Five Young Men: Messages of Yesterday for the Young Men of To-day

by Charles Reynolds Brown

He did it all in His youth and when He died at the age of thirty-three He did not look down and say, "I have failed because My life is cut off all too soon." He looked up and said, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do."

How marvellous was the life of this young man who changed the history of the world! If we could get away from the idea that He is a stained-glass window or a marble statue or a lovely story in a book which most men seldom read—if we could only see Him as He was, the Word made flesh, real, warm, alive, our hearts would leap.

He was born in the manger of a stable. He grew up in a carpenter's home and in a carpenter's shop. He never saw the inside of a college, yet somehow He learned to think straight and to speak as never man spake. He lived with the birds and the flowers, the trees, the hills and the stars. He thought deeply upon the interests and needs of men until He knew what was in man and needed not that any should tell Him—He told them. He looked up with pure eyes and a pure heart until He saw God. Therefore, when He spoke His word was with power; and when He lived His life was with power; and when He stretched forth His hand, His touch had healing in it.

His mind was exceedingly broad. He had never been outside the borders of His own little country, which is about the size of the State of New Hampshire. He had never seen the mighty cities in Egypt to the south of Him, nor Antioch in Syria to the north. He had never looked upon Athens nor upon Rome. The man who thinks Broadway, New York, is the center of the solar system would have called Him provincial. His feet knew nothing save the narrow streets of Jerusalem and the still narrower lanes of Galilee.

Yet He moved about with a dream of world-wide empire in His head and the vision of a Kingdom Everlasting in His heart. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." When He sent forth His disciples to do the work He had taught them to do, this is the way their commission read: "Go into all the world. Make disciples of all nations. Baptize everybody into My name and the name of the Father." He had courage—think of His standing there, a young peasant in little Palestine, talking about a world-wide empire over which He would rule by His own unseen spirit!

He found little in His environment to add strength to His hope. He lived under a government which was tyrannical and corrupt. The Jewish Church to which He belonged was formal and lifeless. He faced a society which was ruled by men like Herod, and by women like the shameless wife of Herod, who cut off a poor man's head for telling her the truth about herself. He saw the religious leaders of His day straining at gnats of difficulty in their formal worship and then swallowing camels of moral fault in their every-day conduct. The situation might well have frightened the boldest heart. It never frightened Him. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me," He said at the beginning of His ministry, "because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and to set at liberty them that are bruised." And when He came to the close of His ministry, He said, "Behold, I make all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." He was undaunted.

He was an optimist. By that I do not mean one of those silly, short-sighted individuals who goes about saying, "Look always on the bright side." Jesus looked at both sides. He went about with His eyes open. He saw everything. He saw the struggle and the sorrow of human life and felt it as if it had been all His own. He looked upon the tired, sad, sin-stained face of the race. He knew it as He knew His own face, and He saw the heart of pain which had made it so. He was no schoolboy shouting himself hoarse in a thoughtless enthusiasm which had never tested its strength against the graver difficulties of life. He saw it all, felt it all, understood it all, yet He lived and died in a great, sweet, serene hope for the race. You cannot find one hateful, cynical or despairing word falling from His lips.

He stood once where the shadow of the Cross was already drawing a black line across His path. He had twelve disciples to whom for the past two years He had given the best part of His time, His thought and His love. One of them had already betrayed Him, bargaining away his poor measure of loyalty for thirty pieces of silver. In the next hour another disciple would deny Him three times over with an oath. Another would doubt Him straight in the face of all those pledges of genuineness which they had received at first hand. And when the hour of trial struck His disciples would all show themselves cowards and quitters.

Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried. "I have overcome the world." He was speaking in anticipation, but He was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and every tongue to confess that He is Lord.

He was to change the history of the world—how did He go about it? In the first place He changed men's thoughts about God. Men are influenced by their environment—they are transformed by the renewing of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the things that matter, so he becomes.