"...let these unfortunate, deluded Christians know that the real Christ of every Christian is the Vach, the 'mystical Voice,' while the man Jeshu was but a mortal like any of us, an adept more by his inherent purity and ignorance of real Evil, than by what he had learned with his initiated Rabbis and the already (at that period) fast degenerating Egyptian Hierophants and priests." (Mahatma Letters, p. 344, #59)

"... neither knew the other John the Baptist having never heard of Jesus who is a spiritual abstraction and no living man of that epoch." (Mahatma Letters, p. 415, #90)

"Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see whether any one can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied idea. 'If any man be in Christ he is a new creature,' he is reborn, as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit - the spirit of man. Paul was the the only one of the apostles who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus, although he had never met him. But Paul had been initiated himself; and bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above the wisdom of the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final revelation to the epoptai. As Professor A. Wilder well proves in a series of able articles, it was not Jesus, but Paul who was the real founder of Christianity." (Isis Unveiled, II, p. 574)

"Do they affirm that Jesus gave himself as a voluntary sacrifice? on the contrary, there is not a word to sustain the idea. They make it clear that he would rather have lived to continue what he considered his mission, and that he died because he could not help it, and only when betrayed... When, finally, he saw that his time had come, he succumbed to the inevitable. But see him in the garden, on the Mount of Olives, writhing in agony until 'his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood,' praying with fervid supplication that the cup might be removed from him; exhausted by his struggles to such a degree that an angel from heaven had to come and strengthen him; and say if the picture is that of self -immolating hostage and martyr."  (ibid., p. 545)

"If we do not accept Jesus as God, we revere him as a man. Such a feeling honors him more than if we were to attribute to him the powers and personality of the Supreme, and credit him at the same time with having played a useless comedy with mankind, as, after all, his mission proves scarcely less than a complete failure; 2,000 years have passed, and Christians do not reckon one-fifth part of the population of the globe, nor is Christianity likely to progress any better in the future." (ibid., p. 530)

Neo-Theosophy:

"Again, in these researches into the remote past we have frequently found the disciple Jesus, who in Palestine had the privilege of yielding up His body to the Christ. As a result of that act He received the incarnation of Apollonius of Tyana . . . the one who was once the disciple Jesus stands ready especially to guide the various activities of the Christian Churches." ( C . W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life I, p. 11)

"I believe with many of the early Christians, that the World Teacher, named by them the Christ, assumed at the stage of the Gospel story called the Baptism, the body of a disciple, Jesus, to carry on his earthly work at that time." (Annie Besant, interviewed Jan. 13, 1926 by Associated Press of India)

"The historical Christ, then, is a glorious Being belonging to the great spiritual hierarchy that guides the spiritual evolution of humanity, who used for some three years the human body of the disciple Jesus ... That Mighty One who had used the body of Jesus as His vehicle, and whose guardian care extends over the whole spiritual evolution of the fifth race of humanity, gave into the strong hands of the holy disciple who had surrendered to Him His body the care of the infant Church. Perfecting his human evolution, Jesus became one of the Masters of Wisdom, and took Christianity under His special charge, ever seeking to guide it to the right lines, to protect, to guard and nourish it." (Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, pp. 96-7)

"We have seen how the man Jesus, the Hebrew disciple, laid down his body in glad surrender that a higher life might descend and become embodied in the form. He thus willingly sacrificed, and how by that act He became a Christ of  full stature, to be the Guardian of Christianity . . . triumphing over death." (Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, p. 148)

"Let us pray.

"Guide us, 0 almighty Father, in all our doings, and from Thy heavenly throne send down Thy holy Angel to be with Thy people who have met together to serve and to worship Thee Through Christ our Lord.

"The phrase 'Let us pray' is a signal given by the celebrant to the people when he is about to say a prayer, and it is therefore time for them to kneel ... for a considerable time there was no written liturgy, and each celebrant filled in extemporaneously the outline of the ceremony as given by the Christ.

"That Christ did give such an outline is certain from clairvoyent investigation." (C. W. Leadbeater, Science of the Sacraments, p. 471)