Introduction

After the Bible, The Imitation of Christ is the most widely translated and most widely read Christian book. In four books of short, plain, proverb-like sentences it urges the reader to put away worldly vanity, to know himself, to be humble and patient, and to converse with God in the heart. 'I would rather feel compunction than know its definition.' 'If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you expect to have another to your liking?' 'Man proposes, but God disposes.' For more than five hundred years, from Ignatius of Loyola to John Wesley, from Thomas More to the Christians of Japan, countless readers have kept it as a companion of the spiritual life.