The Imitation of Christ: The Complete Original Edition

Introduction

One of my favorite stories of Thomas Merton, the famous twentieth-century monk and spiritual writer, is of the time before his conversion to Catholicism when he went to see the Bengali yogi and Hinduism scholar, Mahanambrata Brahmachari. Brahmachari was in New York City after having attended the World Festival of Faiths in Chicago, staying on to earn a doctorate at the University of Chicago before returning to India. Merton was a recent Columbia University graduate, questing and floundering. He asked the Hindu monk for recommendations of religious texts he might read.

Merton was familiar with Christianity, having been raised in a canopy sort of Anglicanism. I became very fond of Brahmachari, and he of me. We got along very well together, especially since he sensed that I was trying to feel my way into a settled religious conviction, and into some kind of a life that was centered, as his was, on God, Merton wrote in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain.¹

Brahmachari was prescient and wise. He told his young protege to look to the mystical classics in his own tradition rather than wander like a tourist into the religions of the East. Start with Augustine’s Confessions and Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, the scholar said. You must read those books. It changed Merton’s life.²

Perhaps Brahmachari learned to appreciate The Imitation of Christ from his Bengali elder, the groundbreaking Vivekananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna, who introduced Hinduism and Vedanta to the West in 1893 at the Parliament of the Religions, in the building on Michigan Avenue that’s now the Art Institute of Chicago. Vivekananda loved and translated The Imitation of Christ into Bengali in 1899. He wrote in his introduction to that translation of the parallels between The Imitation and the most important scripture of his own tradition, the Bhagavad Gita.³ Both texts, he said, were songs of God.

I also remember how Thomas à Kempis, the author of The Imitation of Christ, impacted lives of other literary and philosophical luminaries, even some more notorious characters. England’s King Henry VIII, for instance, was known to praise Kempis’s book, even though its message of love seems to have been lost on him in action. The last of his six wives, Catherine Parr, summarized the principles and prayers of The Imitation in her own Prayers or Meditations, the first book in English by a woman published under her own name, in 1545. In the English colonies of the New World, Kempis was published in Germantown (Maryland) twenty-seven years before the Revolution.

The Imitation of Christ once formed people the way that Bible reading did. The great atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell was under its sway as a young man, before he found his atheist convictions. Russell’s exact contemporary across the Channel, Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin (they were born just eight months apart), was under its sway too. Russell would soon discover Spinoza, instead, while Thérèse Martin committed long passages of Kempis to memory, quoting them in times of need, and incorporating the teachings into her own great work, The Story of a Soul. Thérèse we know today as St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

Around the same time, Leo Tolstoy was spending an increasing amount of time with Kempis in Russia, finding more in the obscure German-Dutch master’s little book than in the stories that had already made Tolstoy famous throughout the world. One hint of Kempis’s influence on the great novelist appears in book five, chapter three of War and Peace: On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days reading Thomas à Kempis, whose book had been sent to him by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men.⁴

The joy … of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection and in the possibility of active brotherly love. That’s the appeal of this classic work. Is this possible in human life?

They say The Imitation of Christ has been read by more people than any other book but the Bible, since first appearing in manuscript copies in about 1425. Kempis wrote and published it anonymously. He intended his book to be a series of devotional and mystical explanations and applications of what is found in the New Testament gospels and epistles. Those ideas about perfection and love began there. If it’s really possible, how?

In one of the notebooks found after his death, Franz Kafka jotted, Everyone carries a room about inside them.⁵ He understood what Kempis did, that perhaps this perfection is more real inside of us than when we go out into the world. Similarly, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, At the heart of our universe, each soul exists for God, in our Lord.⁶ That’s the easy part—in the soul. What about when we are with other people?

Kempis’s message is that humility is essential, and real trust in God is possible. Witness this quote from Book Three: If I humble myself to nothingness, if I shrink from all self-esteem and account myself as the dust which I am, Your grace will favor me, Your light will enshroud my heart.… I am nothing but total weakness. But if You look upon me for an instant, I am at once made strong and filled with new joy. As a twenty-first century person who still turns to this fifteenth-century spiritual classic, I want to help you hear this in a context of relevance.

