Jesus

Jesus Christ

QUOTES ON JESUS

How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer's ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
JOHN NEWTON, Olney Hymns

When I contrast the loving Jesus, comprehending all things in his ample and tender charity, with those who profess to bear his name, marking their zeal by what they do not love, it seems to me as though men, like the witches of old, had read the Bible backward, and had taken incantations out of it for evil, rather than inspiration for good.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
EDWARD HENRY BICKERSTETH, Peace, Perfect Peace

Jesus never let me down
You know Jesus used to show me the score
Then they put Jesus in show business
Now it's hard to get in the door.
BONO, "If God Will Send His Angels"

Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface to Androcles and the Lion
Even yet Christ Jesus has to lie out in waste places very often, because there is no room for him in the inn--no room for him in our hearts, because of our worldliness. There is no room for him even in our politics and religion. There is no room in the inn, and we put him in the manger, and he lies outside our faith, coldly and dimly conceived by us.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he has to say, and make fun of it.

THOMAS CARLYLE

There's not a child so small and weak
But has his little cross to take,
His little work of love and praise
That he may do for Jesus' sake.
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER, We are but Little Children Weak

No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

Jesus ... associated with the outcasts; he spoke with them, touched them, ate with them, loved them.

JOHN ORTBERG, Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them

The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

The greatest need in the world is the transformation of human nature. We need a new heart that will not have lust and greed and hate in it. We need a heart filled with love and peace and joy, and that is why Jesus came into the world.

BILLY GRAHAM, Just As I Am

Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Like hairs on the head, mortal man is joined to Jesus Christ, the head of all, but they are full of transgressions and sins because of man's delight in the flesh. But the Church regenerates and purifies these from the unclean stench and filth of sin by penitence and confession, just as hair is cleansed from dew and drops, and as dust is shaken out and cleansed from wool.

HILDEGARD OF BINDEN, letter to the Abbot, c. 1166

The saints were cowards who stood by to see
Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves
Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain--
The grandest death, to die in vain--for love
Greater than sways the forces of the world!
GEORGE ELIOT, The Spanish Gypsy

I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime.

VINCENT VAN GOGH, letter to Theo van Gogh, Oct. 1884

Down below all the crust of human conceptions, of human ideas, Christ sank an artesian well into a source of happiness so pure and blessed that even yet the world does not believe in it.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?

PHILIP YANCEY, The Jesus I Never Knew

Religion would save a man; Christ would make him worth saving.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Take away the personal Christ from the gospels, leaving the same precepts and doctrines, and the whole aspect of Christianity would change, as the aspect of the earth changes when the sun goes down. The same eternal mountains lift their heads to heaven; the same rivers flow onward. But their animation is gone; they are cold, and gray, and dark. Thus would Christianity be without that central personage, around which all its glories cluster--from which they stream.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

The earth endured Christ's ministry only three years;--not three weeks after his real character and purposes were generally known.

HORACE MANN, Thoughts

There was need of a phantastic, indestructible optimism, and one far removed from all sense of reality, in order, for example, to discover in the shameful death of Christ really the highest salvation and the redemption of the world.

CARL JUNG, Psychology of the Unconscious

We are immediately struck with this peculiarity in the Author of Christianity, that, while all other men are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age, we can discover in Jesus no impression of the period in which he lived. We know, with considerable accuracy, the state of society, the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the country in which Jesus was born and grew up; and he is as free from them, and as exalted above them, as if he had lived in another world, or with every sense shut on the objects around him. His character has nothing in it that is local or temporary. It can be explained by nothing around him. His history shows him to us a solitary being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not so much as the sympathy of a single mind. His apostles, his chosen companions, brought to him the spirit of the age; and nothing shows its strength more strikingly, than the slowness with which it yielded, in these honest men, to the instructions of Jesus.

WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts

Christ is God clothed with human nature.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts

When Christ is the center of your focus, all else will come into proper perspective.

CROFT M. PENTZ, The Complete Book of Zingers

Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts

Christ, who was innocent, was dealt withal as if he were faulty; that we, who are faulty, might be dealt withal as if we were innocent.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Every well-doer on the face of the earth is my blood relation through Jesus Christ.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts