Eugene Victor Debs

“ Nothing is known of Jesus Christ as a lad except that at twelve his parents took him to Jerusalem, where he confounded the learned doctors by the questions he asked them. We have no knowledge as to what these questions were, but taking his lowly birth, his poverty and suffering into account, in contrast with the riches of Jerusalem which now dazzled his vision, and in the light of his subsequent career, we are not left to conjecture as to the nature of the interrogation to which the inquisitive lad subjected the smug doctors in the temple. ”

“ Jesus was not divine because he was less human than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason that he was supremely human, and it is this of which his divinity consists, the fullness and perfection of him as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual being. ”

“ To me Jesus Christ is as real, as palpitant and persuasive as a historic character as John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, or Karl Marx. He has persisted in spite of two thousand years of theological emasculation to destroy his revolutionary personality, and is today the greatest moral force in the world. ”

“ Had His parents been other than poor working people — money changers, usurers, merchants, lawyers, scribes, priests, or other parasites — He would not have been delivered from His mother’s womb on a bed of straw in a stable among asses and other animals.
Was Jesus divinely begotten? Yes, the same as every other babe ever born into the world. He was of miraculous origin the same as all the rest of mankind. The scriptural account of his “immaculate conception” is a beautiful myth, but scarcely more of a miracle than the conception of all other babes. ”

“ The economic basis of his doctrine of brotherhood and love is clearly demonstrated in the fact that under his leadership and teaching all his disciples “sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need,” and that they “had all things in common.” ”