To have courage without pugnacity,
To have conviction without bigotry,
To have charity without condescension,
To have faith without credulity,
To have meekness with power, and emotion with sanity,
To have love for humanity without mere sentimentality
- that is Christianity. (Charles Evans Hughes)

Being a "beautiful Christian" is that second mile that a true experience of Christ produces in us. There are no "ugly Christians" not really. When I was a student at the Duke Divinity School the bells were just then being installed in the tower of the Duke Chapel. We knew that there were fifty bells, the largest weighing five and one half tons, the smallest about the size of a dinner bell. The bells hung in the tower for some time with no music coming from them. We wondered. Then, suddenly one da…