0
0
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.” It hangs on church walls, gets read at memorial services, and opens volunteer days all over the world. The name underneath is almost always Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century Spanish nun.
Here is the straight answer. There is no evidence that Teresa of Avila said or wrote it. Nobody has found it in her writings. The words can be traced in print to Britain, three hundred years after she died: to an 1888 London sermon by a Methodist preacher named Mark Guy Pearse, and to an 1892 Quaker journal where a woman named Sarah Eliza Rowntree added the famous first line.
Almost everyone who loves this line learned it with Teresa’s name on it, and it is easy to see why. It sounds like a saint. It is bold, plain and practical. And it has been printed under her name in prayer books for more than fifty years.
The true story does not take anything away from the words. It gives something back that got lost on the way.
Where “Christ Has No Body Now but Yours” Really Came From
Teresa of Avila lived from 1515 to 1582. She was a Carmelite nun, a reformer, and the author of books still read today, including The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. In 1970 she was named a Doctor of the Church. Her writings have been studied closely for centuries, which is exactly why it matters that this prayer is not among them.
The trail starts somewhere else entirely.
1888: A preacher on a hard New Year’s morning
Every January, the Evangelical Alliance held a Week of Prayer in London, with a different subject for each day. On Tuesday 3 January 1888, the subject was Confession, and the speaker was the Rev. Mark Guy Pearse of the West-end Wesleyan Mission. Pearse was a well-known Methodist preacher and writer from Cornwall.
He was not in a gentle mood. The list of things to confess that day included drunkenness, the opium trade and hatred between nations. In the fuller report of his talk, he describes coming out of St. James’s Hall on New Year’s morning and seeing the drunken streets of Piccadilly and Regent Street. “Is Christianity not able to do the work God meant it to do?” he asked.
Then he turned to the first chapter of Acts, and said this:
“Now, you, my brothers and sisters, are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out upon this world, and yours are the lips through which His love is to speak; yours are the hands with which He is to bless men, and yours the feet with which He is to go about doing good—through His Church, which is His body.”
You can still read it, word for word, in the report of that meeting printed in Evangelical Christendom on 1 February 1888, page 46. It travelled fast. By 4 February 1888, the same address had been reprinted in The Bombay Guardian in India.
Look closely and you will see the modern prayer is already there: the eyes, the compassion, the hands that bless, the feet that go about doing good. What is missing is the opening line.
1892: The first line arrives
Four years later, in 1892, The British Friend, a Quaker journal, reported words from a Quaker woman named Sarah Eliza Rowntree:
“Remember Christ has no human body now upon the earth but yours; no hands but yours…”
From there her words run on into Pearse’s eyes, hands and feet. The Catholic writer Trent Horn, who traces this history in his 2018 book What the Saints Never Said, describes her as a Quaker medical missionary who cited Pearse’s sermon and added the opening herself.
So the most famous part of the prayer, “Christ has no body now but yours,” was the last part to be written.
After that: the name falls off, and a new one arrives
The words kept moving through Quaker circles. A 1906 collection of papers by the Quaker writer John Wilhelm Rowntree includes a version: “Remember Christ has now no human body upon earth but yours; no hands but yours, no feet but yours.” By the 1920s, Quaker publications were printing another turn of it: “God has no human body now upon the earth but ours.”
Somewhere along the way it lost its authors and became a piece that “everybody knows.” Sayings without a name often pick up a famous one. By 1970, a book of prayers was telling readers the words were “written about 400 years ago by St. Teresa of Avila.” Since then it has appeared under her name in family prayer books, confirmation books and student journals.
How sure can we be?
We want to be careful, because this is an article about getting words right. No one can prove Teresa never said anything like this in a conversation that nobody wrote down.
What we can say is this. The prayer is not in her known writings. Its middle section appears, almost word for word, in a sermon by Mark Guy Pearse in January 1888. Its first line appears in 1892 in a Quaker journal, spoken by a woman who, as Trent Horn documents, was citing Pearse. No one has shown a version older than those. That is why “attributed to Teresa of Avila” is the most that can honestly be said for her name, and why “Mark Guy Pearse and Sarah Eliza Rowntree” is the better answer.
What Pearse Actually Said Next
Here is the part almost nobody has heard. Pearse did not stop at “yours are the hands.”
He had opened his reading with the first verse of Acts: “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach” (Acts 1:1, KJV). The key word for him was began. Jesus began the work. The church carries it on.
But right after the famous lines, Pearse went straight on to the next verse, which is about the Holy Ghost. His point was not “try harder.” He pointed out that Jesus himself “never did anything until He was filled with the Holy Ghost.” Then he quoted the promise Jesus made to his friends before he left:
“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” (Acts 1:8, KJV)
And he ended not with a job description but with a prayer. He told his listeners to go to the Lord alone and say, “Take me, give me this power,” and to expect it for the asking.
That is the half the famous prayer left behind. The modern version tells you what your hands are for. The original also tells you where the strength for them comes from.
