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From the Library of
PROFESSOR HENRY BURT WRIGHT
YALE 1898

Tributes of Great Men
to Jesus Christ

"They Presented unto Hm Gifts; Gold, FRANKiNCEireE,
and Myrrh." — Mt. 2:11.

Tributes of Great Men
to Jesus Christ

COMPILED and edited
BY
REV. ARTHUR H. DeLONG
AND
REV. ALLEN P. DeLONG

New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1918, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street.W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF
MOTHER

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In making selections from so wide a range of
literature, we have taken the liberty of quoting
in a few cases, from copyrighted books, usually
with the permission of the authors or publishers.
We gladly acknowledge our debt of gratitude
to all authors and publishers whose material we
have used in compiling this volume.
"We have gathered posies from other men's
flowers
Only the thread that binds them is ours."
We are under special obligation to The
Methodist Book Concern for permission to use
selections from their copyrighted books. We
are unable at this time to give the titles of all
the books with the names of their publishers
from which quotations have been made, but we
gladly submit the following list :
From The Methodist Book Concern Publica
tions, New York,
Page 95 "Baccalaureate Sermons" — Milton
S. Terry.

Acknowledgment

Page 105 "The Keligious Instinct in Man"—
Bishop Frank M. Bristol.
Page 109 "A Man's Keligion"— Bishop W. F.
McDowell.
Page 111 "Our Spiritual Skies" — Charles
Coke Woods.
Page 116 "The Bible and Life"— Bishop Ed
win H. Hughes.
Page 121 "The Theology of a Preacher"—
Lynn Harold Hough.
From Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Publications,
Boston.Page 100 "Story of Jesus" — Elizabeth S.
Phelps.
John Lane's Publications, London & New
York.
Page 118 "Herod, a Tragedy"— Stephen Phil
lips.

" Whom do men say that I the Son of man
am?" — Jestjs.
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Livmg
God." — Simon Petee.

PREFACE
" Whom do men say that I the Son of Man
am? "
It was neither idle curiosity nor personal
vanity which prompted our Lord and Master
to ask His disciples this important question.
He well knew that the success of His Kingdom
depended, in a great measure, upon what men
believed and said concerning His personality.
What was true in the days of His flesh is true
today. What men have said and are still say
ing of the Christ is not only a matter of intel
lectual interest to the world but also of vital
importance to the kingdom of God.
For two thousand years Jesus Christ has
been the one central character of human his
tory. It would be strange indeed if we did not
wish to know what the great men in every age
of the world's history thought and said of Him.
The most striking fact in modern life is the
growing interest in, and reverence for, the char
acter and teachings of Jesus Christ. More and
more the cry of the Greeks, "We would see

10 Preface
Jesus," is becoming the world's cry. It may be
that, as we view Him through the mind's eye
of others, our own vision of Him will be en
larged, our appreciation of Him increased and
our faith in Him greatly strengthened.
The following pages not only contain the
largest and best collection of the sayings of
great men concerning the Christ ever published,
but have been selected with great care from a
wide range of literature and contain some of
the very choicest gems of the greatest authors
who have lived.
It is with the hope that these selections may.
be of value, not only to Ministers and Bible
Students, but to all persons who love to do Him
honor, that this book is given to the public.
Arthur H. DeLong.

TRIBUTES OF GREAT MEN
TO JESUS CHRIST
My son, God will provide himself a Lamb
for a burnt offering. — Genesis 22 : 8.
— Abraham, Hebrew Patriarch.
1996-1818 b. c.
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
nor a law giver from between his feet, until
Shiloh come ; and unto him shall the gathering
of the people be. — Genesis 49: 10.
— Jacob, Hebrew Patriarch.
1836-1689 b. c.
The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy breth
ren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken.
— Deut. 18:15. (See John 5:^5, 6:H.)
— Moses, Hebrew Law Giver.
1571-1451 b. c.
I shall see Him, but not now: I shall be
hold Him, but not nigh: There shall come a
11

12 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out
of Israel. — Numbers 2^: 17.
— Balaam, Prophet of Pethor.
1451 — b. c.

And He shall be as the light of the morning,
when the sun riseth, even a morning without
clouds ; as the tender grass springing out of the
earth by clear shining after rain. — II Samuel
2B:k.

His name shall endure forever: His name
shall be continued as long as the sun : and men
shall be blessed in Him : All nations shall call
Him blessed.— Psa. 72: 17.
— David, King of Israel. -
1085-1015 b. c.

Foe unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given: and the government shall be upon his
shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonder
ful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlast
ing Father, The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
there shall be no end. — Isaiah 9 : 6-7.

Hetnrtch Hofmann
THE BOY OF NAZARETH AT TWELVE YEARS
Engraved from the Painting of "Jesus and the Doctors '*

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 13
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he
hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make
his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his
seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleas
ure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and
shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my
righteous servant justify many; for he shall
bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with
the great, and he shall divide the spoil with
the strong; because he hath poured out his
soul unto death : and he was numbered with the
transgressors ; and he bare the sin of many, and
made intercession for the transgressors. —
Isaiah 58: 10-11-12. — Isaiah, Prophet of Israel.
712 — b. c.
And the Desire of all nations shall come and
I will fill this house with glory. — Haggai 2: 7.
— Haggai, Prophet of Israel.
520 — b. c.
And I cannot help thinking, Socrates, that
the form of the Divine Shepherd is even higher
than that of a King.
— Plato, Greek Philosopher.
429-347 b. c.

14 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
come to his temple, even the messenger of the
covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall
come, saith the Lord of hosts. — Malachi 8:1.
But unto you that fear my name shall the
Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his
wings. — Mai. k.: 2.
— Malachi, Prophet of Israel.
397 — b.c.

But there shall come from heaven a Won
drous Man,
Whose hands were stretched out on the fruitful
wood,
The noblest of the Hebrews, . . .
With admirable speech and hallowed lips.
No longer vex thy soul, nor put a sword
Unto thy bosom, O thou child of God,
Rich, only-longed-for flower, thou goodly light,
Thou consummation noble, longed-for, pure.
— Sibylline Oracles. Apocryphal
160 — b. c. Jewish Writings.

And at that hour that Son of Man was named
in the presence of the Lord of Spirits and His
name before the Head of Days. And before
the sun and the signs were created, before the

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 15
stars of the heaven were made His name was
named before the Lord of Spirits. He will be
a staff to the righteous on which they will sup
port themselves and not fall, and He will be
the Light of the Gentiles and the Hope of those
who are troubled of heart. All who dwell on
earth will fall down and bow the knee before
Him and will bless and laud and celebrate with
song the Lord of Spirits. And for this rea
son has He been chosen and hidden before Him
before the creation of the world and for ever
more. — Book of Enoch, Apocryphal
144 — b. c Jewish Writings.

And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary :
for thou hast found favour with God. And,
behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son
of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give
unto him the throne of his father David : And
he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ;
and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then
said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man ? And the angel an
swered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest

16 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
the Son of God.— Luke 1 : 80-35.
And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth
heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped
in her womb ; and Elisabeth was filled with the
Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud
voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And
whence is this to me, that the mother of my
Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as
the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And
blessed is she that believed : for there shall be a
performance of those things which were told
her from the Lord. — Luke 1 : 1+1—1^5.
— Elisabeth, the Mother of John the
5 b. c. Baptist.
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the
Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my
Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate
of his handmaiden: for, behold, from hence
forth all generations shall call me blessed. For
he that is mighty hath done to me great things ;
and holy is his name. And his mercy is on
them that fear him from generation to genera
tion. He hath shewed strength with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 17
of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty
from their seats, and exalted them of low de
gree. He hath filled the hungry with good
things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remem
brance of his mercy ; As he spake to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his seed for ever. — Luke 1 :
46-55. — Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
5 b. c.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not : for,
behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people. For unto you is
born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a
sign unto you ; Ye shall find the babe wrapped
in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And
suddenly there was with the angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men. — Luke 2: 10-14-
5 b. c.
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes
have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast pre
pared before the face of all people ; A light to

18 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people
Israel. Behold, this child is set for the fall
and rising again of many in Israel; and for a
sign which shall be spoken against. — Luke 2:
29-84. — Simeon, a Jewish Prophet
4 b. c.

Where is he that is born King of the Jews ?
for we have seen his star in the east, and are
come to worship him. — Mat. 2 : 2.
¦ — Wise Men from the East.
4 b. c.

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world. This is he of whom I
said, after me cometh a man which is preferred
before me : for he was before me. And I knew
him not: but that he should be made manifest
to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with
water. I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like
a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew
him not: but he that sent me to baptize with
water, the same said unto me. " Upon whom
thou Shalt see the Spirit descending, and re
maining on him, the same is he which baptizeth

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 19
with the Holy Ghost." And I saw and bare
record that this is the Son of God. — John 1 :
29.
— John the Baptist, Forerunner of
28 A. d. Jesus Christ.
We have found the Messias, which is, being
interpreted, the Christ. — John 1: 41-
— Andrew, one of the First Disciples
28 a. d. . of Jesus.
Rabbi, thou art the son of God ; thou art the
King of Israel. — John 1 : 49.
— Nathaniel, one of the First Dis-
28 a. d. ciples.
Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
Come, see a man, which told me all things that
ever I did : is not this the Christ ?
— Woman of Samaria.
28 A. D.
We have heard him ourselves, and know that
this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the
world. — Samaritans.
28 A. D.
What manner of man is this, that even the
wind and the sea obey him? — Mark 4-' 41-
— Disciples of Jesus.
28 a. d.

20 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
John have I beheaded; but who is thisj of
whom I hear such things ? — Luke 9 : 9.
This is John the Baptist; he is risen from.
the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew
themselves in him. — Mat. 14:2.
— Herod Antipas,
29 a. d. Tetrarch of Galilee.

When Jesus came into the coast of Csesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom
do men say that I the Son of Man am? And
they said, Some say that thou art John the
Baptist: some, Elias: and others, Jeremias, or
one of the prophets.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that
I am? And Simon Peter answered and said:
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
— Mat. 16:18-16. {See also Mark 8:27,
Lk. 9:18, Jn. 6:68-69.
— Simon Peter,
29 a. d. Disciple and Apostle.
Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose
father and mother we know? how is it then
that he saith, I came down from heaven? —
John 6:42. -. — Jews of Christ's Day.
29  A. D.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 21
I am the bread of life. — John 6 : 85.
I am the light of the world. — John 8: 12.
I am the good shepherd. — John 10:11.
I am the resurrection and the life : he that be
lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die. — John 11:25-26.
I am the way, the truth and the life : no man
cometh unto the father, but by me.
He that hath seen me hath seen the father;
and how sayest thou then shew us the father?
— John 14: 6,9. — Claims of Jesus,
30 — a. d. concerning himself.

Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come
from God; for no man can do these miracles
that thou doest, except God be with him. —
John 8: 2. — Nicodemus,
30 a. d. a ruler of the Jews.

Hosanna to the Son of David ; Blessed is he
that cometh in the name of the Lord ; Hosanna
in the highest. — Mat. 21:9.
— Multitude in Jerusalem.
30 A. D.

22 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Nevee man spake like this man. — John 7 :
46.
— Officers of the Sanhedrin
or Temple Police.
30 A. D.
I have sinned in that I have betrayed the in
nocent blood. — Mat. 27:4.
— Judas,
Traitor among the Disciples.
30 A. D.
He casteth out devils through the prince of
the devils. — Mat. 9:34.
This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with
them. — Luke 15: 2.
— Pharisees,
A religious Sect of the Jews.
30 A. D.
He hath spoken blasphemy; what further
need have we of witnesses ? behold, now ye have
heard his blasphemy. — Mat. 26: 65.
— Caiphas, Jewish High Priest.
30 A. D.
Ye have brought this man unto me, as one
that perverteth the people : and, behold, I, hav-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 23
ing examined him before you, have found no
fault in this man touching those things whereof
ye accuse him. — Luke 28: 14-
— Pontius Pilate,
Roman Procurator of Judea.
30 A. D.
Have thou nothing to do with this just man :
for I have suffered many things this day in a
dream because of him. — Mat. 27:19.
30 a. d. — Pilate's Wife.
This man hath done nothing amiss. — Luke
23:41- 30 a. d. — Thief on the Cross.
Certainly this was a righteous man. — Luke
28:47- Truly this man was the Son of God. — Mark
15: 89.
— Roman Centurion,
30 a. d. at the Crucifixion.
Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet
mighty in deed and word before God and all
the people. — Luke 24-' 19.
— Cleopas and John,
30 a. d. Disciples of Jesus.

24 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
And the angel answered and said unto the
women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek
Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here:
for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place
where the Lord lay. — Mat. 28: 5-6.
30 a. d. — Angels at the Tomb.

And Thomas answered and said unto him,
My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him,
Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed: blessed are they that have not seen,
and yet have believed. — John 20:28-29.
— Thomas, called Didymus,
30 a. d. one of Disciples of Jesus.

Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise
man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he
was a doer of wonderful works, and a teacher
of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of the Jews,
and many of the Gentiles. He was (the)
Christ. And when Pilate at the suggestion of
the principal men amongst us, had condemned
him to the cross, those that loved him at the
first did not forsake him; for he appeared to
them alive again the third day, as the divine
prophets had foretold these and ten thousand

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 25
other wonderful things concerning him. And
the tribe of Christians so named for him, are
not extinct at this day. — Flavius Josephus,
37-100 a. d. Jewish Historian.

The name (Christian) was derived from
Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea.
By that event the sect, of which he was
founder, received a blow which for a time
checked that growth of a dangerous supersti
tion ; but it revived soon after, and spread with
recuperated vigor, not only in Judea, the soil
that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome.
— Caius Cornelius Tacitus,
55—117 a. d. Roman Historian.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God: but made
himself of no reputation, and took upon him
the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men : and being found in fashion as
a man, he humbled himself, and became obedi
ent unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him,
and given him a name which is above every
name: that at the name of Jesus every knee

26 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in
earth, and things under the earth; and that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. — Phil.
2: 6-11.
Who is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature : for by him were all
things created, that are in heaven, and that are
in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers : all things were created by him, and for
him.— Col. 1 : 15.
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.— Col. 2:9.
— Paul, Apostle of Jesus Christ.
61 — A. D.

