See amid the winter's snow, Born for us on earth below, See, the Lamb of God appears, Promised from eternal years! Hail thou ever-blesse'  d morn! Hail, redemption's happy dawn! Sing through all Jerusalem: Christ is born in Bethlehem!

-Caswall, Edward
  'See  Amid the Winter's Snow'.

But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taughte, but first he folwed it him-selve.

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Canterbury  Tales,'General Prologue', l.527^8.

Crist wole we claym of him oure gentilleesse, Nat of oure eldres for hire old richesse.

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Canterbury  Tales,'The Wife of Bath's Tale', l.1117^8.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

-Cromwell, Oliver
  Letter to the General  Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 3  Aug.

Signs are taken for wonders.'We would see a sign!' The word within the word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'Gerontion'.

While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,Christ exclaims,'If it is possible, let this cup pass from me'.Christ in this respect is the self- confession of human sensibility.

-Feuerbach, Ludwig
Das Wesen des Christentums (translated by MaryAnn Evans (George Eliot) as The Essence of Christianity,1854).

One was left, too, with a gap in Christianity: the canonical gospels do not record that Christ laughed or played.Cana man be perfect if henever laughs or plays? Krishna's jokes may be vapid, but they bridge a gap.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
  The Hill of Devi,'Gokul  Ashtami'.

Virginite¤ ,  mysticisme, me¤  lancolie! Trois mots inconnus, trois maladies nouvelles apporte¤  es par le Christ. Virginity, mysticism, melancholy! Three unknown words, three new illnesses brought by Christ.

-Gautier,The¤  ophile
  Mademoiselle de Maupin.

He would certainly have despised Christ for being the son of a carpenter, if the NewTestament had not proved in time to be such a howling commercial success.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  Dr Fischer of Geneva, ch.7.

I did say yes O at lightning and lashed rod; Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess Thy terror,O Christ,O God.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'The Wreck of the Deutschland', pt.1, stanza 2.

   Iamall atonce what Christ is, sincehewaswhat Iam, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire'.

And the softness of my body will be guarded by embrace By each button, hook, and lace. For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for?

-Lowell, Amy
  'Patterns'.

Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but more boldly believe and rejoice in Christ.

-Luther, Martin
  Letter to Melanchthon.

   Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!öWho pulls me down?ö See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

-Marlowe, Christopher
c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street, And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom come, And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth.

-Masefield,John Edward
  'The Everlasting Mercy'.

Il n'y a jamais eu de royaume o  u' il y ait eu tant de guerres civiles que dans celui du Christ. No kingdom has ever been so divided by civil wars as that of Christ.

-Bre'  de et de
Lettres persanes, no.29.

The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ.

-Nightingale, Florence
  'Cassandra' pt.4, part of an unpublished work  Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth (revised and privately printed1859). Published as an appendix in Ray Strachey The Cause:  A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain (1928).

While the South is hardly Christ-centred, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

-O'Connor, (Mary) Flannery
  'Some  Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction'. Paper read at  Wesleyan College, Fall.

For thefuture I cease,Deathapproaches with little delay, Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed; I'll follow the heroes far from the light of day, The princes myancestors followed before Christ died.

-O'Rahilly, Egan Gaelic name  Aodhaga¤  n OŁ   Rathaille
c.1729  Closing lines of his last known poem, translated from the Irish by Owen Dudley Edwards.

Christ for myguardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards; Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ over me, Christ to right of me, Christ to left of me, Christ in lying down, Christ in sitting, Christ in rising up, Christ in the heart of every person who may thinkof me, Christ in the mouth of every person who may speak of me, Christ in every eye, which may look on me! Christ in every ear, which may hear me!

-St Patrick   5c
St Patrick's Breastplate, traditionally attributed to the saint.