We worry about so much, and for good reason. We face so much danger. So we occupy ourselves with distractions, to avoid thinking or feeling too much. This shared anxiety is the context for Kempis’s book. He wants you not to resign, but to engage more deeply. He summarizes this early on, succinctly: Sorrow opens the door to many a blessing which dissoluteness usually destroys.⁷

Kempis is reminding us not to let the world have a grip on us. To not allow the suffering and vicissitudes to control us. To remain steadfast in the knowledge and experience of God, whose love is within us.

Next, he points and pushes us to be where we need to be to see, hear, and understand this divine love. For instance, be deliberate with your life by recognizing that one day you will die. The present is very precious; these are the days of salvation; now is the acceptable time.⁸ Zeal and diligence, too, come highly recommended. This is a book designed to challenge every spiritual underachiever. And all of this is before we get to the meat of Kempis’s teaching in Books Two and Three, where he advises on how to have and cultivate an interior life.

Meditation and peace. Achieving purity of mind. Finding the joy of a clear conscience. Friendship with Jesus, who knows our suffering. Hearing truth that speaks without words in our souls. We need these lessons as much as any human beings ever have.

Rereading The Imitation of Christ now, and remembering how I first read it at the age of eighteen, I’m reminded that we read differently depending on our stage in life. At eighteen, I did not love the world the way I do at fifty-five. At eighteen, I didn’t see how ethics and spiritual practice are more important than theology. The primary theme of The Imitation of Christ is conversion, and that’s the work of a lifetime, and the duty of every person who wants to be a decent human being.

—Jon M. Sweeney is a Catholic, rabbi spouse, editor, and author. He’s written many books including Thomas Merton (St. Martin’s Essentials) and Feed the Wolf.

Translator’s Preface

As The Christian’s Pattern, by Dean Stanhope, has claimed a place among the translations of this excellent book, and by an implicit admission has obtained general approbation; it will undoubtedly be asked, what occasion there was for attempting a new one? And to this question, no other answer, as an apology for the translation that is now offered to the public, can be given, than that it was attempted in the hope of doing some justice to the sense of the original; which is almost lost in the loose paraphrase of Dean Stanhope, and almost deprived of its spirit, by the literal and inelegant exactness of others.

With what degree of success this attempt has been prosecuted, must be left wholly to the judgment of the reader. It is hoped, however, that, where the original allowed of some latitude in the translation, no sense is introduced, that will not be found coincident with the author’s great principle, The necessity of exchanging an earthly for a heavenly nature; and that an apology will not be required, for giving the preference, in several instances of competition, to some apposite passage in the Divine oracles, as the best illustration of the thought, and the most forcible manner of expressing it. As this preference has been given, wherever an occasion was supposed to offer, the quotations from the sacred Scriptures are more numerous than they are in the original: and though all the quotations in the original are taken from the Vulgate Bible, yet here they are generally taken from our English Bible; and the Vulgate is seldom retained, but where the force of the author’s sentiment depended upon the peculiar turn given to that translation.

In the third book, the division and the titles of the chapters are different, not only from all the translations, but from all the editions of the original that have been consulted upon this occasion, except the late Paris edition, published by M. J. Valart; which, as it is declared to have been formed upon an accurate collation of manuscripts, and old printed copies; and, in consequence of that collation, purified from more than six hundred errors, has been chosen as the standard with respect to this translation.

Of the book itself, it will be difficult to show the excellency and use, to those that have no sense of spiritual devotion; and unnecessary, to those that have. The numerous editions of the original, however, and the numerous translations of it into the different languages of all the nations professing Christianity, whether as Protestants or Papists, that have been continually published for near three hundred years, is a testimony of approbation which few human compositions can boast; and which the advocates for libertinism, though they may pretend to despise it, cannot but secretly venerate.