Eighty and six years have I served Him, and
He has done me nothing but good, and how
could I curse Him, my Lord and Saviour?
If you would know what I am, I tell you
frankly, I am a Christian.
— Polycarp,
Christian Father and Martyr.
69-155 a. d.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. The

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 27
same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by him; and without him
was not anything made that was made.
In him was life ; and the life was the light of
men. And the light shineth in darkness and
the darkness comprehended it not. — John 1:
1-5. — St. John, Disciple and Apostle.
90 A. D.

Come fire, come cross, and crowds of wild
beasts; come tearing, breaking, and crunching
of my bones : come the mutilation of my mem
bers, and shattering of my whole body, and all
the dreadful torments of the Devil, so I may
but attain to Jesus Christ.
I would rather die for Christ than rule the
world. — Ignatius,
Apostolic Father and Martyr.
First Century.

The Christians are still worshipping that
great man who was crucified in Palestine.
— St. Lucian, Christian Martyr.
250-312.

28 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
My Christ and God was exceedingly beauti
ful in Countenance. His stature was fully de
veloped, his height being six feet. He had
auburn hair, quite abundant, and flowing down
mostly over his whole person. His eyebrows
were black and not highly arched; his eyes
were brown and bright. He had a family like
ness, in his fine eyes, prominent nose, and good
color, to -his ancestor David, who is said to have
had beautiful eyes and a ruddy complexion.
He wore his hair long, for a razor never touched
it; nor was it cut by any person except his
mother in his childhood. His neck inclined
forward a little so that the posture of his body
was not too upright or stiff. His face was full,
but not quite so round as his mother's; tinged
with sufficient color to make it handsome and
natural; mild in expression, like the blandness
in the above description of his mother whose
features his own strongly resembled.
— Epiphanius,
One of the Church Fathers.
310-407 a. d.

" I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the
only-begotten Son of God: Begotten of His
Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of
Light, Very God of Very God. Begotten, not

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 29
made ; Being of one substance with the Father ;
By whom all things were made : Who for us men
and for our salvation came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary, and was made Man.
325 — a. d. — Nicene Creed.

If the things which evince His humanity
have afforded thee a pretext for error, let the
circumstances which attest His Divinity remove
thy mistake. — Gregory Nazianzen,
329-389. Bishop of Nazianzus.
Thou hast conquered, Galilaean (Lt. Vicisti
Galiloee). — Julian the Apostate,
331-363. Emperor of Rome.
As the print of the seal on wax is the express
image of the Seal itself, so Christ is the express
image — the perfect representation of God.
— St. Ambrose,
333-397. Christian Father.
I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that
are very wise and very beautiful; but I never

80 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
read in either of them : " Come unto me all ye
that labor and are heavy ladened."
— Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.
354-430.The angels said, 0, Mary, verily God send-
eth thee good tidings, that thou shalt bear the
Word proceeding from himself; his name shall
be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary ; honorable in
this world and in the world to come, and one
of those who approach near to the presence of
God; and shall speak unto men in the cradle,
and when he is grown up ; and he shall be one
of the righteous. — From the Koran.
— Mohammed,
Founder of the Mohammedan Religion.
570-632. As the sun doth daily rise,
Brightening up the morning skies,
So to thee with one accord,
Lift we up our hearts, O Lord.
— Alfred the Great,
849-901. King of England.
No voice can sing, no heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find,
A sweeter sound than Jesus' name,
The Saviour of mankind.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 81
O, Hope of every contrite heart,
O, Joy of all the meek,
To those who ask, how kind thou art !
How good to those who seek !
— Bernard of Claievaux,
1091-1152. French Ecclesiastic.

There has appeared in this our day a man
of great virtue, named Jesus Christ, who is yet
living amongst us, and with the Gentiles is
accepted as a prophet of truth, but his own
disciples call him the Son of God. He raiseth
the dead, and cureth all manner of diseases ; a
man of stature somewhat tall and comely, with
reverent countenance ; such as the beholder may
both love and fear: his hair is of the color of
filbert, full ripe, and plain down to his ears, but
from ears downwards somewhat curled, and
more orient of color, waving about his shoulders.
In the midst of his head goeth a seam or parti
tion of hair, after the manner of the Nazarites ;
his forehead very smooth and plain; his face
and nose and mouth so framed as nothing can
be reprehended; his beard somewhat thick,
agreeable to the hair of his head for color, not
of any great length, but forked in the middle;
of an innocent and mature look : his eyes grey,
clear and quick. In reproving he is terrible;

32 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
in admonishing, courteous and fair spoken,
pleasant in speech, amidst gravity. It cannot
be remembered that any hath seen him laugh,
but many have seen him weep. In proportion
of body, well shaped and straight : his hands and
arms most beauteous to behold. In speaking
very temperate, modest and wise : a man of
singular virtue, surpassing the children of men.
 PUBLIUS LENTULUS.
Epistle of the llth Century.
{Probably spurious.)
O Jesus Christ, most good, most fair,
More fragrant than May's flowery air ;
Who thee within his soul doth hear,
True cause for joy hath won !
But would one have Thee in his heart,
From all self-will he must depart ;
God's bidding only where thou art
Must evermore be done.
— Johannes Tauler,
Dominican Preacher and Mystic.
1290-1361.

I am not a dreamer, but I hold this for cer
tain that the image of Christ shall never be ef
faced. They have wished to destroy it but it

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 33
shall be painted again in the hearts of men by
painters abler than myself. The nation which
loves Jesus Christ will rejoice thereat, and I
awakening from the dead, and rising from the
grave shall thrill with great joy.
— John Huss,
1369-1415. Bohemian Reformer.

All the glory and beauty of Christ are mani
fested within, and there he delights to dwell;
his visits are frequent, his condescension amaz
ing, his conversations sweet, his comforts re
freshing; and the peace that he brings passeth
all understanding.
— Thomas 'A. Kempis,
1380-1471. German Mystic.

What are the saints compared with Christ?
They are but as dewdrops scattered upon the
head of the Bridegroom, lost in the glory of his
hair.

In his life, Christ is an example, showing us
how to live : in his death he is a sacrifice, satis
fying for our sins: in his resurrection, a con-

34 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
queror : in his ascension, a king : in his interces
sion, a high priest.
— Martin Luther,
1483-1546. German Reformer.
I commend my soul into the hands of God,
my Creator; hoping and assuredly believing,
through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour,
to be made partaker of life everlasting.
— William Shakespeare.
The great English Poet and Dramatist.
{Closing words of his will.)
1564-1616.
The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.
— Thomas Decker,
1570-1641. English Poet.
As all the sweetness that are in the flowers of
the field and in the garden are brought in by
the bees into the hive, and are there embodied
in one hive ; so all the attributes of God and the
sweetness of them all are hived in Christ, in
whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells
bodily.
— William Bridge,
1600-1670. English Divine.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 35
Begotten Son, divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous countenance, without
cloud
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold !
Transfused, on thee His ample spirit rests.
— John Milton,
1608-1674. English Poet.
He came not in the spirit of Elias, but with
meekness and gentle insinuations, mild as the
breath of heaven, not willing to disturb the soft
est stalk of a violet.
— Jeremy Taylor,
1612-1667. Anglican Divme.

