The Imitation of Christ

“ And that I may gather up briefly all that the Scripture says, and especially the Gospel: what seems to indicate to them that they ought to be rich, live delicately, be famous in the world, and suffer no reproach for Christ, these sayings they ruminate over, proclaim aloud and make known all too extensively. But whatever calls for the imitation of Christ, as poverty, gentleness, humility, endurance, chastity, toil or patience—these passages they suppress or gloss over at their pleasure or expressly set aside as not pertaining to salvation. ”

“ Why should religion, which has built up more grandeurs than any of them, turn her back to the new day, confess her creative power exhausted, and creep back to the images of her own idolatry? The Christ-idea, become human, will surpass its old triumphs. ”

“ But whosoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavour to conform his life wholly to the life of Christ. ”

“ It creates a phantom, a fictitious character, and calls that Christ. It makes each writer, each thinker—or rather dreamer—however shallow his heart and stupid his brain—and all our hearts are but too shallow, and all our brains too stupid—the measure of a personage so vast and so unique, that all Christendom for eighteen hundred years has seen in Him, and we of course hold seen truly, the Incarnate God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But what avails that we have seen in Jesus that a man can be holy? His example were indeed a mockery if He show us not the way, and give us not the power, to become like Himself. To bring us this, was indeed the supreme object of the Incarnation. ”

“ It is the fact itself of the Incarnation which constitutes the Christian faith, and which rises above all definitions and all theological controversies. To disregard this fact—to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ—is to deny, to overthrow the Christian religion, which would never have been what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but that the Divine Incarnation was its principle, and Jesus Christ—God and Man—its author. ”

“ For we find, upon a critical examination of the matter, that at least three-fourths of the texts, both in the Gospels and Epistles, which relate to the divinity of Christ, specifically or by implication either teach a different and a contrary doctrine, or make concessions entirely fatal to it, by investing him with finite human qualities utterly incompatible with the character and attributes of a divine or infinite Being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Too often it has not been Christ at all—it has been but a lifeless semblance of Christianity—to which they have given their adhesion. The fear of hell, the hope of heaven—these have been often the chief motives of religion; and alms-giving, church-going, Bible-reading, and the use of the sacraments, have been the means by which men have thought they could escape the one and secure the other. ”

“ There can be no question but that the Gospels show us truly that the change in Christ's first followers was from men, the slaves of every ordinary human passion, into men who were self-mastered—that Christ taught by what he was and did rather than by insistence on creeds and words. ”

“ If thou canst not contemplate high and heavenly things, rest thyself in the passion of Christ, and dwell willingly on His sacred wounds. ”

“ It is a moral miracle superinduced upon a physical one. This repose in greatness makes him surely the most sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. And it is precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate ascendency over men. If the question be put—Why was Christ so successful?—Why did men gather round him at his call, form themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some will answer, Because of the miracles which attested his divine character ”

“ The pulpit ought to be a center of power. But is it? God said to Jonah, ‘Preach the preaching I bid thee.’ Jesus said, ‘Preach the gospel.’ Paul said, ‘Preach the Word.’ Again he said, ‘We preach Christ.’ Philip ‘preached Jesus.’ All this means the selfsame thing. Christ is the soul of the gospel as well as the substance of all doctrine. Much of the preaching, reading or talking—whatever you please to call it—is Christless and powerless. Of course, this is a refined age, and the people are away up, but the devil can appear as refined as a saint. ”

“ You say that it appears to you "impossible that Christ, if really divine, should have been permitted by God to be worshipped as a worker of miracles for eighteen centuries, although in reality he had no power to work them." ”

“ And be assured, dear friends, one and all, that coming generations will mark the man who now worships "the man Christ Jesus" as being "very God" as an idolater, if not a blasphemer—for worshipping a finite man for an infinite God, even though the motives for such worship may be as pure as the pearly stream that issues forth from the golden fount which rolls and sparkles beneath the throne of Almighty God.
Note. The words Creator, Maker, &c., are used from a Christian standpoint Science knows no Creator. ”

“ May we have a stronger faith, a larger mind and affections, to receive Christ as he is revealed in the Word. The Bible reveals Christ to us, but the Spirit must reveal Christ in us. We are poor guilty creatures, and need pardon for all sin. He has shed his blood to make atonement—a satisfaction for sin, and having died for our sin, he is gone to heaven to present his Person and his Work to God for us. ”

