The Man of Galilee

by Atticus G. Haygood

This much is certain: we have in these four little books—compared with what is every day written about common men how small they are!—attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, a most distinct character, known to us and known to history as Jesus. Whether the men whose names the little books bear, or some other men whose names are lost to us wrote them, matters not in the least. What books contain is more important than the question of authorship. No matter who wrote them, the character we know as Jesus is in the books; there can be no dispute about this; here it is, before our eyes. And this character is as surely in history, in literature, in men’s thoughts, in all that we mean by Christian civilization, as it is in the writings of the four men we call evangelists.

Not only do we have the character, but we see clearly that it is a character absolutely unique. It is unique in many respects, but pre-eminently in this—it is the one perfect character that has appeared in the world that ever had a place in the history or the thought of men. It is said that the volatile Voltaire once compared Jesus to Fletcher of Madeley, thinking him as good a man as the Nazarene. But the light Frenchman understood neither the one nor the other. As one said of an unfit biographer of Fletcher’s great friend, John Wesley: “He had nothing to draw with, and the well was deep.”

Is there one solitary defect, the very least, in this character that we find in the evangelists? Is there one weak spot, or suggestion of fault, or intimation of infirmity, or suspicion of failure, the slightest, to do and to be what was right for him to do and to be?

Look at him as he is set before us in these brief writings; look, reverently if you will, but with open and fearless eyes, to see all that may be seen of him. What least flaw can be found in him? Is there the least possible shadow of reason for reversing, or so much as questioning, Pilate’s verdict, “I find no fault in him?” Is there in all history one other character of which you can say or believe as much? Is there any other you are willing to name second to him?

If you are making an estimate of any other character—whether of a real person, as a sage, a statesman, or a philanthropist, or of some imaginary person, as the hero of a story—how would you judge him most severely? You would compare him with Jesus. We must remember that it is to Jesus we owe those higher standards by which we judge men in our times. Christ-likeness expresses the highest ideal of character we are capable of conceiving.

Some writers, as you know, have denied that Jesus, the Jesus of the four gospels, did at any time really live, a man among men. Of far more importance than any mere denials in books is the failure of many thousands to realize in their inmost consciousness that the story of the evangelists is the record of a life actually lived.

We will demand of those who deny or doubt that Jesus really lived to account to us for the existence of the character. This they must do, for the existence of the character they cannot deny; it is here before men’s eyes, as it is in men’s thoughts and lives. This character is not in these little books only; it is in a hundred thousand books. It was not only in the minds of four writers long ago; it is in the minds of millions of men, women, and children to-day. If any deny or doubt the historic Jesus, let them explain to us how this character, flawless and perfect, ever got itself into the thoughts of men and is now in history, literature, art, law, custom, in human life itself.

Some have tried to explain the existence of the character, while denying that Jesus really lived among men, by telling us the evangelists invented the Jesus of these stories. They tell us Jesus is the product of the dramatic genius of the four men whose names go with the brief account we have of him, his words, and his deeds. It would not alter the case to deny that these four wrote the books, and to say some other writers whose names we do not know invented the character.

Let us look carefully and fairly at this view of the subject. If it be reasonable it may be true; if it be true we need not fear to accept it. Nothing in Jesus calls on men to profess to believe what to them is not the truth; nothing can be more unlike him than to use words without convictions. We cannot do otherwise than “hold fast that which is true” to us; indeed we cannot hold fast to any thing else, though it be called truth by never so many voices of men.

The theory that Jesus is an invention is another way of saying that he is the hero of a romance, a creation of constructive imagination. It involves this: four Jews at about the same time, among a people not given to making books of any kind—least of all books of the imagination—were seized with desire to write books, and thus it came about that they have given to the world, as the product of dramatic genius, this character of Jesus. As, for illustration, it may be said, in a sense, that Bulwer invented the “Margrave” of A Strange Story.