John Bertram Phillips quotes:

The truth taught by Jesus Christ is the right way to live.

Your God is too Small

All poetry and music, and art of every true sort, bears witness to man's continual falling in love with beauty and his desperate attempt to induce beauty to live with him and enrich his common life.

Christ is the aperture through which the immensity and magnificence of God can be seen.

God may thunder His commands from Mount Sinai and men may fear, yet remain at heart exactly as they were before. But let a man once see his God down in the arena as a Man-suffering, tempted, sweating, and agonized, finally dying a criminal's death-and he is a hard man indeed who is untouched.

What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare stand too near the cross in case they got involved) into heroes who would stop at nothing? A swindle? Hallucination? Spooky nonsense in a darkened room? Or Somebody quietly doing what He said He'd do - walk right through death? What do you think?

God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job.

The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference can in fact never be neutral.

We shall never want to serve God in our real and secret hearts if He looms in our subconscious mind as an arbitrary Dictator or a Spoil-sport, or as one who takes advantage of His position to make us poor mortals feel guilty and afraid. We have not only to be impressed by the "size" and unlimited power of God, we have to be moved to genuine admiration, respect, and affection, if we are ever to worship Him.

If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.

Christianity is not a religion at all but a way of life, a falling in love with God, and through him a falling in love with our fellows.