“If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, but there are many paths to Him.”
Gandhi and Robert Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991), 12.
“I venture to think that the scriptures of the world are far safer and sounder treatises on the laws of economics than many of the modern textbooks.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 18.
“Perhaps the strongest of all the testimonies in favor of the affirmative answer to the question before us are the lives of the greatest teachers of the world; Jesus, Mahomed, Buddha, Nank, Kabir, Chaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand, Ramakrishna were men who exercised an immense influence over, and molded the character of thousands of men.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 19.
“I shall say to the Hindus that your lives will be incomplete unless you reverently study the teachings of Jesus. I have come to the conclusion in my own experience, that those who, no matter to what faith they belong, reverently study the teaching of other faiths, broaden their own instead of narrowing their hearts. Personally, I do not regard any of the great religions of the world as false.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 23.
“‘Proselytizing [Gandhi said] has done some good, but it has perhaps been outweighed by the evil it has left behind. Whether you profess one religion or another is of no consequence whatsoever. What God will say, and wants us to say, is not what we profess with our lips but what we believe in our hearts’”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 33.
“My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith, but to make him a better follower of his own faith.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 44.
“Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, so is there one true and perfect Religion, but it becomes many, as it masses through the human medium. The one Religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such languages as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 62.
“For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 65.
“After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that (1) all religions are true; (2) all religions have some error in them; (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, inasmuch as all human beings should be as dear to me as one’s own close relatives. My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith.”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 69.
“As Vincent Sheehan is said to have put it, ‘The most Christlike man in history was not a Christian at all.’ By his own confession, Gandhi said of Jesus, ‘He affects my life no less because I regard him as one among the many begotten sons of God.’”
Gandhi and Ellsberg, Gandhi on Christianity, 86.
