United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Churches would be ravaged and destroyed; priests would be murdered in attempting the defence of their ecclesiastical treasures; fire and sword would waste to its remotest confines the stronghold of Christianity, and overwhelm in death and oblivion the boldest of Christianity's devotees!
In an old myth, Antaeus, the child of Earth, could be overcome when he was lifted from contact with the ground but, whenever he touched again the earth from which he sprang, his old power came back once more. Such is Christianity's relation with Jesus Christ.
The church itself, in its purest teachings, has always condemned property; and when I attacked, not only the authority of the church, but also its infidelity to justice, I did it to the glory of religion. I wanted to provoke a peremptory reply, and to pave the way for Christianity's triumph, in spite of the innumerable attacks of which it is at present the object.
I know that Christ is the Saviour of men, but he can't save 'em 'less they want him to, no more'n I can catch a jack-rabbit a-foot. Christianity's all right, but it aint a goin' to do no good 'less people live it, and there's a heap more living it too than we think. What such fellers as you want to do is to listen to what Christ says and not look at what some little two by four church member does.
Moreover, it is the personality of Jesus that has been the source of Christianity's transforming influence on character. Ask whence has come that power over the spirits of men which we recognize as Christianity at its mightiest and best, and the origin must be sought, not primarily in our theologies or rubrics or churches, but in the character and spirit of Jesus.
Another characteristic of Christianity which is also very fine in its way but has its limits of utility, has been its insistence on "morality." Some modern writers indeed have gone so far forgetting, I suppose, the Stoics as to claim that Christianity's chief mark is its high morality, and that the pagans generally were quite wanting in the moral sense! This, of course, is a profound mistake.
This medieval age is probably the most difficult period of medical history to understand properly, but it is worth while taking the trouble to follow out the thread of medical tradition from the Greeks to the Renaissance medical writers, who practically begin modern medicine for us. It is easy to understand that Christianity's influence on medicine, instead of hampering, was most favorable.
Hypocrisy is Christianity's most admirable invention. Banish it, and what do you find? Not skeletons in the closet, but catacombs of distasteful things. No, Eden, be a hypocrite. We all are; everyone prefers it. There was a man once who got up in the morning with the idea of telling everybody the truth. By sunset he was safe in an asylum.
That it is Christianity's function to believe in these ideals, to have faith in the possibility of their realization, to supply motives for their achievement, and to work for them with courage and sacrifice, is the familiar note of modern Christian hope. The modern apologetic also is tinctured with this same quality. Not as of old is it a laboured working out of metaphysical propositions.
Men's thoughts of God, of Christ, of the Church, of hope, their methods of apologetic, are shaped to that mold are often thinned out and flattened down and made cheap and unconvincing by being shaped to that mold so that an endeavour to achieve an intelligent understanding of Christianity's relationship with the idea of progress is in part a defensive measure to save the Gospel from being unintelligently mauled and mishandled by it.
Word Of The Day