“ If thou knewest the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it profit thee without the love of God, and without grace? ”

“ As this assent becomes weaker or stronger, in proportion to the clearness and force of the evidence by which it is produced, a full assurance of faith is that high degree of it which admits of no suspicion. Hence, you are convinced that Jesus Christ came into this world—that he sojourned in the land of Judea—that he performed the miracles which are ascribed to him—that he died on the cross to expiate the guilt of sin—rose from the dead—and is now seated on the right hand of the majesty on high, receiving there the ascriptions of praise from the lips of the redeemed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The history of Jesus Christ very soon took a strong hold of my imagination, and I soon began to admire the fine blending of majesty and meekness, of dignity and tenderness, of lofty bearing, which no insults could disturb, and sweet compassion, which his character so broadly exhibits. Yes, I often said, he is a real person, for no human genius could invent such a person, or draw such a character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, while the Jews required a sign, and the Greeks sought after wisdom, the apostles preached Christ crucified; understanding the philosophy, the efficiency, and the necessity of their doctrine. And so long as the world lasts, every man who reads the New Testament, whether saint or sinner, will be penetrated with the conviction that a vain, aspiring, selfish spirit is incompatible with the religion of Jesus. ”

“ The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed through all eternity. In Christ glorified they will behold Christ crucified. Never will it be forgotten that He whose power created and upheld the unnumbered worlds through the vast realms of space, the Beloved of God, the Majesty of heaven, He whom cherub and shining seraph delighted to adore,—humbled Himself to uplift fallen man; that He bore the guilt and shame of sin, and the hiding of His Father's face, till the woes of a lost world broke His heart, and crushed out His life on Calvary's cross. ”

“ Christ, and no other God, could have possessed a miraculous power superior to his, for "all" comprehends the whole, beyond which nothing can reach. Where, then, is the evidence to come from to prove that Christ was a God, because he was a miracle-worker, or his religion divine, because attested by miracles—seeing the devil performed some of the most difficult miracles ever wrought? Should we not then change his title from that of a demon to a God, and place his religion amongst the divinely endowed systems? ”

“ Historic sense and imagination should be allowed to play upon the recorded acts and sayings of Jesus, until a great temple to His memory rises in the high places of the mind, dominating thence the whole intellectual and moral life. Such an enterprise would infuse life and meaning into the Christological formula, and would effect, so to speak, a reconstruction of the human nature of the historic Christ. The Christian's attitude towards the Man Christ Jesus is the "acid test" of the sincerity of his faith. ”

“ This struggle of a great mind to fling off the incubus of modern error, whose every maze he had thoroughly explored, coupled with his subsequent conversion to Catholicity and his saint-like death in its communion, is an admirable practical illustration of the truth that nothing short of the light and grace to be found only in the true church of Christ can ever thoroughly satisfy a great soul. ”

“ The instincts of man himself foreshadowed the truth. Stories of a virgin birth here and there discernible in paganism show the deep intuition which was realised in Jesus Christ. He came into the world to fight with sin, to redeem a race steeped in a terrible heritage of evil, and that He might redeem it He Himself was born, and yet was free from evil. ”

“ This acceptance of Jesus as an infallible teacher, as one whose every word is to be believed simply because He said it, and whose every direction is to be observed simply because He directs it, whose spirit is to be possessed and cultivated to the transforming of the life, till we grow into the divine image and become partakers of the divine nature, is all involved in the "good confession": Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. ”

“ Jesus will appear as their advocate, to plead in their behalf before God. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”853 “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” ”

“ Whether you believe with the evangelists that Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern Secularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually, the fact remains that according to all the narratives he did not do so. ”

“ In the same manner, when a person thinks of Jesus Christ, meditates on his life, death, and glorified state in heaven, he will form to himself images which represent his ideal conception, images so much the more distinct as they reflect the humanity of Christ with which we are far more immediately united than we are with the divine nature, and which we are therefore able to represent more exactly and vividly to our imagination. Are we to say, then, that every person worships the image of God or of Jesus Christ which his intellect has formed, and becomes thereby an idolater? ”

“ The situation then as presented by the dogma of the "Immaculate Conception" is this: By it Jesus, even in his "human" nature, is put so far from sinful men that we cannot reach him nor approach him except through the intercessions of Mary, and Anne, and the other Catholic saints. ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to the Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily. ”