In His Steps
1896
A destitute young man stumbles into Rev. Henry Maxwell's church and asks a question that shatters the congregation's complacency: What would Jesus do? After the man dies unexpectedly, Maxwell persuades his wealthiest and most prominent members to vow that for one year, they will make no decision without first asking this question. The commitment begins with small challenges, giving up luxuries, helping the poor, but quickly escalates into something that threatens relationships, careers, and identities. Each character must confront how little their Christianity has actually cost them. This book matters because it forces readers to grapple with the gap between belief and action. Sheldon's radical premise remains unsettling: what if we actually tried to follow Jesus, not as metaphor but as daily practice? The novel's power lies in its willingness to follow the implications of genuine faith into uncomfortable territory, criticizing industrial capitalism, demanding personal sacrifice, and insisting that compassion requires cost. Over a century later, it still speaks to anyone who has ever felt their beliefs don't match their life.
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“We must know Jesus before we can imitate Him.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“But if our definition of being a Christian is simply to enjoy the privileges of worship, be generous at no expense to ourselves, have a good, easy time surrounded by pleasant friends and by comfortable things, live respectably and at the same time avoid the world's great stress of sin and trouble because it is too much pain to bear it”
— Charles M. Sheldon
“The greatest question in all of human life is summed up when we ask, 'What would Jesus do?' if, as we ask it, we also try to answer it from a growth in knowledge of Jesus himself. We must know Jesus before we can imitate Him.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“Must Jesus bear the cross alone And all the world go free? No, there's a cross for every one, And there's a cross for me.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“Our Christianity loves its ease and comfort too well to take up anything so rough and heavy as a cross. And””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“No man can tell until he is moved by the Divine Spirit what he may do, or how he may change the current of a lifetime of fixed habits of thought and speech and action.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“The bishop thought that night, while Rachel was singing, that if the world of sinful, diseased, depraved, lost humanity could only have the Gospel preached to it by consecrated sopranos and professional tenors and altos and basses, he believed it would hasten the coming of the Kingdom quicker than any other one force.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“Somehow I get puzzled when I see so many Christians living in luxury and singing 'Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee,' and remember how my wife died in a tenement in New York City, gasping for air and asking God to take the little girl too. Of course I don't expect you people can prevent every one from dying of starvation, lack of proper nourishment and tenement air, but what does following Jesus mean?””
— Charles M. Sheldon
“He had made money his god. As soon as that god was gone out of his little world there was nothing more to worship; and when a man's object of worship is gone he has no more to live for.””
— Charles M. Sheldon
