THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD.
What has been set forth concerning the power of the teachings of
Jesus to stir and stimulate and enlighten the conscience; what has
been said of his own character and life as incarnating, and thereby
expounding, making clear and enforcing, his doctrine; what has been
suggested concerning the absolute universality of his character, making
him brother to every human being and therefore as much to one as to
another, all this brings us to speak briefly of a wonderful but very
common fact of daily observation and experience, a fact that cannot
be dissevered from the character, nature, and personality of Jesus
himself: the effect of his doctrines and of himself upon men.
It is not meant that all who are called Christians show these results;
that all who are Christians show all these results; that any man or
woman who ever was called Christian has shown all the results possible
to humanity as the natural sequence of receiving fully the doctrine of
Jesus and living up to it. No more than I will plead for counterfeit
coins; no more than I would say that all coins that have pure gold in
them are of full weight and without alloy of baser metal. But this I
do say: we do find, and always find, in those who receive and obey
the teachings of Jesus the results he pointed out as following their
reception; that the results follow in proportion to the thoroughness
with which these teachings are observed; that those who best keep them
become most like him, the one blameless and perfect Man.
We will not enter into any theological discussions; we do not touch
the metaphysics of the subject; but this may be affirmed roundly and
without qualification: those who believe and receive and obey his
words are not only changed in their manner of life, they are, so far
as we can have any means of judging men, changed in their spirit of
life. So it does come to pass in those who keep his words; old things
become new, not only in the sphere of action, but also in the sphere of
thinking, feeling, willing.
As it seems to me, there can be nothing in this world harder to do
than to change, not men’s external lives merely, but men themselves.
Changing men’s hearts is like making worlds.
Who else who ever taught, lived, or died, does this? Does this while
among men? Does this, being for nearly two thousand years gone out of
the sight and hearing of men? But Jesus works this miracle now, and
in men of all races and conditions, civilized and savage, learned and
unlearned. And their number is as the sands by the sea-shore and as the
stars of heaven for multitude.
Candid thinkers in accounting for Jesus--in characterizing and
classifying him--must take account of the effects produced in human
character, as well as in human lives, and in human lives because in
human character.
The men of science tell us we must take account of facts in forming our
conclusions; and they are right. It was Jesus who taught this principle
long before Bacon; “By their fruits ye shall know them.” In studying
Jesus we must take account of those facts in human life which seem to
be connected with him.
We have spoken of the change in character--call it by any name or
none--that follows obedience to Jesus. In this connection there is
another most wonderful thing to be considered. What I am to mention now
is, on the mere grounds of common sense and worldly reasoning, the most
marvelous and inexplicable of all facts observed among men in relation
to any being not with them in visible, tangible form; I refer to the
matchless love his true disciples feel toward him, not as a teacher,
but as a person.
None can deny it. Who, if Jesus was only a man, can explain it?
No man who knows history, or the world to-day, will doubt for one
moment that millions on millions of human beings--men, women, and
little children--have felt and shown for the person of Jesus the most
absorbing love; a love that drove out all fear and mastered every other
love. Some great teachers and leaders while they were yet in the flesh
have had followers and friends who loved them well enough to hazard
life for them and to die for them. We can understand the soldier who,
on one occasion, when a shell fell close by the first Napoleon, while
it was just exploding flung himself between the fatal bomb and his
loved chief, and throwing his arms about him died in his stead. But
when Napoleon was an exile in St. Helena he complained one day that,
among all those he had befriended in the days of his power, there were
none to draw sword for him when he was an exile. Who would die for
Napoleon now?
There have been thinkers, poets, orators, philosophers, who have
enthusiastic admirers who contend for them in the pretty war of
words. Shakespeare has as many such admirers as the foremost in all
the world. But who loves him--the man--in any such deep, absorbing
fashion as untold millions have loved and do now love the Man--Jesus of
Nazareth? It surprises you to hear such a question. If Jesus was only a
man the question should not surprise. How does it come about that such
love as the great army of martyrs and confessors have shown was never
felt for any except this Galilean peasant?
There is not now, there never was such love for Buddha or Mohammed.
Such love was never professed for the founders of Buddhism or
Mohammedanism. Such love was never felt for any person long gone from
the midst of men.
This love is not like the fanaticism that fights for one’s own idea;
it is the love of a person for a person. This love for Jesus has shown
itself to be the master love that ever held sway in the human heart.
For this love all other loves have been given up--have been crucified.
Do men and women, in their senses, give their strength and life-long
service for any other name? Die cheerfully for any other name? Die for
one long gone away from them--gone out of the world and, so far as
sense and reason know, gone forever? But neither lapse of centuries,
distance by separating seas, distances unknown between this world and
the world men do not know, or separation by differences of race, cools
this love. What the martyrs did in Jerusalem they soon afterward did
in Rome, in Alexandria, in every city and country of that age and that
part of the world. They did the same thing--died with songs on their
lips for this Man of Galilee--in after centuries. So did they in the
Middle Ages in every country of Europe. So they have done in our own
time in that great island, Madagascar, that has shown in the dark sons
of the tropics, whose fathers were heathen idolaters, the overmastering
love of men, women, and children, for the Jesus they had never seen;
who lived on the other side of the world from them, and taught men how
to be saved nearly two thousand years ago. They died in Madagascar as
they died in Rome, “the love of Christ constraining them.”
And the best people in the world to-day would so die for him in every
country where his word has gone. And this love grows fuller and
stronger; Jesus is more in the thoughts and love of men than he ever
was before.
