The Agony of the Church | Page 3

reminding us of Christ's sacrifice, and through it of our own calling
to sacrifice.
You have to choose either to be proud or poor in spirit. The first will
mean a noisy destruction, the second a quiet construction.
There exists no sublime and no mean thing in 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