But, besides the professors and patrons of profane wit, and unrestrained pleasure, there are some sober minds, who, because they live in a nation where Christianity is professed, have assumed the character of Christians; and being perfectly pleased with themselves, and satisfied with following the regular rotation of formal duties, are offended at every attempt to convince them, that there is something still needful of much higher importance than the most minute conformity to the ceremonials of external worship. They have also assumed the character of Protestants—an honourable character, if formed upon Christian principles, and supported with a Christian spirit!—and when motives to the attainment of a divine life, urged by a Roman Catholic, are offered to their consideration, their displeasure is heightened; and the offer is rejected, not only with indignation, but with a dread of all the evils which they have been used to associate with the idea of a Roman Catholic. Like those of old, who asked, if anything good could come out of Nazareth; they are ready to exclaim, Can precepts of truth and holiness proceed from the cell of a monk? And no less danger is apprehended, than that of being artfully betrayed into the trammels of a spiritual director: or artfully worked up to such a rage of ill-humour with themselves and the world, as to be driven into the irremeable gate of a cloister.

The author of this book had no design that terminates in any of the changeable forms and perishing interests of the present life. As a Roman Catholic he has himself performed the office of a spiritual director; and it is to bring and leave his disciple, where he leaves himself, under the conduct of the only guide to life, light, holiness, and peace, the Spirit of God. In his own person he makes this address: O God, who art the Truth, make me one with thee in everlasting love! I am often weary of reading, and weary of hearing: in thee alone is the sum of my desires! Let all teachers be silent; let the whole creation be dumb before thee; and do thou only speak unto my soul!¹ And in another place, in the character of that disciple of whom he has been the director, he says: Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth. Let not Moses speak to me, nor any of the prophets. But do thou, O Lord my God, Eternal truth! Speak to my soul; lest, being only outwardly warned, but not inwardly quickened, I die and be found unfruitful; lest the word heard, and not obeyed, known and not loved, professed and not kept, turn to my condemnation! Speak, therefore, Lord, for thy servant heareth: Thou only, hast the words of eternal life! O speak to the comfort of my soul, to the renovation of my heavenly nature, and to the eternal praise and glory of thy own holy name.²

As a Roman Catholic also, he had renounced the world, and devoted his time and attention to the purification of his spirit, in the retirement of a cloister: and even in a cloister, he frequently deplores the worldly and sensual life of many that were immured with him; and directs man to a more sacred retirement, his own heart, to discover the evil of his fallen nature, and the manifestations of that divine power, which is his only redemption from it. It is the renunciation of the spirit of the world, and a continual dependance upon the Spirit of God, as the principle of all truth and goodness, that are the duties he enjoins, and the perfection he requires; and if this perfection is attained in the midst of the tumultuous scenes of life, it can suffer no abatement, because it was not attained in the retirement of a cloister. What he sought himself in a state of retirement, he tells us in these words: It is not the peculiar habit, the tonsure, or any alteration merely external, but a change of heart, and an entire mortification of the passions, that are the indispensable qualifications for such a state; and he that seeks anything in it, but the glory of God in the purification of his own soul, will meet only with disappointment and trouble, anxiety and remorse.³

Retirement into a cloister, is not a precept of the Christian faith; but the renunciation of the world, is one of its essential duties; and universally enjoined, as an indispensable condition of becoming faithful followers of Him who, as our Exampler, as well as our Redeemer, had himself renounced and overcome the world; and if this duty had been universally fulfilled by those who have assumed the sacred character of his faithful followers, retirement into a cloister would never have been known.

But we are to consider, what has been the state of Christianity since it became national; and how deplorably all Christian nations have fallen from the spirit and power of the Gospel of Christ. What has any Christian nation ever aimed at, but an emulation of the wealth and splendour, the policy, the luxury, the refined vanity, the pride, pomp, and power of Pagan Greece and Rome? What does any Christian nation now seek, but even to outdo Pagan Greece and Rome, in all the frantic excesses of a worldly spirit; devoting all the faculties of an immortal soul, and all the short time of its probation for eternity, to the diversification of the scenes of sensual pleasure, or to the accumulation of poisonous riches, which become proportionably more deadly, the more they are collected and engrossed; violating the sacred obligations of justice and charity, to seize each other’s possessions; and calling in the aid of hell, to secure the plunder with every murdering engine of war? Now he, who, in such a state of Christianity, labours to fulfil the precept, and follow the example of his Redeemer, in the renunciation and conquest of the world, will find that he must labour in an abstraction, not less painful in itself, nor less unfriendly to worldly interest, than retirement into a cloister, in whatever formidable light his imagination may have painted it.