If you would in some sense realize the wonder of which we are now
speaking, try to imagine such a passion coming into the hearts of
millions of men to-day as would impel them to die with rejoicings
for Socrates, or any other born of woman, save the Man who was once
a carpenter in Joseph’s shop in Nazareth of Galilee. You cannot
imagine such a thing. As to Jesus, and love for him, it is not left to
imagination; we have history. And we know a great multitude who would
gladly die for Jesus now if to them should come the martyr’s test.
When Jesus disappeared from the sight of men there was not a human
probability that his name would be other than a reproach, till, like
any common felon--like the forgotten thieves between whom he died--his
name and fate should drop out of the memory of men. Humanly speaking,
it was certain that he would never have a solitary follower. No
sane man, reckoning on the ordinary probabilities of human motives
and action, could have conceived the possibility of a vast body of
disciples, ever growing, and pushing on his conquests round the world,
holding together through passing centuries, enduring all manner of
opposition and bitter persecution, and now, in this year 1889, the
master-force of the world; a force that, beyond all cavil, is now the
most active, aggressive, and revolutionizing influence ever set going
among men.
It could not have been conceived; every dominant power of the world was
arrayed against him; there was not a star shining for Jesus if he was
only a man.
But Jesus crucified lives on. Around his cross has been the
battle-ground of the ages. All that human skill and bitter hate could
do has been done to put out the light he kindled on Calvary. But he
lives on--lives in men to-day; single-handed he goes on his conquering
way. His servants, because they love him, are pushing his cause in
every nation under heaven. As in the old days, in the lands that
bordered the Mediterranean, so now among the great pagan nations--in
India, China, Japan, Africa, and in the islands of the sea, they are
telling the story he commanded them to repeat till he should come
again. And, telling it, they are now, as in the days of his first
apostles, “turning the world upside down.”
In every land his children are building up his kingdom. They die for
him, and others take their places; and so the work begun in Jerusalem
never ceases. History confirms his promise, “I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world.”
Such a character could not have been conceived had not such a life
been lived; such a life could not have sprung out of Hebrew soil; no
mere man ever knew the deepest truths without investigation or taught
them without proving them; no mere man ever conceived of such a work
as Jesus proposed to himself, and no mere man would have adopted the
methods Jesus used; no mere man ever conceived so vast an undertaking
as the moral conquest of the race; no mere man ever took such masterful
hold upon the conscience, love, and will of mankind.
* * * * *
What Simon Peter said stands to-day as the faith of the Church: “Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The great words of St. John
stand firm as the teaching of Scripture and the verdict both of reason
and history: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
The facts of his humanity and of his work and influence in the world
forbid us to classify Jesus with men, and the recognition of his
divinity alone explains the facts of his humanity. Considered as
God-man all is in harmony; miracles take their proper place in the
records of his history, and mind and nature, heaven and earth, God and
man meet in Jesus, the Christ.
But--if he be only a man--he is such a man as were a thousand times
worth dying for and following forever, through time and eternity.
OTHER BOOKS BY ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD.
OUR BROTHER IN BLACK: His Freedom and His Future.
_Price, post-paid, $1._
New York: HUNT & EATON; Cincinnati: CRANSTON & STOWE; Nashville, Tenn.:
SOUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE.
It goes to the very kernel of affairs.--_Atlanta_ (Ga.) _Constitution._
A most exhaustive and interesting study of the colored man, his present
condition and future prospects.--_New York Herald._
A more powerful plea for the Negro than any Negro ever
made.--_Cincinnati Star-Times._
We recall no other work on the subject so entirely
satisfactory.--_Christian Intelligencer._
---------:O:---------
PLEAS FOR PROGRESS.
_Price, post-paid, $1._
New York: HUNT & EATON: Cincinnati: CRANSTON & STOWE.
Discusses Negro citizenship and Negro education on all sides, the
Neglected Classes, the Social Evil, Public Education, Prohibition, and
kindred topics.
A remarkable book, that should be in every public library, North and
South.--_Chicago Advance._
Covers almost every phase of the momentous race question.--_Zion’s
Herald._
No book of our day will serve the needs of information, North
and South, as this volume. It discusses our civilization and its
future.--_Richmond_ (Va.) _Christian Advocate._
This is the kernel of the Southern question.--_Des Moines_ (Iowa)
_Christian Advocate._
---------:O:---------
SERMONS AND SPEECHES.
_Price, post-paid, $1 25._
New York: HUNT & EATON.
Discusses the vital points of religion and daily duty. Most of these
are discourses delivered to the young men of Emory College, Oxford, Ga.
---------:O:---------
OUR CHILDREN.
_Price, post-paid, $1 25._
New York: HUNT & EATON.
There are single chapters worth more than the whole book.--_New York
Christian Advocate._
Most excellent, wholesome, and practical.--_Zion’s Herald._
The best treatise of the kind of which we have any knowledge.--_Dr. T.
O. Summers, in Christian Advocate._
It is a book for every household.--_Bishop J. H. Vincent._
A book that will at once instruct and arouse.--_Western Methodist._
Placed in every family in the land, and carefully read, it would create
a perceptible moral uplifting.--_Holston Methodist._
Will be helpful to all Christian parents and teachers.--_New York
Observer._
SEND TO PUBLISHERS, OR TO
A. G. HAYGOOD, Jr.,
Decatur, Ga.
Transcriber’s Note:
Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the
original publication except the following:
Page 66
he does not philosphize _changed to_
he does not philosophize
Page 94
It were hard to say which _changed to_
It was hard to say which
Page 106
in any wise to self interest _changed to_
in any wise to self-interest
Page 157
present conditiom and future _changed to_
present condition and future
End of Project Gutenberg's The Man of Galilee, by Atticus G. Haygood