of identification. But the Church requires more of him. He has also to identify himself with Christ and love all other Christians as Christ loved them. ”

“ But this one work and faith of Christ, this only thing that made his teachings new, regenerative of the world, is just alone what all our churches, Protestant and Catholic, unite in evading, in dodging, in interpreting away. The one thing they will not follow Christ in is his unselfishness. ”

“ Christ is divine charity incarnate; and to be like him is to love as he loved—with the ardor, the intensity, the self-forgetfulness, which drew him to the manger and led him to the cross. Christ is immaculate holiness made visible to men; and to be like him is to be as spotless, as faultless, as free from iniquity, perversity, hypocrisy, impurity, as He who could challenge the world with the demand—"Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Christ is every moral excellence combined and blended in human character ”

“ Why, if any other man should claim to be divine, saying, in plain terms, 'I and my Father are one,' he would be seized and punished for blasphemy. It would be monstrous, presumptuous in the last degree. The fact that Jesus Christ claimed that he was one with the Father, the fact that he was a sinless being, and could not therefore be such a wicked impostor, that he proved his assertion by his life, his teachings, and his power to work miracles, is the great central truth on which Christianity is based. If you read your Bible prayerfully, as I earnestly hope you do, you must concede so much. ”

“ Many who reject Christianity carry the principles of morality to very high perfection, and are distinguished for their integrity and benevolence, but we are required to surpass them. The same mind which dwelt in Christ Jesus is to dwell in us. We are not only to admire his humility and condescension, his meekness and his devotional fervour, but to imitate it. We are not only to love him as a Saviour, and obey him as a sovereign, but to follow him as an example. ”

“ They are ready to declare that it was a glorious thing that man was originally made like God, and that it was a still more condescending thing that God was made like man. The Christ was indeed the ideal man of the human race. He was the great exemplar, the perfect model, the sublime original to be imitated by all true men and women. In Him, and in Him only, the plant of humanity blossomed and bloomed into a perfect flower. ”

“ To trust that, just because Christ is so magnificent, He will pity, and not despise, our meanness. Just because He is so pure, and righteous, and true, and lovely, He will appreciate, and not abhor, our struggles after purity, righteousness, truth, love, however imperfect, however soiled with failure—and with worse. Just because He is so unlike us, He will smile graciously upon out feeblest attempts to be like Him. ”

“ The same affection, desire, and motives which have stimulated true Christianity in all ages, and given impulse to goodness, in or out of the Church, have nerved her purpose to build on the new-born conception of the Christ, as Jesus declared himself, — namely, “the way, the truth, and the life.” Living a true life, casting out evil, healing the sick, and preaching the gospel of Truth, — these are the ends of Christianity. ”

“ But there is mercy with God upon repentance, and propitiation in the blood of Jesus.—3. He is the light of the world that reproves the darkness, that is, the evil of the world; and he is to be known within.—4. Christendom, like the inn of old, is full of other guests: she is advised to believe in, receive, and apply to Christ.—5. Of the nature of true faith; it brings power to overcome every appearance of evil: this leads to consider the Cross of Christ, which has been so much wanted.—6. ”

“ Would any one refuse admission to these spiritual views as they are given off to our souls from the pure life of Jesus, if he was permitted to receive them from Christ himself, and not obliged on his way to that Heavenly Image of grace, liberty, and truth, to stoop his free neck to the yoke of Churches and of Creeds? But men preach themselves, not Christ. ”

“ To such heavenly-mindedness, my dear brethren, we all are called; and without something of this spirit, whatever our professions and formalities, we do but belie the name of Christian. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth, on the right hand of God; set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." ”

“ And this, we say, is again a signal witness to Christianity. Jesus Christ came to reveal what righteousness, to which the promises belong, really is; and so long as this, though shown by Jesus, is not recognised by us, we may call ourselves Christendom as much as we please, the true character of a Christendom will be wanting to us, because the great promises of prophecy will be still without their fulfilment. Nothing will do, except righteousness; and no other conception of righteousness will do, except Jesus Christ's conception of it:—his method, his secret, and his temper. ”

“ But first let me ask, Does the present form of Christianity commend itself to the masses? Surely not to the very poor, that is to say, not to the class to whom Christ appears to have specially addressed Himself. And even among the classes which retain the tradition of worshipping Christ, has Christianity been such as would commend itself to Christ? Has not our religion been too often divorced from morality? Has there been dominant among us that habit of mutual helpfulness—"comforting one another," as St. Paul calls it—which is the criterion of a truly Christian nation? ”

“ The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God. ”

“ The Christian churches have been presided over by pastors who have possessed both penetration and purity in the highest degree—who were able to see what there was to be seen, and devout enough to render it in their lives. Try the question even in our day. If Christ be the symbol of love and gentleness to all who believe in his name, how is it that in every part of the world the Freethinker should fear to fall into the hands of the Christian? ”

“ From the moment we are attached to the world, we cease, in some measure, to be Christians. This profane world, so passionately fond of grandeur, of pleasure, of everything that can flatter self-love, is the capital enemy of Jesus Christ: their maxims, their commandments, their interests are quite opposite ”

“ During many ages of misery and darkness this story gained implicit belief; but at length men arose who suspected that it was a fable and imposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a man like themselves. ”

“ Whoever therefore in the highest degree loves and trusts and reveres human nature at its divinest, he naturally worships a representation of Christ, even though he may never have heard of the name. Now life will bring a young man many disappointments and disillusions and paradoxes: but no one, who has once worshipped Christ in this natural way, need fear (or hope?) that life will ever bring him anything more worthy of representing human nature at its divinest, anything therefore more worthy of worship, than Jesus of Nazareth. ”

“ If He came from the farther side of the gulf and we only from the hither; if we are humanity without divinity, and He divinity that has only assumed humanity,—perfect fellowship between Him and ourselves is impossible. But it is untrue to say that any such distinction exists. Let us go on thinking of Jesus as Christ, the very Christ of glory, but let us realise that that same Christ is seeking expression through every human soul. He is incarnate in the race in order that by means of limitation He may manifest the innermost of God, the life and love eternal. ”

“ They reject all the scholastic accounts of Christ's metaphysical nature, they will not use the term Trinity, nor will they admit that it is right to employ any words which imply that God is divided into multiform personalities; but nevertheless they hold, with all the fervour of their earnest spirits, that Christ is God historically and humanly revealed, and that to see Christ is to see the true and only God, and to love Christ is to love the Eternal Love. ”

“ And this should not appear incredible to us; for, if Christ's divine nature, which infinitely differs from and is incomparably more sublime than his human nature, was so united with it as to be only one person, how much more credible is it that the faithful and holy Christians are one Christ with the Man Christ! ”

“ Every circumstance connected with the Savior's life is looked upon as being divine. Christendom now acknowledge that Jesus was the Son of God; they look upon him as God manifested in the flesh according to the New Testament; yet the generation in which He lived did not see these tokens of divinity which this generation recognize. To them he was "a root out of dry ground"—"a stumbling block," "a rock of offence." So with the Latter-day Saints. They are a stumbling block to this generation. The world see all their weaknesses and faults, and see no divinity in the work in which they are engaged. ”

“ Should we be worse Christians if it were clearly and plainly demonstrated that we only possess popular traditions, out of which we must ourselves form a conception of the career and teaching of Christ? Is it not good for us, [pg 199] that we are free in many points to decide for ourselves what Jesus was and what he taught? ”