“If you ask what particular scheme you shall take up, I cannot answer. Christianity has not set schemes. It makes no choice between conflicting philanthropies; decides nothing between competing churches; favours no particular public policy; organizes no one line of private charity. Christianity is not at call carried on by committees. As Christ’s friends, His followers are supposed to know what He wants done, and try to do it – this is the whole working basis of Christianity. Next to its love for the chief of sinners, the most touching thing about the “religion” of Christ is its amazing trust in the least of saints.”
“His pulpit was the hillside, His congregation a woman at the well. His work was everywhere; His workshop was the world. One’s associations of Christ are all of the wayside. We never think of Him in connection with a church.”
“ . . . Christ did not pass among them as a very religious man. It is certain that the religious people of His time not only refused to accept this type of religion as any kind of religion at all, but repudiated and denounced Him as its bitter enemy.”
“It is a mistake to suppose that the working people of this country are opposed to Christianity; the working men would still follow Christ is He came among them.”
“In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from the people; they have taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.”
“As a channel of nourishment, as a stimulus to holy deeds, as link withal holy lives, let everyone use the church, and to the utmost of their opportunity. But beware of mistaking its services for Christianity. What church services really express is the want of Christianity.”
“Earth is the rehearsal for heaven. The eternal beyond is the eternal here. The street-life, the home-life, the business-life, the city-life in all the varied range of its activity, are an apprenticeship for the city of God.”
“ . . . even when the highest heaven lies all around us, when we might touch it, and dwell in it every day we live, we almost fail to see that it is there.”
Having been a “chief” of sinners, I am still a least of saints, but here I am LORD, speak, your servant is listening.
only by Grace,
pat
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