Jesus Christ is the center of all, and the
goal to which all tends.
— Blaise Pascal,
1623-1662. French Philosopher.
Your Saviour comes not with gaudy show,
Nor was his kingdom of the world below ;
The crown he wore was of the pointed thorn,
In purple he was crucified, not born.
— John Dryden,
1631-1700. English Poet.

36 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
This is the highest thing which Christ said
of himself, namely: that He is the temple of
God, since God chiefly manifested himself in
Christ; which St. John, that he might express
it more efficaciously, clothed in the expression
that " The Word was made flesh."
— Baruch Spinoza,
1632-1677. Dutch Philosopher.

Every knee must bow to him. The whole
creation must be in subjection to him, things in
heaven and things in earth and things under the
earth : the living and the dead. At the name of
Jesus all must pay solemn homage. And every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Every nation and language shall publicly own
the universal empire of the exalted Redeemer.
— Matthew Henry,
English divine and Commentator.
1662-1714.

Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
Upon the Saviour's brow ;
His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 37
No mortal can with Him compare
Among the sons of men;
Fairer is He than all the fair
That fills the heavenly train.
— Joseph Stennet,
1663-1713. English Hymn Writer.

Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love and power,
That ever mortals knew,
Or angels ever bore;
All are too mean to speak his worth,
Too mean to set the Saviour forth.
— Isaac Watts,
English Poet and Hymnologist.
1674-1776.

The system of religion which Christ pub
lished, and his evangelists recorded, is a com
plete system to all the purposes of religion,
natural and revealed. Christianity, as it
stands in the gospel, contains not only a com
plete, but a very plain system of religion. The
gospel is in all cases one continued lesson of
the strictest morality, of justice, of benevolent
and universal charity. Supposing Christianity
to be a human invention, it is the most amiable

38 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
and successful invention that ever was imposed
on mankind for their good.
— Henry St. John Bolingbroke,
English Lord and Noted Infidel.
1678-1751.

In Christ we have an example of a quiet and
peaceful spirit, of becoming modesty and so
briety; just, honest, upright and sincere; and
above all, of a most gracious and benevolent
temper and behavior ; one who did no wrong, no
injury to any man; in whose mouth was no
guile ; who went about doing good, not only by
his ministry, but also in curing all manner of
diseases among the people. His was a beauti
ful picture of human nature in its native purity
and simplicity; and showed, at once, what ex
cellent creatures men would be under the influ
ence and power of the Gospel which he preached
unto them.
— Thomas Chubb,
1679-1746. English Infidel.

He is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah
the Lord, Creator from eternity, Saviour in

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 89
time and Reformer to eternity, who is at once
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
— Emanuel Swedenborg,
1688-1772. Swedish Philosopher.
Jesus taught with a degree of light to which
that of Nature is darkness.
— Joseph Butler,
Author of Analogy of Religion.
1692-1752.
When we are delighted with flowery
meadows, and gentle breezes, we may consider
that we see only the emanations of the sweet
benevolence of Jesus. When we behold the
fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and pur
ity; so too, the green trees and singing of the
birds are the emanations of his infinite joy and
benignity.
— Jonathan Edwards,
1703-1758. American Divine.

The inspired writers give Him all the titles
of the Most High God. They call him over
and over by the uncommunicable name Je
hovah, never given to any creature. They
ascribe to him all the attributes and all the
works of God. So that we need not scruple to.

40 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
pronounce him God of God, Light of Light,
very God of very God ; in glory equal with the
Father, in majesty co-eternal.
— John Wesley,
1703-1791. Founder of Methodism.

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of
whom, you particularly desire, I think the sys
tem of morals, and his religion, as he left them
to us, is the best the world ever saw, or is likely
to see.
— Benjamin Franklin,
1706-1790. American Statesman.

Jesus the name high over all,
In hell, or earth, or sky,
Angels and men before it fall,
And devils fear and fly.
Happy, if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name ;
Preach him to all and cry in death,
" Behold, behold the lamb ! "
— Charles Wesley,
1708-1788 English Hymnwriter.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 41
How petty are the books of the philosophers
with all their pomp, compared with the Gos
pels! Can he whose life they tell be Himself
no more than a man? Is there anything in
his character, of the enthusiast or the ambitious
sectary? What sweetness, what purity in His
ways, what touching grace in his teachings!
What loftiness in His maxims, what profound
wisdom in His words. What an empire over
His passions ! Where is the man, where is the
sage, who knows how to act, to suffer, and to
die, without weakness and without display ? If
the death of Socrates be that of a sage, the life
and death of Jesus are those of a God.
— Jean Jacques Rosseau,
1712-1778. French Deist and Author.
I defy you all — as many as are here — to
prepare a tale so simple and at the same time
so sublime and touching as the tale of the pas
sion and death of Jesus Christ; which pro
duces the same effect, which makes an impres
sion so strong and generally felt, and whose in
fluence will be the same after so many cen
turies.
— Denis Diderot,
1713-1784. French Encyclopedist.
{At a free-thinkers' gathering in d'Holbach's
house.)

42 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Worship, honor, power and blessing,
Christ is worthy to receive ;
Loudest praises without ceasing
Meet it is for us to give.
Help, ye bright angelic Spirits!
Bring your sweetest, noblest lays,
Help to sing Jesus' merits,
Help to chant Immanuel's praise.
— John Bakewell, Hymn Writer.
1721-1819.

One of those names, before which the heavens
bow, is sacred, while the other is only that of
a poor scholar endeavoring to explain, to the
best of his ability, the teachings of his Master.
— Immanuel Kant,
German Metaphysician and
1724-1804. Philosopher.
{When one instituted a comparison
between his name and Christ's.)

The well-spring of whatever is best and pur
est in human life. The first trustworthy and
practical teacher of the Immortality of the
Soul.  GOTTHOLD LESSING,
1729-1781. German Author.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 43
THOU
Whom soft-eyed Pity led down from Heaven
To bleed for man, to teach him how to live,
And oh ! still harder lesson, how to die !
— Beilby Porteus,
Bishop of the English Church.
1731-1808.

I now make it my earnest prayer that God
would have you and the State over which you
preside in his holy protection; and that he
would most graciously be pleased to dispose us
all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean
ourselves with charity, humility, and pacific
temper of mind, which were the characteris
tics of the Divine Author of our blessed re
ligion; without a humble recognition of whose
example, in these things, we can never hope to
be a happy nation.
— George Washington,
First President of the United States.
1732-1799. {In a letter to the Governor of one of the
States.)

The Christian religion, as I understand it,
is the brightness of the glory and the express

44 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Portrait of the Character of the eternal, self-
existent, independent, benevolent, all-power
ful, and all-merciful Creator, Preserver, and
Father of the universe, the first good, the first
perfect, and the first fair. It will last as long
as the world. Neither savage nor civilized
man, without a revelation could have discov
ered it.
— John Adams,
Second President of the United States.
1735-1826.

He was a virtuous and amiable man. The
morality that he preached and practiced was of
the most benevolent kind: and though similar
systems of morality had been preached by Con
fucius and by some of the Greek philosophers,
many ages before; by the Quakers since; and
by many good men in all ages, it has not been
exceeded by any.
— Thomas Paine,
American Deistical Writer.
1737-1809.

