There are more portraits of Jesus Christ, painted and drawn and printed, than of any other man who has ever lived. Everybody knows the picture of Jesus as soon as he sees it, whether it be of the baby Jesus in his mother's arms, or the boy Jesus in the Temple, or the Saviour teaching, or dying upon the cross. You do not need to be told which one in any picture is Jesus—his face is so well known that you know it at once. No other face among all the men who have ever lived from Adam the first man down to today, is known to as many people as the face of Jesus. Then, too, look in the hymn books of the churches and the song books of the Sunday-schools, and see how many of the hymns and songs are in praise of Jesus Christ. You do not find songs in praise of Julius Caesar, nor of Christopher Columbus, nor even of George Washington. No one who gives it thought doubts that the most famous man in all the world is Jesus Christ; and because he is so famous and so great, every one should know something of his life.
Then, too, everybody likes to hear stories of wonderful things. Even though we know that they are not true stories, every one listens to fairy tales and the stories of the "Arabian Nights." But how often, when the story is ended, the child looks up to the story-teller's face and says, "Is it all true?" Now, the story of Jesus is full of wonders. You read of his turning water into wine when the guests at the feast needed it, of his touching the eyes of a blind man and giving him sight, of his speaking to the storm and bringing peace, of his walking upon the waters in another storm to help his friends in danger, and, most wonderful of all, of his coming out of his own tomb living, after he had died. Wonderful indeed are the stories told of Jesus; and the greatest wonder is that they are all true. You would like to hear those stories, I am sure; and every child should know them and be able to tell them to others.
Let me give you another reason why every one should know the story of Jesus. He came to show us who God is, what God is to us, and how God feels toward us. Every one, even every child, thinks of God and in his heart wishes to know about God. How terribly some people have mistaken God! They have thought of him as an enemy, not as a friend. You can see in some countries images of a person with forty arms, and on every hand something to kill a man with—a sword, a spear, an arrow, a club, a cup of poison, or some other fearful thing—and that is the thought of God in that land: a mighty being who hates men! In old times, many people thought that their gods were pleased when men killed their own children and burned their bodies on an altar as an offering to God. God saw all over the earth that men had wrong and cruel thoughts of him; and he sent his Son Jesus Christ to teach men by his words, and to show men in his life what God is, how God feels toward us, and how we should feel toward God. If Jesus had done no more for us than to teach us the Lord's Prayer, beginning with the words "Our Father who art in heaven," he would have done enough to make us love him. He showed people that God is their Father, the Father of every one in all the world, and that as a Father we may call upon him, just as any child can go to his father for whatever he needs.
There was once an artist who was called upon to paint the portrait of a good man. But the man had died ten years before; the artist had never seen him, and there was no picture of him to be used as a copy. At first the artist did not know what to do. Then a thought occurred to him.
"Is there no one," he said, "who looks like this man, so that I can see him and know something of the man's face?"
"Why, yes," they answered. "He has left a son, a man grown, who looks exactly like his father."
The artist studied the face of the son, and from it painted a likeness of the father, whom he had never seen. No one has ever seen God, but if we would know, not his face, which we cannot know, but his nature, how kind, and loving, and helpful, and willing God is, we have only to think of Christ; and if we know Christ, the Son of God, we know God, his Father and our Father. For this reason, because in Jesus we may know God, everybody should know about Jesus.
But Jesus came to this world, not only to show us what God is, but to show us what we should be and how we should live. Whatever his work may be, every one needs a copy which he can look at and follow. The child who is learning to write must have a copy, so that he may know how to shape his letters. The boy or girl learning to draw has a copy or a model to guide him in his drawing. When a man is about to build a ship, he first makes a model and then shapes his great ship exactly like it. Perhaps you have heard the lines in Longfellow's poem, "The Building of the Ship."
"In the shipyard stood the Master,
With the model of the vessel
That should laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle."
Well, we are all builders. Each one of us, boy or girl, man or woman, is building for himself what no one else can build for him: his character, what he is to be, whether good or bad, whether wise or ignorant, whether noble or selfish. And in building up ourselves we need a model, one perfect man, on whom we can look and whose life we can copy. That model we can find in Jesus. He lived our life, and in living showed us how we should live. Even a little child may say, "Jesus was once a little child; and I will try my best to be just such a child as he was." A boy of twelve may think of Jesus as a boy and resolve to live as Jesus lived. The young man, working in a shop, or office, or in the field, may take Jesus the workingman for his pattern. When Jesus was on the earth, he said many times, and to different people, "Follow me!" He says it to every one of us. But if we are to follow Jesus and to be like him, the best man that ever lived, we must study him, must know about his life, must have every story of him in our mind and in our heart; and that is another reason why every one should know the story of Jesus.