If we did not know what men may do and say, with the gospel in their hands, and the Sun of Righteousness still shedding his vital beams upon them, we should wonder—that those who at their baptism, have solemnly renounced the world, the flesh and the devil; and who in the public service of the church, hear the precepts of their Redeemer, to overcome the world, deny themselves, take up their daily cross, and follow Him; and in the use of its liturgy, repeat the most earnest prayers for the continual influences of the Holy Spirit, to enable them to fulfil those precepts, because they cannot do it by their own strength,—we should wonder that such persons should be the most violent in exclaiming against books like this, as the ravings of enthusiasm, or the dreams of monkish ignorance, because they call men to the renunciation of the world, self-denial, watchfulness and prayer, and to a continual unreserved dependance upon the illuminating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit.

The author had a profound knowledge of the spiritual life; such as is not to be acquired, but by a mind truly devoted, and long inured, to spiritual exercises. He stops not at calling men to the renunciation of the world, self-denial, watchfulness, and prayer; but leads them on to that naked faith, absolute resignation, and pure love, which are the strength and beauty of the regenerate nature—the nature which can alone enter into heaven, because it comes out of heaven: that can alone love, desire, and unite with God, because it is born of God! His instructions, therefore, are founded upon this great principle, which is also the foundation of the precepts of the Gospel—that man has lost the divine life born of God, and is fallen into an earthly, animal, and sensual life of this world; a life of darkness, impurity, impotence, and misery; which must be abandoned, that his first divine life may be regenerated in him by the operation of the Holy Ghost. And as it would be in vain to offer such instructions, to those who think they do not want them; so it is in vain, that Christ once preached to men himself, and has continued preaching to them by his Holy Spirit, while they shun, or disguise, or misapply everything, that would bring them to a sense of the darkness, impurity, impotence and misery, of their life in this world.

Men, in their fallen state, are destitute of happiness, restless and insatiable in their desires of it, and always seeking it, where it cannot possibly be found, in themselves, and their earthly life: and men, in these days of fallen Christianity are only in a better state, because some real, though alienated goodness, is produced by the efforts of that Divine life, which is struggling for redemption within them. They know their Master has declared that there is but one who is good, and that is God; and yet, they know not, or will not know, that whatever goodness lives in intelligent natures, from the highest angel to the lowest of mankind, is solely the manifestation of the presence and power of Him, who alone is good. All the light and goodness, therefore, which the mercy of God, notwithstanding their repugnancy, still preserves within them, as their call to heaven, they arrogate as the light of human reason, and the attainments of human virtue; and confiding wholly in themselves, and contented with the forms of godliness instead of the power, they stifle the sense of their inherent darkness, impurity, impotence, and misery, by mingling in the cares and pleasures of a vain and busy world. But they are questions that deserve the most serious consideration, whether Christ is not the Saviour of men, only by being formed within them, as the living power of knowing and fulfilling the will of God: and whether those that reject him as this inward Saviour, who alone, by the manifestation of his own nature, life and spirit in the soul, can transform selfish, sensúal, proud, and malignant spirits, into angels of patience, humility, meekness, purity, and love, and from children of wrath, make them children of the living God; reject him less than the Scribes and Pharisees, who blasphemed, persecuted, and put him to death.

Some, says the author, speaking in the person of Christ, "place their religion in books; some, in images; and some, in the pomp and splendor of external worship: these honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But there are some who, with illuminated understandings, discern the glory which man has lost, and with pure affections pant for its recovery: these hear and speak, with reluctance, of the cares and pleasures of the present life, and even lament the necessity of administering to the wants of animal nature: these hear and understand what the Holy Spirit speaketh in their heart; exhorting them, to withdraw their affection from things on earth, and set it on things above; to abandon this fallen world, and day and night aspire after re-union with