I have heard it said that Deists claimed me.
The thought pained me more than the appella
tion of Tory; for I consider religion of in-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 45
finitely higher importance than politics, and I
find much cause to reproach myself, that I have
lived so long, and given no decided proof of
my being a Christian.
— Patrick Henry,
American Patriot and Statesman.
1739-1799.

A more beautiful and precious morsel of
ethics I have never seen: it is a document in
proof that I am a real Christian; that is to
say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.
— Thomas Jefferson,
Third President of the United States.
1743-1826. {Written in a book in which he had made a
collection of the sayings of Jesus.)

No one ever loved as Christ did, nor did
anything so great and good as the Bible tells
us of Him ever enter into the heart of man.
It is a holy form that rises before the poor
pilgrim like a star in the night, and satisfies
his inmost cravings, his most secret yearnings
and hopes.
— Matthias Claudius,
1743-1815. German Poet.

46 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is in the noblest and most per
fect sense the realized ideal of humanity.
— Johann Gottfried von Herder,
1744-1803. German Philosopher.
I esteem the Gospels to be thoroughly gen
uine, for there shines forth from them the re
flected splendor of a sublimity, proceeding from
the person of Jesus Christ, of so divine a kind
as only the divine could ever have manifested
on earth.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
1749-1832. German Author.
A humble form the Godhead wore,
The pains of poverty He bore,
To gaudy pomp unknown:
Tho' in a human walk He trod
Still was the Man Almighty God
In glory all His own.
— Thomas Chatterton,
1752-1770. An English Poet.
Christ is the key to the history of the world.
Not only does all harmonize with the mission
of Christ, but all is subordinate to it.
— John von Muller,
1752-1809. Swiss Historian.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 47
Gentlemen, I refer you to a historical fact
which may give you some light as to the best
way to establish a new religion in the world.
When Christ undertook to establish a new re
ligion, he was crucified, he lay in the grave
three days, he rose again and ascended into
heaven. If you would succeed, I advise you to
do the same.
— Charles M. Talleyrand,
1754-1838. French Statesman.
{When a delegation of philanthropists con
sulted him as to the best way to establish a new
religion.)

I should be ashamed to acknowledge him as
my Saviour if I could comprehend him — he
would be no greater than myself. Such is my
sense of sin, and consciousness of my inability
to save myself, that I feel I need a superhuman
Saviour — one so great and glorious that I can
not comprehend him.
— Noah Webster,
1758-1843. American Lexicographer.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed,

48 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
How He who bore in heaven the second name
Had not on earth whereon to lay His head.
— Robert Burns, Scotch Poet.
1759-1796.

The life of Christ concerns Him who, being
the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest
among the holy, lifted with his pierced hand
empires off their hinges and turned the stream
of centuries out of its channel, and still gov
erns the ages.
— Jean Paul Richter,
1763-1825. German Author.

The combination of these qualities, justice
and fidelity, so essential to the heroic character ;
with those of meekness, lowliness of heart, and
brotherly love, is what constitutes that moral
perfection of which Christ gave an example in
his own life, and to which he commended his
disciples to aspire. . . .
Jesus Christ came into the world to preach
repentance and remission of sins, to proclaim
glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace,
good will to man ; and finally, to bring life and
immortality to light in the gospel; and all this

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 49
is clear, if we consider the Bible as a divine
revelation.
— John Quincy Adams,
Sixth President of the United States.
1767-1848.

Ah ! if the purest morality, and the most ten
der heart — if a life spent in removing the
errors, and relieving the sufferings of mankind,
are attributes of the divinity, who can deny
that Jesus Christ is God ?
— Francois Chateaubriand.
1768-1848.

I stand still before Christ as before a riddle,
in the presence of which all my philosophical
and historical criticism is silent. I know not
what to call that being to which in the entire
history of humanity I find no analogy. But I
find that the whole history of humanity before
Him and after Him points to Him, and in Him
finds its centre and its solution. His whole
conduct, His deeds, His addresses, have a su
pernatural character, being altogether inexplic
able from human relations and human means.
I feel that there is something more than man,

50 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
that he must be a divine ambassador. But how
He is it I do not undertake to say.
— Friedeich Daniel Eenst
Schleiermacher,
German Theologian and Critic.
1768-1829.
Jesus Christ was more than man. Alex
ander, Cassar, Charlemagne, and myself founded
great empires, but upon what did the creations
of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus
alone founded His empire upon love, and to
this very day millions would die for Him.
Everything in Christ astonishes me. His
spirit overawes me, and his will confounds me.
His ideas and his sentiments, the truths which
he announces, his manner of convincing, are
not explained either by human observation, or
the nature of things. His birth and the his
tory of his life ; the profundity of his doctrine,
which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and
which is of those difficulties the most admirable
solution; his gospel; his apparition; his em
pire; his march across the ages and the realms
— everything is for me a prodigy, a mystery in-
solvable, which plunges me into a revery from
which I cannot escape — a mystery which is
there before my eyes, a mystery which I can-

Hetnrtch Hofmann
THE SON OF MAN
Engraved from the Famous Painting of " Christ and the Rich Young Ruler "

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 51
not deny nor explain. Here I see nothing hu
man. The nearer I approach, the more care
fully I examine. Everything is above me.
Everything remains grand, — of a grandeur
which overpowers. His religion is a revelation
from an Intelligence which certainly is not that
of man.
— Napoleon I,
1768-1821. Emperor of France.

That person (Christ) in whose self-conscious
ness the unity of the Divine and human first
came forth, and with an energy that, in the
whole course of his life and character, dimin
ished to the very lowest degree all limitation of
this unity. In this respect he stands alone and
unequaled in the world's history.
— George Wilhelm Hegel,
1770-1831. German Philosopher.

Hosanna ! be the children's song,
To Christ the children's King;
His praise, to whom our souls belong,
Let all the children sing.
— James Montgomery.
Scottish Poet and Hymn Writer.
1771-1854.

52 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
The greatest of all blessings, and the most
ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a
Christian.
— Samuel T. Coleridge,
1772-1834. English Poet.

When I read again the story of his life and
contemplate his teachings, it is as though I
were lifted from the valley to the broad table
land, and from thence to successive mountain
heights, until I stand at last upon the highest
peak above the clouds, where all is clear and
radiant with sunlight; and it has been during
these mountaintop experiences that I have
seemed to behold his face and have attempted
to paint his likeness.
— Ernest T. Hofmann,
1776-1822. A noted German Painter.

I always have had, and always shall have a
profound regard for Christianity, the religion
of my fathers, for its rise, its usages and its ob
servances.
— Henry Clay,
1777-1852. American Statesman.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 53
This only I know, that there is salvation in
no other than in the name of Jesus Christ the
Crucified, and that nothing loftier offers itself
to humanity than the God-manhood realized in
Him. Jesus is the blameless and sinless one.
— Wilhelm Martin De Witte,
1780-1849. German Theologian.
The character of Jesus is wholly inexplicable
on human principles.
I know of no sincere enduring good but the
moral excellency which shines forth in Jesus
Christ. What is it that constitutes Christ's claim to
love and respect? It is the moral beauty and
grandeur of his character.
— William Ellery Channing,
1780-1842. Unitarian Divine.

