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.