“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”
L 16
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist 1742–1799Related quotes

Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 97

“He prayed, 'Lord God, let us be the kind of Christians that you would be if you were a Christian'.”
The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 24

Source: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)
Context: I suppose you are now back in Staunton. I wrote you about my disgust at reading the Reunion speeches. It has since been increased by reading Christian's report. I am certainly glad I wasn't there. According to Christian, the Virginia people were the abolitionists and the Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was 'a patriarchal' institution. So were polygamy and circumcision. Ask Hugh if he has been circumcised.

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 78
Context: Tolstoy deplored all the modern tendencies toward immense congregations of people in limited areas, on the ground that they were making more and more impossible the truly Christian life. In cities the rich find little restraint to their lusts, while the lusts of the poor are greater there than in the country, and they satisfy them up to the limit of their means. In the country, Tolstoy could still see the possibility of men living a Christian life; in the cities he saw no such possibility. Cities had therefore to be uprooted and destroyed. The people had to get back to the soil.

Journal of Discourses 14:346 (March 10, 1872).
Apostacy

Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 91