The Man of GalileeHaygood, Atticus G. (Atticus Greene)
Religion
The Man of Galilee
Haygood, Atticus G. (Atticus Greene)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity; Jesus Christ -- Popular works
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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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