Jana Wrenn’s Reviews > The Kingdom of God Is Within You > Status Update

“Men of modern times strive to stupefy themselves…if there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one’s reason is the most intolerable condition…[modern men] exist in…continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life.”

“To maintain so great a multitude of soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder, hundreds of millions are spent annually, sums which would be sufficient for the education of the people and for immense works of public utility, and which would make it possible to find a peaceful solution of the social question.”

“The press of all countries is continually expressing the universal desire for peace…at the same time…increasing the strength of their armies every year…the inevitable result of this expenditure on war and preparations for war is a continually growing national debt.”

“The man of the so-called educated classes…knows that all the habits…he could not give up without suffering can only be satisfied through…often fatal toil of oppressed laborers…he advocates the principles of fraternity, humanity, justice, and science, and yet he lives so that he is dependent on the oppression of the working classes…his whole life is based on the advantages gained by their oppression.”

Christ’s teaching is misunderstood due to “the mistaken notion that it is impracticable, and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love humanity…that Christianity is a doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of life.”

“Religion… Is a manifestation always inherent in the life of humanity, and is as indispensable, as inherent in humanity at the present time as at any other. Secondly, religion is always the theory of the practice of the future and not of the past.”

While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one, it had no need to declare itself as a church. It was only when believers were split up into opposing parties…seemed necessary to each party to confirm their own truth by ascribing to themselves infallibility… one church only arose when there were two sides…called the other side heresy, and recognized their own side as the only infallible church

With certain Scriptural commands (ie non-resistance) the church claims “the man who transgresses any command..does not cease to be a Christian if he hold the true faith…reducing a direct conscious denial of a command to a casual breach…we must not understand it too literally, but that there are conditions & circumstances in which we must do the direct opposite.” Not applied to all commands, hypocrisy emerges