I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God.
The miracles which he wrought establish in my
mind, his personal authority, and render it
proper for me to believe whatever he asserts.
I believe, therefore, all his declarations, as well
when he declares himself to be the Son of God,
as when he declares any other proposition. And

54 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
I believe there is no other way of Salvation
than through the merits of his atonement.
— Daniel Webster,
American Statesman and Orator.
1782-1852.

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid ;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
Cold on his cradle the dewdrops are shining ;
Low lies his head with beasts of the stall ;
Angels adore him, in slumber reclining,
Maker, and Monarch, and Saviour of all.
— Reginald Heber,
1783-1826. English Bishop of Calcutta.
If ever man was God or God man, Jesus
Christ was both.
— Lord Byron, English Poet.
1788-1824.

The name of Christ — the one great word —
well worth all the languages in earth or heaven.
— Samuel Bailey,
1791-1880. English Philosopher.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 55
The being who has influenced in the most re
markable manner the opinions and fortunes of
the human species is Jesus Christ. At this
day his name is connected with the devotional
feelings of 200,000,000 of the human race.
The institutions of the most civilized portions
of the globe derive their authority from the
sanction of his doctrines.
— Percy B. Shelley,
1792-1822. English Poet.

In my view of the life, the teachings, the
labors, and the sufferings of the blessed Jesus,
there can be no admiration too profound; no
love of which the human heart is capable too
warm; no gratitude too earnest and deep of
which he is justly the object.
Take away the blessings of the advent of His
life and the blessings purchased by His death,
in what an abyss of guilt would man have been
left ! It would seem to be blotting the sun out
of the heavens — to leave our system in chaos,
frost and darkness.
— William Cullen Bryant,
1794-1878. American Poet.

Jesus of Nazareth our divinist symbol!
Higher has the human thought not reached; a

56 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
symbol of quiet perennial, infinite character,
whose significance will ever demand to be anew
inquired into, and anew made manifest.
The greatest of all heroes is one whom we do
not name here. Let sacred silence meditate
that sacred truth.
— Thomas Carlyle,
1795-1881. British Author.

City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus
Christ but City Streets tells us of the reign of
Satan.
— Horace Mann,
1796-1859. American Educator.

Till the end of time all the sensible will bow
low before this Jesus of Nazareth, and will
humbly acknowledge the exceeding glory of this
great phenomenon. His followers are nations
and generations.
— Immanuel H. Fichte,
German Philosopher and Sceptic.
11797-1878.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 57
May all the Alumni of this Institution
(Cathedral College) find this day so blest to
them that the knowledge of God and His only-
begotten Son Jesus Christ as the only source
of salvation, may advance to them.
— William I,
1797-1888. Emperor of Germany.

Since ninety-nine hundredths of all Chris
tians, in all ages, have rendered divine wor
ship to Christ, it follows then that he is either
entitled to receive worship, or he has, as a re
ligious teacher, so failed in his mission as to
lead nearly all his pupils into the idolatry of
Creature worship.
— Thomas Binney,
English Theological Author.
1798-1808.

Lion of Judah, hail !
And let thy name prevail
From age to age:
Lord of the rolling years
Claim for thine own the spheres,
For thou hast bought with tears
Thy heritage.
1800-1893. Matthew Bridges.

58 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
I find the name of Jesus Christ written on
the top of every page of modern history.
— George Bancroft,
1800-1891. American Historian.

It was before Deity embodied in human form
walking among men, partaking of their infirm
ities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over
their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleed
ing on the cross ; that the prejudices of the syna
gogue and the doubts of the academy, the fasces
of the victor and the swords of thirty legions
were humbled in dust.
— Thomas B. Macaulay,
English Essayist and Historian.
1800-1859.The greatest monuments of art shelter His
sacred images ; the most magnificent ceremonies
assemble the people under the influence of His
name; poetry, music, painting, sculpture, ex
haust their resources to proclaim His glory, and
to offer Him incense worthy of the adoration
which ages have consecrated to Him. And yet
upon what throne do they adore Him? Upon
a Cross! — Pere Lacordaire,
1802-1861. A French pulpit orator.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 59
The unique impression of Jesus upon man
kind — whose name is not so much written as
ploughed into the history of the world — is
proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion.
Jesus belonged to the race of prophets. He
saw with open eye the mystery of the soul.
One man was true to what is in you and me.
He, as I think, is the only soul in history who
has appreciated the worth of man.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson,
American Essayist and Philosopher.
1803-1882.

The babe of Bethlehem, whose words were so
few, whose brief life was so soon ended, and
whose sacrificial death upon the cross was so
wonderful, though dead, still he lives and
reigns in this world ; — a monarch more influ
ential than any other, or all other sovereigns
upon the globe.
— John S. C. Abbott,
1805-1877. American Historian.

The pupil of Moses may ask himself whether
all the princes of the House of David have
done so much for Jews as that Prince who
was crucified. . . .

60 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Had it not been for Him, the Jews would
have been comparatively unknown, or known
only as a high Oriental Caste which had lost its
country. Has not He made their history the
most famous history in the world.
The wildest dreams of their Rabbis have been
far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Eu-
ope and changed its name to Christendom?
All countries that refuse the cross wilt, and the
time will come when the countless myriads of
America and Australia will find music in the
Songs of Zion, and solace in the parables of
Galilee.
— Benjamin Disraeli, (a jew),
1805-1881. Earl of Beacons field.

Jesus Christ must be called the regenerator
of the human race. The world has changed
and that change is historically traceable to
Christ.

Not more clearly does the worship of the
saintly soul, breathing through its windows
opened to the midnight, betray the secrets of its
affections, than the mind of Jesus of Nazareth
reveals the perfect thought and inmost love of

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 61
the all-ruling God. Were he the only born —
the solitary self-revelation of the created spirit,
He should not more surely open the mind of
heaven, being the Logos — the apprehensible
nature of God — which long unuttered to the
world, and abiding in the beginning with Him,
has now come forth and dwelt among us, full
of grace and truth.
— James Martineau,
1805 — 1900. Unitarian Divine.

Jesus stood and stands alone, Supreme, over
all other great religious reformers in every
thing that concerns the heart and affections.
— Giuseppe Mazzini,
1805-1872. Italian Patriot.

About the life and sayings of Jesus Christ
there is a stamp of personal originality, com
bined with profundity of insight, which must
place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the esti
mation of those who have no belief in his in
spiration, in the very first rank of the men of
sublime genius of whom our species can boast.
When this prominent genius is combined with
the qualities of probably the greatest moral re-

62 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
former, and martyr to that mission, whoever
existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to
have made a bad choice in fixing upon this man
as the ideal representative and guide of human
ity; nor even now would it be easy, even for
an unbeliever, to find a better translation of
the rule of virtue from the abstract to the con
crete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ
would approve our life. When to this we add,
that, to the conception of the rational sceptic,
it remains a possibility that Christ actually was
what he supposed Himself to be.
— John Stuart Mill,
English Author and Sceptic.
1806-1873.

