When Jesus disappeared from the sight of men there was not a human probability that his name would be other than a reproach, till, like any common felon--like the forgotten thieves between whom he died--his name and fate should drop out of the memory of men. Humanly speaking, it was certain that he would never have a solitary follower. No sane man, reckoning on the ordinary probabilities of human motives and action, could have conceived the possibility of a vast body of disciples, ever growing, and pushing on his conquests round the world, holding together through passing centuries, enduring all manner of opposition and bitter persecution, and now, in this year 1889, the master-force of the world; a force that, beyond all cavil, is now the most active, aggressive, and revolutionizing influence ever set going among men.
It could not have been conceived; every dominant power of the world was arrayed against him; there was not a star shining for Jesus if he was only a man.
But Jesus crucified lives on. Around his cross has been the battle-ground of the ages. All that human skill and bitter hate could do has been done to put out the light he kindled on Calvary. But he lives on--lives in men to-day; single-handed he goes on his conquering way. His servants, because they love him, are pushing his cause in every nation under heaven. As in the old days, in the lands that bordered the Mediterranean, so now among the great pagan nations--in India, China, Japan, Africa, and in the islands of the sea, they are telling the story he commanded them to repeat till he should come again. And, telling it, they are now, as in the days of his first apostles, “turning the world upside down.”
In every land his children are building up his kingdom. They die for him, and others take their places; and so the work begun in Jerusalem never ceases. History confirms his promise, “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
Such a character could not have been conceived had not such a life been lived; such a life could not have sprung out of Hebrew soil; no mere man ever knew the deepest truths without investigation or taught them without proving them; no mere man ever conceived of such a work as Jesus proposed to himself, and no mere man would have adopted the methods Jesus used; no mere man ever conceived so vast an undertaking as the moral conquest of the race; no mere man ever took such masterful hold upon the conscience, love, and will of mankind.