In His Image by William Jennings Bryan
page 54 of 242 (22%)
page 54 of 242 (22%)
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man, unwilling to purchase eternal life at that price, went away
sorrowing--his heart still centered on his great possessions. Of whom but an honest person could such a story be told? Was Christ deceived? That is the theory set forth in a little volume entitled "A Jewish View of Jesus" (published recently by the Macmillan Company). The author, H.G. Emelow, pays the following high tribute to "Jesus the Jew" (and it is the most charitable view an orthodox Jew can hold): "Yet, these things apart, who can compute all that Jesus has meant to humanity? The love He has inspired, the solace He has given, the good He has engendered, the hope and joy He has kindled--all that is unequalled in human history. Among the great and good that the human race has produced, none has even approached Jesus in universality of appeal and sway. He has become the most fascinating figure in history. In Him is combined what is best and most enchanting and most mysterious in Israel--the eternal people whose child He was. The Jew cannot help glorying in what Jesus thus has meant to the world; nor can he help hoping that Jesus may yet serve as a bond of union between Jew and Christian, once His teaching is better known and the bane of misunderstanding is at last removed from His words and His ideal." But could honest delusion produce a character who, in "the love He has inspired," "the solace He has given," and "the hope and joy He has kindled" is "unequalled in human history"? Is it not impossible that under a _delusion_ one could (as Emelow says Jesus did) become "the most fascinating figure in history"--unapproachable in the "universality of appeal and sway"? The world has been full of delusions: have any of them |
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