The Agony of the Church | Page 3

the whole world of which I could not find a representation in myself, and none in which I were wholly unrepresented.
The beauty, glory and greatness of a field of golden wheat consists of an association of innumerable blades of wheat, with their insignificant beauty, glory and greatness. If you have seen that, then do not repeat to me the old story of the beauty, glory and greatness of the human blade called Pythagoras, Caear or Napoleon.
The wealthiest and most powerful people, that we are wont to admire and imitate, were most pitied by Christ. To-day, as always, the most difficult Christian mission is that among the rich.
Our real value we never reveal through the using of our rights but through our capacity for service and sacrifice.
Easier is it for a man to get his own rights than to lose his pride.
Sacrifice without murmuring makes of our stormy life a calm holy day. We fill all our days with the talk of the people who are loth to sacrifice and of those who dare to sacrifice. Disgust and admiration are two baths in which our hearts bathe from sunrise to sunset. By nothing is the disgust towards a man more excited than by hearing: "He is incapable of sacrifice." When this sentence is directed to ourselves, we feel as if we had lost the whole battle of life.
The value of metaphysical systems is more for the scientific than for the moral progress of mankind. Upon Hegel you could build a new science, but upon St Paul only could you build a new social life and a new world politics. Did you ever think that St Paul is the greatest prophet of a new and desirable statesmanship?
All the Empires founded upon rights have perished and must perish. The future belongs to the Empire of St Paul, an Empire founded upon loving service.
It is better in humbleness to belong to the worst of the Churches than proudly to separate one's self from the best of the Churches.
Aristocratic origin is as inscrutable as the darkness of the past night. A mighty aristocrat of to-day may be of the meanest soul-stuff, and the beggar at his door of the noblest. But respect both of them equally, knowing that both of them are of the same royal origin. The Most High names both of them His children. For the same reason respect asses and sheep and trees and stones.
The real crucifiers of Christ in our time are those who think Christ's Gospel could not be taken as a base for world politics. Were not His last words to the disciples: go to all nations? The last and supreme expression of Christianity will be in the relations of nation to nation, as its starting expression has been the relations of man to man.
Inter-individualism has been the elementary school of Christianity. Inter-nationalism ought to be its university.
Christian ethics, i.e. cheerful service and sacrifice, is the noblest consequence of real belief in God. Never a shorter line can bind our planet with the centre of the Universe than the line going through Christ. It is the shortest way, as a straight line is the shortest distance between two geometrical points.
Slavery means obligatory service; freedom ought to mean willing service. Only a man or a nation educated for willing service to their neighbours is a really free man or free nation. All other theories of freedom are illusions. Freedom asking for rights and not for willing service means an endless quarrel crowning with unhappiness all its champions. Neither Pericles' republic nor Octavian's monarchy were the States of happiness, but St Paul's pan-human state, with a single Magna Charta of willing service, will be a State of Universal Happiness.
Every man is a battlefield of many unclean spirits, very bold in the absence of Christ and very shy in His Presence. O how many of these spirits that find an easy habitation in us would make even the swine to rage and run down the steep place--into the sea!
The conception that the mentality of Machiavelli and Metternich, Bismarck and Beaconsfield could be taken as a basis of politics, whereas Christ's mentality could not, is the conception even of many theologians. Yet Christ survives all these politicians as an undying power, just because He is the fittest of all of them.
What an obscure philosophy it is which teaches that Moses and Mohamed had some thing to do with politics and Christ has not!
Carlyle and Emerson were over-anxious to recommend every great man as a leader of mankind more than Christ. It is the same as to say: men! take candles and lamps to light your way in darkness, but be aware of the sun. How quite different are Dostoievsky and Tolstoi!
I looked at men in prayer and I thought: Behold, the fallen angels!