Atticus G. Haygood

“ Consider the power of the teachings of Jesus upon the human conscience. This is to me a growing wonder. Other men’s words stimulate the conscience to a degree, but only when they echo his or approach harmony with them. This is so strangely true that no words of any teacher stir the conscience—except to protest—that antagonize and contradict Jesus. There is no risk of exaggeration or dogmatism here; it is perfectly safe and perfectly fair to say no doctrine of God or man, of rights and wrongs, that repudiates or denies what Jesus teaches, has any power over the human conscience. ”

“ No sane man, with any high ideal of goodness and knowing the meaning of words, ever yet used of himself words that fit only Jesus.
It is like a true artist’s ideal: the better artist he is the less he satisfies his own conception in what he does; so in religion, the saintliest most realize the distance between them and the Christ. An unbeliever has said that Mary at the sepulcher idealized him, and so made Christianity possible! He supposed he had accounted for the most stupendous fact of all time. Why is it that only Jesus has become the highest ideal that ever filled the human soul? ”

“ Is there in any teacher of any nation one single principle of rights and wrongs that the suffrage of the race could approve, that Jesus does not teach? Is there one single principle of Jesus as to rights and wrongs that the suffrage of good men can condemn as false? Men may, indeed, reject his teachings, and oppose them with bitterest hate, but which one of them—the least or the greatest—can they show to be immoral, wrong? ”

“ There have been thinkers, poets, orators, philosophers, who have enthusiastic admirers who contend for them in the pretty war of words. Shakespeare has as many such admirers as the foremost in all the world. But who loves him—the man—in any such deep, absorbing fashion as untold millions have loved and do now love the Man—Jesus of Nazareth? It surprises you to hear such a question. If Jesus was only a man the question should not surprise. How does it come about that such love as the great army of martyrs and confessors have shown was never felt for any except this Galilean peasant? ”

“ If we believe in Jesus and in his work in the world at all we may, if we wish, find out what he meant by what has followed. It is true that the religion that makes men good restrains them and protects them from the follies and sins that waste energy and squander fortune; but it is utterly misleading and confusing to try to read into the words of Jesus the idea that he appeals to any mere selfish interest by promising fortune to the good. It is like making worldly riches the reward of meekness and long life the premium on obedience to parents. ”

“ No mere man ever had such thoughts, could originate such thoughts, or for long hold such thoughts in his grasp. The end Jesus proposed to himself is as far above the noblest thoughts of the noblest men as the splendors of the midnight heavens are above the cheap glitter of a toy-shop.
The thought of saving a race was as extra-human and superhuman as the thought of the universe; the saving of a race, the saving of one man, is as far beyond man’s power as the creation itself.
We cannot grasp the conception Jesus had of the work he came to do; it makes us dizzy when we contemplate it steadily ”

“ The Romans are masters not only in the holy city but in all the world we know, and the Roman power has just sanctioned the death of Jesus. The Greeks still give philosophy and art to the world, but there is not among the Greeks sympathy with the teachings and work of Jesus. No people befriend his cause; no hand is stretched out to his disciples; the world is against his cause, and for his sake against us, his disciples.
Looking at it all as a man might, was there then a single human probability that the cause represented by the crucified Galilean would have the least place in history? ”

“ Perhaps, for the most part, the great ones do the best they can. It seems that, when a mere man seeks to think profoundly or to speak strongly, he must fall into obscurity. This obscurity cannot be due to any inherent difficulty in the truth itself, but to those limitations, mental and spiritual, that belong to mere human teachers. But Jesus taught the greatest truths in language as simple and clear as when he spoke of the most familiar duties of daily life. His manner is as easy and his words as plain when speaking of immortality as when telling men to be honest and to “love one another.” ”

“ No great teacher, unless it be some one who has learned of him the true secret of teaching—and how far below the Teacher the best and wisest fall!—ever before or since has the manner of Jesus.
There is a sort of fatality about men’s teaching. Vanity or ignorance makes them seek to appear profound when they are only obscure. What an unspeakable relief and blessing it would bring to all churches and schools if pastors and teachers would only study the method of Jesus and seek to imitate the simplicity of Jesus! ”

“ Progress and growth depend upon inquiry. Wise men will cheer every earnest student, whether he is trying to find what an atom is or what the stars contain. It is a man’s way to seek to explain all things; the effort affords the drill and discipline that make growth and progress possible to the race.
But in these respects, as in so many others, Jesus is utterly unlike the philosophers and scientists and theologians. He does not in the least seek the end that mere men seek. He makes us understand the universe—matter and mind, man and God—better than all of them put together. ”

“ We do not like to think of the dreams of ambition, the loftiest that ever dared or planned a worldwide scheme of conquest, when we are listening to Jesus concerning his mission to men. Jesus speaks of the conquest of all nations, not as they then were, but of all nations for all times. It is nothing less and nothing else than the moral and spiritual re-creation of the human race, the absolute conquest of the love of men’s hearts for time and eternity. ”