O, Who shall paint him? Let the sweetest
tone
That ever trembled on the harps of heaven
Be discord ; let the chanting seraphim
Whose anthem is Eternity be dumb;
For praise and wonder, adoration, all
Melt into muteness ere they soar to thee,
The sole perfection! Theme of countless
worlds !
— Robert Montgomery,
1807-1855. English Poet.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 63
I shall be disappointed, sir. I shall fail in
the leading object that brought me here unless
these young men become real Christians. I
wish you and others of your sacred profession
to do all you can to accomplish this result.
— Gen'l Robert E. Lee,
1807-1870. American Soldier.
{To a clergyman of Lexington, Virginia,
when he became President of Washington Col
lege.)

In the beginning was the Word :
Athwart the Chaos — night,
It gleamed with quick creative power
And there was life and light.
Thy Word, O God ! is living yet,
Amid earth's restless strife,
New harmony creating still
And ever higher life.
...... •
O Word that broke the stillness first,
Sound on ! and never cease
Till all earth's darkness be made light,
And all her discord peace.
Till selfish passion, strife and wrong,
Thy summons shall have heard,

64 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
And thy creation be complete,
O thou Eternal Word:
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
1807-1882.

I love and venerate the religion of Christ,
because Christ came into the world to deliver
humanity from slavery, for which God had not
created it. — Giuseppe Garibaldi,
1807-1882. Italian Patriot.

My ground of hope for myself and for hu
manity is in that divine fullness of love which
was manifested in the life, teaching and sacri
fice of Christ. In the infinite mercy of God
so revealed and not in any worth or merit of
our nature, I humbly, yet very hopefully trust.

O, Lord, and Master of us all
What e'er our name or sign
We own thy sway, we hear thy call,
We test our lives by thine.
— John Greenleaf Whittier.
1808-1892. American Poet.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 65
Christ stands alone, and unapproached in the
world's history. He remains the highest model
of religion within the reach of our thought.
No perfect piety is possible without his pres
ence in the heart.
— David Frederich Strauss,
German Rationalistic Theologian.
1808-1874.

'Twas the hour when One in Sion
Hung for love's sake on the cross —
When His brow was chill with dying,
And His soul was faint with loss;
When His priestly blood dropped downward,
And His kingly eyes looked throneward —
Then Pan was dead.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
1809-1861. English Poetess.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of Creeds
In lovliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.

66 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest, manhood thou,
Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours to make them thine.
— Alfred Tennyson,
1809-1892. English Poet Laureate.

All that I think, all that I hope, all that I
write and all that I live for is based upon the
divinity of Jesus Christ; the one central joy
of our poor wayward race.
— William E. Gladstone,
1809-1898. British Statesman.

Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a
firm reliance on Him, who has never forsaken
this favored land, are still competent to ad
just in the best way all our present difficulty.
Inaugural Address.

If what you have told me is really a correct
view of this great subject, I think I can say
with sincerity, that I hope I am a Christian;
and will further add, that it has been my in-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 67
tention for some time, at a suitable opportunity
to make a public religious profession.
{Conversation with a lady connected with the
Christian Commission.)
— Abraham Lincoln,
1809-1865.

This we may say, that the fullness of life in
the soul of Jesus has preceded the fullness of
life in his religion. If Christianity does jus
tice to the different sides of human nature and
meets the various needs of the soul, it is be
cause the same all-sided development was in the
life of Jesus himself. He united love to God
with love to man, courage and caution, perfect
freedom of forms and reverence for the sub
stance in all forms, hatred for sin and love for
the sinner. All that is essential in Christianity
was in Jesus Christ.
— James Freeman Clark,
American Author and Unitarian Divine.
1810-1888.

What had the life of Jesus been to us, if we
had only the record of his sermons, without the
record of his going about doing good ? I think

68 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
the everyday life of Jesus touches the human
heart more than the great truths which he ut
tered. — Matthew Simpson,
Bishop of the Methodist
1810-1884. Episcopal Church,

Today the question that is stirring men's
hearts to their very depths is, " Who is this
Jesus Christ ? " His life is becoming to us a
new life, as if we had never seen a word of it.
There is round about us an influence so strange,
so penetrating, so subtle, yet so mighty, that
we are obliged to ask the great heaving world
of time to be silent for a while, that we may
see just what we are and where we are. That
influence is the life of Jesus, We cannot get
clear of it: we hear it in the tones of joy; we
feel it stealing across the darkness of sorrow;
we see it where we least expect it. Even men
who have travelled farthest from it seem only
to have come around to it again ; and while they
have been undervaluing the inner work of Jesus
Christ, they have actually been living on the
virtues which came out of His garment's hem.
Christ unites in Himself the sublimest pre
cepts and divinest practices. He pours out a

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 69
doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as
heaven, and true as God.
— Theodore Parker,
American Theologian and Scholar.
1810-1860.

What artist could depict the character of
Christ, if there were no reality from which to
paint ?
— Noah Porter, American Educator.
1811-1892.

I believe that Christ lived when and as the
Gospel says; that he was more than man —
namely, above all men who had as yet lived —
and yet less than God; full of the strongest
sense and knowledge, and of virtue superior
to any which we call Roman or Grecian or
Stoic, and which we best denote when, borrow
ing his name, we call it Christian. I pray you
not to believe that I am insensible to the good
ness and greatness of his character. My idea
of human nature is exalted when I think that
such a being lived and went as man among men.
— Charles Sumner,
1811-1874. American Statesman.

70 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World !
I think this is the authentic sign and seal
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
And recommence at sorrow.

Oh, thou pale form 
Oft have I stood by thee —
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee
In the damp night by weeping Olivet ;
Or leaning on thy bosom, —
Or dying with thee on the Holy Cross,
Or witnessing thy bursting from the tomb.
No one ever plucked
A rag, even, from the body of the Lord,
To wear and mock with, but despite himself
He looked the greater and was the better.
— Robeet Browning, English Poet.
1812-1889.

I now most solemnly impress upon you the
truth and beauty of the Christian religion as it
came from Christ himself, and the impossibility
of going far wrong if you humbly but heartily
respect it. — In a letter to his son.

Antonio Ciseri

BEHOLD THE MAN! :

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 71
I commit my soul to the mercy of God,
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
and I exhort my dear children humbly to try
to guide themselves by the teachings of the New
Testament. — Charles Dickens, in his will.
1812-1870.

You cannot take in such a nature as Christ's
with all its relations to heaven above and to the
earth beneath, all its social and aesthetic quali
ties, and all its divine elements, not simply that
they elude your grasp, running out beyond
analysis and research, but because they are so
combined, so changeable, so constantly coming
and going, with various phases and in various
ways, that no man can give the whole of it.
There is always more; and when that is ex
pressed there is still more.

If Christ be not Divine, every impulse of
the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and
light and love and hope decline.
— Henry Ward Beecher,
1813-1887. American Pulpit Orator.

72 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
That Jesus, surrounded as he was, could
have promulgated a system of morals embody
ing all that is most valuable in the prior life of
the world, and to which nineteen centuries of
civilization have not been able to add a thought
or impart an ornament, is a fact not to be ex
plained by any ridicule.
— William Benjamin Carpenter,
1813-1885. English Physiologist.

The founder of the Christian Religion was
not wise; He was divine. To believe in Him
is to imitate Him and to seek union with Him.
In consequence of His atoning death, every
thing which lives and breathes may know itself
redeemed.
— Richard Wagner,
1813-1883. German Poet and Author.

