The Kingdom of God Is Within You

The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility of life only when men mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a rule. It is only then that the principles presented in Christ’s teaching appear to be destructive of life. These principles, on the contrary, are the only ones that make true life possible.

All the congresses of both hemispheres may vote against war, and against dueling too, but above all arbitrations, conventions, and legislations there will always be the personal honor of individual men, which has always demanded dueling, and the interests of nations, which will always demand war." - Camille Doucet

The Christian will not dispute with anyone, nor attack anyone, nor use violence against anyone. On the contrary, he will bear violence without opposing it. But by this very attitude to violence, he will not only himself be free, but will free the whole world from all external power.

The spirit of God, of which we are aware within us, is not something apart from ourselves. It is our very essence and the source of our higher aspirations.

The recognition of the spirit of God in one's self and in others is not just a matter of faith or belief, but of actual, daily experience and action.

Every man carries in himself the kingdom of God, and when he realizes this, he is saved from the darkness of ignorance and the slavery of sin.

The true life is the realization of the higher self in the union with the spirit of God which dwells in every man.

True life is the realization of the I in the sonship to God and the brotherhood of mankind; and this life is effected by the recognition of the spirit of God, which is in every man and in the whole of mankind.

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?

The acknowledgment of the spirit of God in the heart of man and its realization in life is the only true faith.

The kingdom of God is within you.

Christ’s teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of violence and the sword, but by means of non-resistance to evil, gentleness, meekness, and peacefulness, can only be diffused through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among its followers.

A man cannot get rid of the responsibility for his own actions.

Christians do not need government, and therefore they cannot either obey it in what is contrary to Christ’s teaching nor, still less, take part in it.

The Christian view of life has exerted an influence on the Jewish and heathen, and the heathen and Jewish view of life has, too, exerted an influence on the Christian.

The longer mankind lived, the clearer and clearer became the meaning of Christianity, as must always be the case with every theory of life.

A church is a body of men who claim for themselves that they are in complete and sole possession of the truth.

Heresy is the opinion of the men who do not admit the infallibility of the Church’s truth.

The churches as churches are not, as many people suppose, institutions that have Christian principles for their basis, even though they may have strayed a little away from the straight path. The churches as churches, as bodies that assert their own infallibility, are institutions opposed to Christianity.

The man who believes in a God, in a Christ coming again in glory to judge and to punish the living and the dead, cannot believe in the Christ who told us to turn the left cheek, do not judge, forgive those that wrong us, and love our enemies.

The teaching of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments, excludes the teaching of Christ, most of all the teaching of the Orthodox Church with its idolatrous observances.

The inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the teaching of Christ is, of course, the reason why special efforts are necessary to conceal this inconsistency from people.

These three views of life are as follows: first, embracing the individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole world, or the divine view of life.

The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the gradual transition from the personal, animal conception of life to the social conception of life, and from the social conception of life to the divine conception of life.

Christianity recognizes love of self, of family, of nation, and of humanity, and not only of humanity, but also of everything living, everything existing; it recognizes the necessity of an infinite extension of the sphere of love.

Life according to Christ’s teaching consists of nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in every man, from the animal, and in bringing him closer to the Father.

Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainable perfection, and therefore in itself it does not imply a greater or lesser degree of life.

The fulfillment of Christ’s teaching consists in moving away from self toward God. It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching.

The Christian doctrine to love God and serve him, and only as a result of that love to love and serve one’s neighbor, seems to scientific men obscure, mystic, and arbitrary.

The Christian doctrine shows man that the essence of his soul is love – that his happiness depends not on loving this or that object, but on loving the principle of the whole – God, whom he recognizes within himself as love, and therefore he loves all things and all men.

The Christian doctrine brings a man to the elementary consciousness of self, only not of the animal self, but of the divine self, the divine spark, the self as the Son of God, as much God as the Father himself, though confined in an animal husk.

Humanity can no more go backward in its development than the individual man. Men have outlived the social, family, and state conceptions of life. Now they must go forward and assimilate the next and higher conception of life, which is what is now taking place.

The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency. The more delicate a man’s conscience is, the more painful this contradiction is to him.

All men of the modern world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life.

The division of men into two castes and the use of force in government and war are opposed to every moral principle professed by our modern society.

All depends, therefore, on the strength of the consciousness of Christian truth on the part of each individual man.

The basis of authority is bodily violence. The possibility of applying bodily violence to people is provided above all by an organization of armed men, trained to act in unison in submission to one will.

The violence of internal feud crushed by authority reappears in authority itself, which falls into the hands of men who, like the rest, are frequently or always ready to sacrifice the public welfare to their personal interest.

The oppression of the oppressed always goes on growing up to the furthest limit, beyond which it cannot go without killing the goose with the golden eggs.

In ratio to the duration and increasing strength of authority its advantages for its subjects disappear and its disadvantages increase.

The power of the state, far from being a security against the attacks of our neighbors, exposes us, on the contrary, to much greater danger of such attacks.

The question will be finally decided beyond appeal by the religious consciousness or conscience of every man who is forced, whether he will or no, through universal conscription, to face the question whether the state is to continue to exist or not.

Christianity is a new and higher conception of life. A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated.

The Christian religion is not a legal system that, being imposed by violence, may transform men’s lives. Christianity is a new and higher conception of life.

The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupt form by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the seed should remain hidden for a certain time in the earth in order to germinate.

A Christian cannot fail to be free, because the attainment of the aim he sets before himself cannot be prevented or even hindered by anyone or anything.

The Christian is independent of human authority, because he acknowledges God’s authority alone. His law, revealed by Christ, he recognizes in himself, and voluntarily obeys it.

Until every individual man makes the Christian conception of life his own, and begins to live in accordance with it, there can be no solution of the problem of human life, and no establishment of a new form of life.

Every man of the present day is under the necessity of taking part in the cruelties of pagan life, or of refusing all participation in them.

The freedom of all men will be brought about only through the freedom of individual persons becomes more and more clear as time goes on.

The time will come and is inevitably coming when all institutions based on force will disappear through their uselessness, stupidity, and even inconvenience becoming obvious to all.

The organization of our society rests, not as people interested in maintaining the present order of things like to imagine, on certain principles of jurisprudence, but on simple brute force, on the murder and torture of men.

All the advantages the rich have over the poor are based on nothing but flogging, imprisonment, and murder.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Do not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Non-resistance is Salvation; Resistance is Ruin.

The Christian has in no case the right to put to death his neighbor who has done him evil, or to do him injury in return.

The sole escape from it for them lies in their hope that they may be able, by using the authority of the Church, of antiquity, and of their sacred office, to overawe the reader.

The Christian precepts... are the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount – all negative in character. They show only what at a certain stage of development of humanity men may not do.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth revealed to him.

The conception of one church only arose when there were two sides divided and disputing, who each called the other side heresy, and recognized their own side only as the infallible church.

The churches as churches, as bodies that assert their own infallibility, are institutions opposed to Christianity.

Authority, that is, Violence, is the Principle that is Destroying the Social Conception of Life.

The only way to be saved from the slavery of sin and from the suffering it involves is through the recognition of the truth revealed to men by Christ; and this truth is the brotherhood of all men, consequent on the sonship of all men to God.