Jesus of Nazareth

“ Such was Jesus of Nazareth—a true man in body, soul, and spirit, yet differing from all men, a character absolutely unique and original, from tender childhood to ripe manhood moving in unbroken union with God, overflowing with the purest love to man, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and practising all virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness loses on closer inspection ”

“ Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you."
And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid.
Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. ”

“ A few of that race will begin to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, but the masses of that people will not receive Him in that light until He comes and "His feet shall stand again on the Mount of Olives." ”

“ A man might believe all the promises and their doctrinal import, but if he did not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the subject of them, he would make a very good believing Jew under the law, but he would not be a Christian under grace. This is the great turning point in the faith of an enlightened Jew, and Christian. Is Jesus of Nazareth the personage described in the law and the prophets; has he right and title to the throne of David, and to the dominion of the world? ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city to city, always calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient, serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only man that perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his spirit. ”

“ May that Title be the comfort of my heart in distress, may it be my special protection when temptations assail me; may the evil spirit depart from me; may the lust of concupiscence die out within me; may the whole world have a bitter taste to me, when I think, or read, of " Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." For of a truth nothing is more sweet than Jesus, nothing more wholesome, nothing more helpful; nothing can be brighter, nothing more pure, nothing more holy than the Nazarene ”

“ If we turn away from the true Jesus of Nazareth because he has been disfigured and misrepresented by the Churches, we turn away from that in which our weak wills and desponding souls are meant to find their most obvious and natural help and inspiration—from that symbol of the Divine, which, of necessity, means most to us. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person.
In and through all this extraordinary experience, God the Father chose to manifest himself as he always does—in the usual way—in the normal, natural, and dependable way of divine acting. ”

“ I regard Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew of the Jews, one whom all Jewish people are learning to love. His teaching has been an immense service to the world in bringing Israel's God to the knowledge of hundreds of millions of mankind. ”

“ Make the sign of the Holy Cross, sign thyself with it on thy forehead and on thy breast, and then read devoutly the words of this title; and in place of anxiety and distress, thou shalt perceive in thyself such help as will leave its mark on thee: for if thou invoke the saving Name of Jesus by using the words, " Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" the power of Christ, and a sure trust in God, will not suffer thee to be exposed to danger. The full sweetness of this most illustrious title no words can express, no mind can adequately grasp. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth is so enveloped in the mists of the past, and his history so obscured by legend, that it may be compared to footprints in the sand. We know some one has been there, but as to what manner of man he may have been, we certainly know little as fact. The Gospels, the only records we have of him, [508:1] have been proven, over and over again, unhistorical and legendary; to state anything as positive about the man is nothing more nor less than assumption ”

“ Through all the perplexities of doubt, amidst all the obscurings of irrelevant speculations, the hearts of men to-day turn to this Jesus of Nazareth as their supreme revelation of God, and find in him "the Master of their thinking and the Lord of their lives."
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God."
Appendix Books of Reference on the Life of Jesus
1. ”

“ Far be it from me to reproach the meek, the compassionate, the amiable Jesus; or to attribute to him, the mischiefs occasioned by his followers*. No, I look upon his character with the respect which every man should pay to purity of morals: though mingled with something like the sentiments which we naturally feel for the mistaken enthusiast. Jesus of Nazareth appears to have been a man of irreproachable purity, of great piety, and of great mildness of disposition. Though the world has never beheld a character exactly parallel with his, yet it has seen many, greatly similar. ”

“ Pray, let us wait till they have passed on or entered the tavern.'
'Come, there is nothing to fear, I tell you.'
'No, I entreat you, Jane: another moment.—Really, I admire your bravery!'
'Oh! ‘tis because Jesus of Nazareth inspires courage as he inspires gentleness towards the guilty, tenderness for him who suffers. And then, if you knew how natural his language is! what touching and ingenuous parables he finds to bring his ideas within reach of simple men, of the poor in mind as he calls them, and whom he loves so! ”

“ Wherefore, albeit Moses had called God the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and the Prophets also had taught Israel to say unto God, "Thou art our Father," and all this doctrine was well known and trite among us; yet now, for the first time, the doctrine seemed to be no more a mere dead letter, but a living word. Such a life did Jesus of Nazareth breathe into it, insomuch that his Good News (for so he called it) came upon our hearts as news indeed, never heard before among the children of men. ”

