One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation
is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now flourishing
plant of Christianity. The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was from
here to Jerusalem - about one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles. The next
longest was from here to Sidon - say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of
being wide apart - as American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest
- the places made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are
nearly all right here in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving
out two or three three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached
his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary
county in the United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying
fact.
- The Innocents Abroad
Collier's
Weekly Magazine for |
For England must not fall: it would mean an
inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop
the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which
would last till Christ comes again--which I hope he will not do; he made
trouble enough before. - Letter to W. D. Howells, January 25, 1900 I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled,
besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria,
South Africa, and the Philipines, with her soul full of meanness, her
pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her
soap and towel, but hide the looking glass. |
There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him--early.
- Notebook, 1898
The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo
down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded
as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
This is a Christian country. Why, so is hell. Inasmuch as "Strait is the
way and narrow is the gate, and few-few-are they that enter in thereat"
has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian
community in any of the worlds; but we don't brag of this and certainly it is
not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all
know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the
narrow gate.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the
thought of that, it was so ignoble.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be--a Christian.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence--stuffed
and in a museum.
- Notebook, 1898
You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this
saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient "people
say." In all my seventy-two years and a half I have never come across such
another ass as this human race is.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but
in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every
innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when
the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided
the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology
ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed
us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian
religion was born.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
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