Thursday, November 6, 2014
Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944

Any one can believe that Jesus was a god—what is so hard to credit is that He who hung upon the cross was the God. That is what you are asked as Christians to believe.

And it is the sword, glittering but fearful. It must cut your life away from the standards of this world, away from its thought and its measures, no less than its aims and hopes. Hard and bitter is the separation; and you will be parted from many great and noble men, some perhaps your own teachers, who can accept about Jesus everything but the one thing needful. The Christian faith, if accepted, drives a wedge between its own adherents and the disciples of every other philosophy or religion, however lofty or soaring. And they will not see this; they will tell you that really your views and theirs are the same thing, and only differ in words, which, if only you were a little more highly trained, you would understand. Even among Christ’s nominal servants there are many who think a little goodwill is all that is needed to bridge the gulf—a little amiability and mutual explanation, a more careful use of phrases, would soon accommodate Christianity to fashionable modes of speaking and thinking, and destroy all causes of provocation. So they would. But they would destroy also its one inalienable attraction: that of being... a wonder, and a beauty, and a terror—no dull and drab system of thought, no mere symbolic idealism.

... John Neville Figgis (1866-1919), The Gospel and Human Needs, London: Longman’s, Green & Co., 1911, p. 149-150 (see the book; see also Matt. 10:34-36; Mic. 7:5-6; Matt. 24:10; Mark 13:12-13; Luke 21:16; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 1:19-23; 3:18-19; 2 Cor. 10:5; Col. 2:8; 1 Tim. 6:20-21; Heb. 4:12; Rev. 1:16; 21:5; more at Belief, Cross, Faith, God, Gospel, Jesus, Philosophy, Religion, Thought)

 
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2024, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
        with Robert Douglas, principal contributor
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 12/17/18

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