Christian city

“ Look at your own country, Christian though it is called—your own city, highly as it is favored of heaven; and see how far the masses lie from the living God; how his name is profaned, his altars abandoned, while every place of amusement is thronged with merry votaries of pleasure, and drunken men reel athwart the path of church-going people, and the house of her whose steps take hold on hell stands in the very shadow of the sanctuary, and libidinous songs and blasphemous oaths form the horrible counterpart to your sacred psalmody ”

“ Having begun to speak of the city of God, I have thought it necessary first of all to reply to its enemies, who, eagerly pursuing earthly joys, and gaping after transitory things, throw the blame of all the sorrow they suffer in them—rather through the compassion of God in admonishing, than His severity in punishing—on the Christian religion, which is the one salutary and true religion. ”

“ Having entered the holy city yesterday, they are returning from their first visit to that sacred spot where I am going in my turn; poor pilgrims who come here by the thousand, on foot, sleeping out of doors in the rain or the snow, suffering with hunger and dying on the way.
In proportion as you approach, the Oriental objects in the stalls give place to objects of an obscure Christian piety: thousands of chaplets, crosses, religious lamps, and images or icons. ”

“ How truly does this explain the return of the Christian mind to the simple Gospel and the right understanding thereof!
The new heaven was formed of those gathered by the judgment into the fold of the Good Shepherd. The new earth, its child in the world, is being born and nurtured. But the holy city, the new Jerusalem, what is that? A city is the abode of a community of men, with separate dwellings but with common streets in which they walk in concert, and public grounds and buildings for common interests. ”

“ For if under His guidance we shall merit to enter that city to which we desire to come, all things concerning which we now inquire we shall see with our eyes, being made, as it were, heirs of all things. Understand, therefore, that the way is this course of our life; the travellers are those who do good works; the gate is the true Prophet, of whom we speak; the city is the kingdom in which dwells the Almighty Father, whom only those can see who are of pure heart. ”

“ A Christian city is the same with a Christian Church. 21. It follows what hath been already said by necessary connexion, that a city of Christian men and a Church is altogether the same thing, of the same men, termed by two names, for two causes. For the matter of a city and a Church is one, to wit, the same Christian men. ”

“ But there is another aspect of this matter which would perhaps startle those who think that all piety and orthodoxy reside in the rural districts; and that is, that the city, as it is, affords far greater encouragements to well developed piety than the country; and that if the church were fully awake to her duty towards young men, and actually employing all the means afforded her by her wealth, organization and influence to shield, restrain, influence and reform them, the city would be the safest place on earth for a youth. ”

“ In them, too, are sometimes large city congregations, self-supporting indeed and self-governing, but sucking into themselves all the more vigorous elements of the Christian community and employing them within a somewhat narrow circle. The problem of the evangelisation of these cities is a very serious one. ”

“ When we ask if the city is holy, we mean nothing about basilicas, or churches, or convents; but we mean, are the people like Jesus Christ, like a people prepared as a fit population for a sinless heaven? ”

“ But there is in heaven the eternal Jerusalem, where are our fellow-citizens, the Angels: we are wanderers on earth from these our fellow-citizens. We sigh in our pilgrimage; we shall rejoice in the city. ”

“ They are driven to set pillar against pillar in the same temple, while we can set city against city across the plains of the world. While for us a church rises from its foundations as naturally as a flower springs from a flower-bed, they have to bless the soil and curse the stones that stand on it. ”

“ O! if religion were thus a diffusive, practical, every-day reality, there would be a marvellous change in the aspects of life and the conditions of humanity around us. The great city, now so gross and profane, would become as a vast cathedral, through whose stony aisles would flow perpetual service; where labor would discharge its daily offices, and faith and patience keep their heavenward look, and love present its offerings. Yea, the very roll of wheels through its busy streets would be as a litany, and the sound of homeward feet the chant of its evening psalm. ”

“ This is the most glorious city of God; this is the city which knows and worships one God: she is celebrated by the holy angels, who invite us to their society, and desire us to become fellow-citizens with them in this city; for they do not wish us to worship them as our gods, but to join them in worshipping their God and ours; nor to sacrifice to them, but, together with them, to become a sacrifice to God. ”

“ Happy are those that belong to this city, who are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; whose citizenship is in heaven, and they have a right to enter in through the gates into the holy city, the new Jerusalem ”

“ Come, O ye poor and wayward Christians, and have your hearts established unblameable in holiness. Come, ye who are in bondage of sect captivity, and learn your way out of the wilderness unto the city that is set upon a hill, which hath foundations, and whose builder and maker is God. Come from far and near, whoever seeks the old paths and the peace of Jerusalem. ”

“ But the best minds of England seven centuries ago dreamed of another citizenship and a higher, of which the Church was the city—a city not future only and invisible, but manifest in their midst, which they loved with passion and were jealous over, too exclusively perhaps, but in the event not unwisely. ”

“ We possess a City which was founded with the divine approval as revealed in auguries and auspices; in it there is not a spot which is not full of religious associations and the presence of a god; the regular sacrifices have their appointed places no less than they have their appointed days. Are you, Quirites, going to desert all these gods - those whom the State honours, those whom you worship, each at your own altars? ”

“ Above the earthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls, the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to be the citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life. ”

“ Between two neighbouring cities there was something more impassable than a mountain—to wit, the series of sacred limits, the difference of cults, the barrier which each city set up between the stranger and its Gods. ”

“ Then, sage-brush plain, with no inhabitants excepting the wandering Lamanite, not a building, not a fence, not a furrow, the silence of a barren desert reigned supreme. To-day, a mighty city of 100,000 people stands, with a Temple of the Lord, many houses of worship and of learning, modern inventions, and all other evidences of civilization. ”

“ Is there any bigger one than this man and his three children has on his hands right this minute? And he's only one out of thousands. And yet this city, and every other big city in this country, has its thousands of professed Christians who have all the luxuries and comforts, and who go to church Sundays and sing their hymns about giving all to Jesus and bearing the cross and following Him all the way and being saved! ”

“ After some short Pause, the old Knight turning about his Head twice or thrice, to take a Survey of this great Metropolis, bid me observe how thick the City was set with Churches, and that there was scarce a single Steeple on this side Temple-Bar. A most Heathenish Sight! says Sir Roger: There is no Religion at this End of the Town. The Fifty new Churches will very much mend the Prospect; but Church-work is slow, Church-work is slow! ”

“ He who builds his life after the Divine model, reading the Christ-life into his own, will build up another city of God on earth, four-square and compact together, a city of peace, because a city of righteousness and a city of love. ”

“ That city is truly great and honourable, it is strong, it is rich, it is safe, it is beautiful, it is the most desirable place that can be to live in, which is the city of the Lord, which he owns, in which he dwells, in which religion is uppermost. ”

“ John, in his Apocalypse, represents the Church under the figure of a city. “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”502 Our Savior is the Architect and Founder of this celestial city. The Apostles are its foundation. The faithful are the living stones of the edifice. The anointed ministers of the Lord are the workmen chosen to adjust and polish these stones, that they may reflect the beauty and glory of the sun of justice that perpetually illumines this city. ”

“ The great city spreads her dusky mantle over innumerable races and creeds, and I believe there is scarcely a known form of worship that has not some temple there (have I not attended at the Church of Humanity, in Lamb’s Conduit, in company with an American lady, a vague old gentleman, and several seamstresses?) or any communion of men that has not some club or guild. ”

“ The description given of heaven: it is a city, a regular society, well established, well defended, and well supplied: it is a city that hath foundations, even the immutable purposes and almighty power of God, the infinite merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the promises of an everlasting covenant, its own purity, and the perfection of its inhabitants: and it is a city whose builder and maker is God. ”

“ I want to search for a tangible reality, "a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," as the scriptures speak of a city that one of those ancient men of God, when under the inspiration of the Almighty, had a vision of, and contemplated its glory. ”

“ When these two cities began to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. ”

“ I have seen this mighty city grow from comparatively small and mean conditions. And I have watched slowly growing here a new City of the Soul, the gradual development of civilization itself into a joyous religion whose God is Justice and Righteousness. ”

“ From every square with its church, and every church with its towers, this brazen-tongued clamor is relentlessly poured forth. In most Christian lands one good bell is all-sufficient for a church steeple, but here they have them in the plural, and all striving to excel each other at the same moment. ”

“ The meaning of all these places is, that in the day that the Lord doth turn his church and people into the frame and fashion of a city, and when he shall build them up to answer the first state of the church, there will such grace and plenty of mercy be extended unto her, begetting such faith and holiness and grace in her soul, and all her actions, that she shall convince all that are about her that she is the city, the beloved city, the city that the Lord hath chosen ”

“ And when he speaks of the 'beatific vision' of the City of God, our hearts are stirred in response. We too seek a 'continuing city' of life in its grandeur. We, too, see the promise of that city here, even in the very failures of our own. ”

“ In the city which derives its name from us, a very great multitude of persons, through the assisting providence of our Saviour God, have united themselves to the most holy Church, so that it has received much increase there. ”

“ In this capital city, comprising about five hundred thousand inhabitants, were established a voluminous library, and vast theological schools, in which men of every religious order, and of every phase of faith, met and exchanged religious ideas, and borrowed new doctrines, with which they remodeled their former systems of faith, amounting in some cases to an entire change of their long-established creeds. ”

“ You stop here to pinch and toil and care, and quarrel one of another, and starve your children through having nothing to give ’em, when you might go out there to ease, to love, to peace, to plenty. It’s a charming city; what else should it be called the City of the Saints for? The houses have shady verandars round ’em, with sweet shrubs a-creeping up, and white posts and pillows to lean against. The bigger a household is, the more rooms it have got ”

“ And the form, which consists in a lawful power of assembling them, is the same too; for it is manifest that every subject is obliged to come thither, whither he is summoned by his city. Now that which is called a city, as it is made up of men, the same, as it consists of Christians, is styled a Church. ”

“ But let me remind you of another city of quite a different character, blessed with every privilege of a religious kind—the city of Jerusalem. Though that city had every blessing which God could shower on it, the people rejected God in all His love, and grace, and kindness. Their wickedness may have been of a different kind, but it was as great in the sight of God as that of Nineveh. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself came as the great Missionary to that city—the city of His love. ”

“ Thirty-four years have now elapsed since our city found within its walls 200,000 strangers, all actuated by a pious longing after this holy relic, before which they might present their adoration, and, in lively feelings of devotion, strengthen themselves in the faith and the love of the Lord. ”