OTHER TESTIMONY TO JESUS
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
[A Letter. Washington, D.C., 1900.]
The religion which Christ founded has been a mighty influence in the civilization of the human race. If we of to-day owed to it nothing more than this, our debt of appreciation would be incalculable. The doctrine of love, purity, and right-living has step by step won its way into the heart of mankind, has exalted home and family, and has filled the future with hope and promise.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
[Complete Works. (Emilius.) Edinburgh: 1778, vol. ii., pp. 215-218.]
I will confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that the sacred personage whose history they contain should be Himself a mere man?… Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato describes his imaginary righteous man, loaded with all the punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ. The resemblance is so striking that all the Church fathers perceived it.
THOMAS JEFFERSON.
[Works. Philadelphia: 1871, vol. iv., p. 479.]
I am a Christian in the only sense in which He [Christ] wishes any one to be: sincerely attracted to His doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to Him every human excellence, and believing He never claimed any other.
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.
[Review of Ecce Homo, from Gleanings of Past Years. New York: 1879, vol. iii., pp. 84, 93.]
Through the fair gloss of His manhood, we perceive the rich bloom of His divinity. If He is not now without an assailant, at least He is without a rival. If He be not the Sun of Righteousness, the Friend that gives His life for His friends and that sticketh closer than a brother, the unfailing Consoler, the constant Guide, the everlasting Priest and King, at least, as all must confess, there is no other to come into His room.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
[Conversations with Eckermann. London: 1874, pp. 567-569.]
If I am asked whether it is in my nature to pay Him devout reverence, I say, certainly. I bow before Him as the divine manifestation of the highest principles of morality.… Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospel.…
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
[Prose Works. Boston: 1870, vol. i., pp. 69, 70.]
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, He lived in it, and had His being there. Alone in all history, He estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnated Himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of His world.…
FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT.
[Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. New York: 1885, p. 320 et seq.]
The supernatural being and power of Jesus may be disputed; but the perfection, the sublimity of His acts and precepts, of His life and His moral law, are incontestable. And in effect, not only are they not contested, but they are admired and celebrated enthusiastically, and complacently too; it would seem as if it were desired to restore to Jesus as man, and man alone, the superiority of which men deprived Him in refusing to see in Him the Godhead.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
[John S. C. Abbott’s Life of Napoleon, vol. ii, p. 612.]
Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love, and at this hour, millions of men would die for Him.…
This testimony from Napoleon has been much disputed. Dr. Philip Schaff, weighing the argument for and against, says that he believes that it is authentic in substance.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
[Letter to President Stiles or Yale College, March 9, 1790.]
I think His [Jesus Christ’s] system of morals and religion as He left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER.
[Dawnings for Germany. Complete Works, pp. 33, 36.]
It concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among the holy, lifted, with His pierced hands, empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.
JOHN STUART MILL.
[Three Essays on Religion. New York: 1874, pp. 253, 255.]
Religion can not be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Sartor Resartus, pp. 155, 158.]
If thou ask to what length man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest symbol, Jesus of Nazareth, and His life and His biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human thought not yet reached: this Christianity and Christendom—a symbol of quite perennial infinite character, whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest.…
WILLIAM E. LECKY.
[History of European Morals. London: 1869, vol. ii., p. 9.]
It may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. This has, indeed, been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism, that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration.
JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN.
[The Life of Jesus. New York: 1864, pp. 215, 365, 375, 376.]
He founded the pure worship—of no age, of no clime—which shall be that of all lofty souls to the end of time. Not only was His religion that day (John iv. 24) the benign religion of humanity, but it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have inhabitants endowed with reason and morality, their religion can not be different from that which Jesus proclaimed at Jacob’s well.…
Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; His legend will call forth tears without end; His sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.