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.]