“ No light is so splendid but the eye knows the sunlight for what it is.
But it is not, as you know, a question as to what the human race in some age could do; it is, what could the Hebrew race do in the age of Cæsar Augustus? For Jesus was of the Hebrew race and of that age.
But for the moment forget this limitation of our inquiry and ask, What could that age do? It is like asking, What could the Roman race and civilization do? For the glory of Egypt and Babylon had long departed, and the great Greeks were before the time of Jesus. ”

“ It is nothing peculiar to the life of Jesus of Nazareth that his influence should abide in human history. Every human life, the humblest and unworthiest, so abides. But the influence of Jesus is different from that of other men. I am not now speaking of degree, but kind. As his method of thinking, of teaching; as the work he proposed to do and as the plans he adopted difference him from mere men, so does the history of the influence that flowed out from him into life and so made modern civilization, so does the character of his influence now difference him from men. ”

“ They were afraid not only of men’s anger, but of their criticism. But it is impossible to think of Jesus as hesitating, for one instant, from any sort of fear of men, fear of death or criticism, in uttering one truth or doing one right thing. We cannot think of Jesus as feeling the pulse of public sentiment in order to determine what he should say. We cannot think of Jesus as, for one instant, looking about him to read in the faces of his hearers, whether they were Galilean peasants or the chief estates of Jerusalem, the probable reception of his words. ”

“ The love of money he denounced. He taught that greed of money is debasing. Getting to heaven, for a rich man, is like a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle—only “harder.” The only rich man who volunteered discipleship turned sorrowfully away when told to sell his estates and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus warns his disciples with gracious vehemence of the folly and danger of laying up treasure upon earth. Personally he had no concern about wealth, except to warn his disciples of the terrible spiritual dangers that lurk in riches. He provides no treasure for carrying on his work. ”

“ The philosopher who studies mind seeks the same sort of end—the construction of a mental science that embraces every fact and explains every mystery of mental action. The theologian is in the same drift; he wants a philosophy of religion. He seeks to explain God, and, in not a few instances, seems to labor more earnestly to show how God can save a sinner consistently with his own nature and government than to show the sinner how to be saved. The theologian labors to show what the origin of evil is, and to make his view a philosophy that will harmonize all differences and explain all mysteries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may easily make out a very long list of names of human lives that, going before us, now live in us. The list will show names that stand for diverse and antagonistic elements; but all these enter into our lives, just as, to return to our illustration from the world of waters, the water pure from the clouds, sparkling in mountain springs, foul and reeking from swamps and all manner of ugly places, enters, it well may be, into the constituent elements of the dew-drop that reflects the sun upon each grass-blade in the fields. ”

“ And this love grows fuller and stronger; Jesus is more in the thoughts and love of men than he ever was before.
If you would in some sense realize the wonder of which we are now speaking, try to imagine such a passion coming into the hearts of millions of men to-day as would impel them to die with rejoicings for Socrates, or any other born of woman, save the Man who was once a carpenter in Joseph’s shop in Nazareth of Galilee. You cannot imagine such a thing. As to Jesus, and love for him, it is not left to imagination; we have history. ”

“ Do these men whose names go with the four gospels show right feeling, sentiment, for inventing such a character, granting, what we know they did not have, all other qualifications? Seeing what they were, what they show themselves to have been, is it possible to believe that, in their inmost souls, they were in sympathy with the character they have given us in the gospels? To invent a truly great, all-round character, there must be not only adequate gifts of intellect and force of conscience ”

“ What he teaches about rights and wrongs, in principle and practice, is so absolutely full and perfect that good men—the best men in the world to-day, so long after his time—cannot so much as conceive of one single virtue he did not teach or of one single evil that he did not condemn. Nay, the wisest and best are always trying to teach men the truth Jesus taught; and his standard is so high that no sane and honest man has ever professed to have reached it. ”

“ If Jesus be only a man—a Galilean Jew, we must remember—he contradicts in his flawless all-round character and perfect teaching the conditions of his life. This perfection of character and teaching on the one hand, and this Galilean Jew and Nazarene carpenter on the other, not only do not agree, they cannot exist together. It is by his life that we realize how imperfect all others are; it is by his teachings that we test the rights and wrongs of all other teachings. ”

“ Nothing in the universe must come between him and the loyal, all-sacrificing love of his disciples. He must be first in our hearts; whatever comes between him and our love forfeits all claim upon him. If a mere man made these demands the world would despise him, and the world would be right.
But he sets up other claims of a sort no sincere and sane man, who is only a man, can think of for a moment. He claims the right to forgive sins. His critics were right—assuming him to be only a man. “Why does this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?” ”

“ As it seems to me, there can be nothing in this world harder to do than to change, not men’s external lives merely, but men themselves. Changing men’s hearts is like making worlds.
Who else who ever taught, lived, or died, does this? Does this while among men? Does this, being for nearly two thousand years gone out of the sight and hearing of men? But Jesus works this miracle now, and in men of all races and conditions, civilized and savage, learned and unlearned. ”

“ There is another thought to be considered at this point in taking note of characteristics which difference Jesus from men. A mere man discovering in his reflections the abysmal depths of man’s spiritual malady, a mere man clearly comprehending, as no man ever yet comprehended, the evil of sin, would be crushed by despair. Many good men, seeing but a little way into this darkness, have been made mad by what they saw. ”