“ But Jesus of Nazareth was a pure and perfect being who claimed to be sinless, [4] and whose claims have been admitted by all the world, believers and unbelievers alike. The great truths taught by the gentle Nazarene and transmitted by the Evangelists have brought balm 15and healing to the nations, have proclaimed and established universal brotherhood among men. Is it probable that such a character was painted and such truths proclaimed by dishonest and insincere men? Can Vice be the mother of Virtue? "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" ”

“ The Jewish Christians then—the congregation of Jerusalem, and their immediate successors, the Ebionites or Nazarenes—saw in their master nothing more than a man. From this, and the other facts which we have seen in this chapter, it is evident that the man Jesus of Nazareth was deified long after his death, just as many other men had been deified centuries before his time, and even after. ”

“ They insist that the Son of God has been incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and that our hands have handled and our eyes have seen the word of life. This same purpose, namely, to hold fast to the historic Jesus, triumphed in the doctrine of the Trinity; Jesus was not to be resolved into an aeon or into some mysterious tertium quid, neither God nor man, but to be recognized as very God who redeemed the soul. Through him men were to understand the Father and to understand themselves as God’s children. ”

“ It was at such a time and among such a people, that there arose Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. What was the startling truth he taught? What was the new revelation he preached to the sons of men? An old truth, and an old sermon—Righteousness; no more, meaning nothing at all, a mere trite common-place, on the lips of the time-server and the plausible vendor of moral phrases. Meaning mighty changes for the better, when invoked with a profounder sense of its sanctity, and a new sacredness in life, and larger impulses for ever and for ever. ”

“ The legendary history of Jesus of Nazareth, contained in the books of the New Testament, is full of prodigies and wonders. These alleged prodigies, and the faith which the people seem to have put in such a tissue of falsehoods, indicate the prevalent disposition of the people to believe in everything, and it was among such a class that Christianity was propagated. All leaders of religion had the reputation of having performed miracles; the biographers of Jesus, therefore, not wishing their Master to be outdone, have made him also a wonder-worker, and a performer of miracles ”

“ The Christian Church is founded on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus; if that fact had not occurred there would be no Church to-day. The disciples of Jesus of Nazareth were evidently far inferior to him in spiritual discernment and in courage. Evidently they could not hope to succeed if he had failed. And with his death what little strength they may have had before was utterly destroyed. In the hour of his trial they had deserted him in cowardly flight. And when he was taken from them by a shameful death, they were in despair. Never did a movement seem to be more hopelessly dead. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
24 Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. ”

“ Nazareth was the abode of Jesus until He was about thirty years of age; and, in accordance with the custom of designating individuals by the names of their home towns as additions to their personal names, [269] our Lord came to be generally known as Jesus of Nazareth. [270] He is also referred to as a Nazarene, or a native of Nazareth, and this fact is cited by Matthew as a fulfilment of earlier prediction, though our current compilation of scriptures constituting the Old Testament contains no record of such prophecy. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
39 And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the country of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom also they slew, hanging him on a tree. ”

“ While Jesus had been at the feast during those seven days he had found out what every boy and girl sooner or later must find out, what he is to do and to be in the world. But though Jesus now knew what he was to be and do, yet at once he said to the great teachers, “Good-bye,” and went back with his parents to Nazareth, a cheerful, obedient Jewish boy.
And in all that land no son was ever so thoughtful, so kind, so loving, and so helpful to his parents and to his brothers and sisters, as was this noble boy and young man, whom his neighbors knew as Jesus, the young carpenter of Nazareth. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth to the level of a multitude of other victims of a barbarous superstition, and will see in him no more than a moral teacher, whom the fortunate accident of his execution invested with the crown, not merely of a martyr, but of a god. ”

“ He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his life in Nazareth that drew the attention of his companions and neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and kindness. ”

“ The outstanding wonder of early Christianity is the complete transformation not only of life but of established religious ideas by the personal impress of Jesus on a Peter, a John, and a Paul. The secret of the new element of the Christian religion--salvation through personal attachment to Jesus Christ--is simply this personal power of the man of Nazareth. The multitudes followed because they saw wonderful works or heard wonderful words ”

“ HAVE we not shown that the soul-form which manifested itself through human birth to men as Jesus of Nazareth was true man, for it had all the planes of life that man has, with God dwelling within? Jesus of Nazareth was perfect man, with a rational soul, for on the merely human plane he was tempted, grew tired, and manifested other limitations of the human taken on from Mary. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material Jesus the Scientist surface of things, and found the spiritual cause. ”