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.