Even the phrase “go about doing good” is borrowed. It echoes Acts 10:38, where Peter describes Jesus as the one “who went about doing good.” Pearse was not inventing a new idea. He was reading an old one out loud: that the people who follow Jesus become, together, the way that work goes on. Paul put it in one short line: “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KJV).
Why the Difference Matters
This is not just a point for quote collectors. “Christ has no hands but yours” is a favourite at volunteer days and healing services, and it is printed in books written for volunteers and people who care for the sick. In other words, it is often handed to the people who already show up for everyone.
For someone running on empty, the short version can land hard. If Christ has no hands but mine, and my hands are shaking, what then? It can start to sound like everything depends on you.
Pearse, on that grim January morning, did not believe that. He believed the work was real and the calling was real, and that the power for it was a gift to be asked for, not a supply you had to produce. That is a kinder sentence, and it is the one he actually preached.
If you have been moved by these words, you were moved by something true. Nothing here asks you to take the picture off the wall. It just adds the line that was always meant to come after it. If this story made you want to walk more closely with the Jesus whose hands these words are about, our free 3-day sample of 30 Days Walking with Jesus is a gentle place to start.
So Can You Still Use It?
Yes. It is a beautiful piece of writing, and the idea at its heart is in the Bible. If you use it, “attributed to Teresa of Avila” is honest about the tradition, and “adapted from Mark Guy Pearse (1888) and Sarah Eliza Rowntree (1892)” is honest about the history.
You may also see it as “Christ has no hands but yours,” “Christ has no body on earth but yours,” “Christ has no body now on earth but yours,” or simply “the Teresa of Avila prayer.” These are all versions of the same travelling words.
It keeps company with other famous lines that picked up a saint’s name. “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words” is another one, and Francis of Assisi’s real words on that turn out to be surprising. And if the idea of Christ’s compassion looking out through human eyes moves you, it is worth seeing what the Bible’s word for Jesus’ compassion actually pictures. If you are wondering what your own hands might be for, our free Spiritual Gifts Assessment is a good place to look.
Most of us learned this prayer with Teresa’s name on it, often from people we love. That is how good words travel. The real story just returns the piece that fell off: the hands were never meant to work on their own strength.
Your Turn
Is there a prayer or saying you have always heard with a saint’s name on it? Something on a bookmark, a church bulletin, or a card from someone you love? Tell us in the comments. We read every one.
And if you would like to spend a few days walking through the life of Jesus, the one who “went about doing good,” the free sample of 30 Days Walking with Jesus is here:
Share This
- “‘Christ has no body now but yours’ isn’t from Teresa of Avila. The middle of it comes almost word for word from a Methodist preacher’s sermon in London, January 1888. I had no idea.”
- “The famous first line of the ‘Christ has no body’ prayer was added last, by a Quaker woman named Sarah Eliza Rowntree in 1892.”
- “The preacher behind ‘yours are the hands’ didn’t stop there. Next he said Jesus did nothing until filled with the Holy Ghost, and told people to pray: ‘Take me, give me this power.’ The poem kept the job and dropped the power.”
Questions People Ask
Did Teresa of Avila write “Christ has no body now but yours”?
There is no evidence that Teresa of Avila wrote or said “Christ has no body now but yours.” The prayer does not appear in her known writings. Its wording can be traced to Britain in the late 1800s: the lines about eyes, hands and feet come from an 1888 sermon by the Methodist preacher Mark Guy Pearse, and the opening line appears in 1892 in the Quaker journal The British Friend, in words from Sarah Eliza Rowntree. It was being printed under Teresa’s name by 1970.
Who wrote “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours”?
“Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours” grew from two people. Mark Guy Pearse, a Methodist preacher, said on 3 January 1888 in London that “you, my brothers and sisters, are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out upon this world,” along with lines about hands and feet. In 1892, Sarah Eliza Rowntree, a Quaker, used his words and added the opening: “Remember Christ has no human body now upon the earth but yours; no hands but yours.” Later versions shortened and smoothed the wording.
Is “Christ has no hands but yours” in the Bible?
No. “Christ has no hands but yours” is not a Bible verse. The idea behind it is close to 1 Corinthians 12:27 (KJV), “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” The phrase “go about doing good” in the prayer echoes Acts 10:38, which says Jesus “went about doing good.”
What did Mark Guy Pearse mean by “yours are the hands with which He is to bless men”?
When Mark Guy Pearse said “yours are the hands with which He is to bless men” in 1888, he meant that the church carries on the work Jesus began, as Acts 1:1 puts it. But he did not mean people should do it on their own strength. In the same sermon he said Jesus “never did anything until He was filled with the Holy Ghost,” quoted Acts 1:8, “ye shall receive power,” and urged his listeners to pray, “Take me, give me this power.”
Does “Christ has no body now but yours” mean Christ has no body at all?
The oldest printed forms of “Christ has no body now but yours” were worded more carefully than the modern one. Sarah Eliza Rowntree’s 1892 version said “no human body now upon the earth but yours,” and Mark Guy Pearse’s 1888 sermon described the church as Christ’s body, saying the work goes on “through His Church, which is His body.” The shorter modern wording dropped the word “human.”