If I were not a Christian I would not serve
the King another hour. Did I not obey God
and count upon him, I should certainly take
no account of earthly masters. Were I not a
Christian, did I not stand upon the miraculous

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 73
basis of religion, you would never have pos
sessed a Federal Chancellor in my person.
— Prince Otto von Bismark,
1815-1898. German Statesman.

As the material evolution of nature found its
significance in man, so must humanity enter
immediately upon a higher spiritual evolution
to find its goal and completion, and its signifi
cance in the ideal man — the Divine Man.
— John LeConte, American Physicist.
1818-1891.

A personal experience of fifty years gives
me an absolute knowledge of the saving, up
lifting power of Jesus. His word has a power
to rebuke, to cleanse, to comfort, to uphold, to
enlighten me, incomparably greater than that
of any other word which has ever reached me.
The nearer I keep to him, and the more unre
servedly I trust in him, so much the more ten
derly do I feel the love of God redeeming,
guiding and sanctifying me.
— Thomas H. Hill,
American Clergyman and Educator.
1818-1891.

74 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
There is evidence enough for me merely in
the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables of
our Lord, considered simply as uttered there
and then, and by him whose whole life, char
acter, and death, exemplified all that he taught,
and showed that in him the fulness of the God
head was incarnate ; for he spake as never man
spake.
— Francis Bowen,
1818-1909. American Educator.

Eighteen hundred years have passed away
since Jesus Christ appeared upon this earth to
redeem a fallen race from sin and death, and
to open a never ceasing fountain of righteous
ness and life. The noblest and best of men
under every clime hold him not only in the
purest affection and the profoundest gratitude,
but in divine adoration and worship.
His name is above every name that can be
named in heaven or on earth, and the only one
whereby the sinner can be saved. He is Im-
manuel, God with us, the eternal Word become
flesh ; very God and very man in the undivided
person ; the author of a new creation ; the Way,
the Truth and the Life, the Prophet, the Priest,
the King of a regenerated humanity, the Saviour

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 75
of the world. Blessed is he who from the heart
believes that Jesus is the Son of God and the
foundation of Salvation.
— Philip Schaff,
Swiss theologian and Author in America.
1819-1893.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born
across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you
and me ;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make
men free,
While God is marching on.
— Julia Wabd Howe,
1819-1910. American Poet.

In order to render communion with Him pos
sible, the Deity has stooped from His throne
and has not only in the person of the son, taken
upon Him the veil of our human flesh, but, in
the person of the Father, taken upon Him the
veil of our human thoughts and permitted us
by His own spoken authority to conceive Him

76 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
simply and clearly as a living Father and
friend.
— John Ruskin, English Author.
1819-1900.

His character has passed the test of the ma
licious assaults of two thousand years, and
stands today before the world as faultless in
every part. It comprises all paradoxes; more
tender and gentle than that of a woman, and
yet as rugged as a mountain. Stern as an
avenger, and inflexible as fate; he was gentle
but not weak, and always strong and grand ; he
made no clamor, but moved among people like
a gentle current; yet wherever he went he
stirred and agitated human society to its depths ;
he dealt in symbols of eternal judgment, but
they came from his lips so tenderly as to move
his hearers to tears ; he was gently terrible ; he
was a revelation of grand and rugged manhood ;
and something nobler and deeper, something
higher and grander, than the world. His name
stands as the synonym of God on earth.
— Randolph S. Foster,
Bishop of the Methodist
1820-1903. Episcopal Church.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 77
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear !
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer !
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer !
Are we weak and heavy laden,
Cumbered with a load of care ? —
Precious Saviour, still our refuge, —
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee ?
Take it to the Lord in prayer ;
In his arms he'll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there.
— Joseph Sceiven,
1820-1886. Hymn Writer.

Find us a better answer to the questionings
of our spirits than Christ has furnished!
Shew us a better ideal of manhood than he has
given ! Bring us a better testimony to the life
beyond the grave than he has brought. For
four thousand years the world tried in vain to
return to God, and now that he has come him-

78 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
self to be the way, we will not give him up again
for any negation.
— William Taylor,
Missionary Bishop of the
1821-1902. Methodist Church,

Cheist came to reveal what righteousness
really is, for nothing will do except righteous
ness, and no other conception of righteousness
will do except Christ's conception of it — his
method and secret.
— Matthew Aenold,
1822-1888. English Poet Essayest.
I am no infidel. I was educated by pious
Grandparents to a professed belief in Chris
tianity, and taught to reverence holy things.
I have never fallen into disbelief. The Chris
tian gentleman is the noblest and loveliest char
acter on earth, for which I entertain moreover
the highest respect and love.
— Olives P. Morton,
1823-1877. Governor of Indiana.
There is no religion in the whole world which
in simplicity, in purity of purpose, in charity
and true humanity, comes near to that religion

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 79
which Christ taught to his disciples. How
little was taught by Christ and yet that is
enough and every addition is of evil. Love
God, love men — that is the whole law and the
prophets — not the Creeds and the Catechisms,
Articles and endless theological discussions.
Christ's teaching is plainly that as he is the
son of God so we are his brothers.
— F. Max Muller,
1823-1900. German Philologist.
Whatever may be the surprises of the future,
Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship
will grow young without ceasing; his legend will
call forth tears without end ; his sufferings will
melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim
that among the sons of Men there is none born
greater than Jesus.
Jesus is a thousand times more living, a thou
sand times more loved, than he was in his short
passage through life. He presides still day by
day over the destiny of the world . He started
us in a new direction and in that direction we
still move.
His beauty is eternal; His kingdom shall
have no end.
— Joseph Ernest Renan,
1823-1892. French Author and Critic.

80 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
" He, who from the Father forth was sent,
Came the true Light, light to our hearts to
bring;
The Word of God, — the telling of His thought ;
The Light of God, — the making visible ;
The far-transcending glory brought
In human form with man to dwell ;
The dazzling gone — the power not less
To show, irradiate, and bless ;
The gathering of the primal rays divine,
In forming Chaos to a pure sunshine ! "
— George Macdonald,
1824-1905. Scotch Moralist and Poet.

The chosen of God, His image, His darling,
His world-guide, and world-shaper in the his
tory of mankind.
— Theodore Keim,
1825-1879. German Theologian.
Nothing human is seen disproportionately in
Christ, and nothing which belongs to human
perfection fails to find a place in Him. This
universality of Christ's character is no specula
tive fancy of the scholar.
— Brooke Foss Wescott,
English Bishop and Bible Scholar.
1825-1901.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 81
The cross is the center of the world's history :
the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of
our Lord are the pivot round which all the
events of the ages revolve, the testimony of
Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the
growing power of Jesus in history.
— Alexander Maclaren,
1826-1910. English Baptist Preacher.

After six years given to the impartial inves
tigation of Christianity, as to its truth or falsity,
I have come to the deliberate conclusion that
Jesus Christ was the Messiah of the Jews, the
Saviour of the world, and my personal Saviour.
— Lew Wallace,
American General and Author.
1827-1905.

For thirty-five years of my life, I was, in the
proper acceptance of the word a nihilist — not
a revolutionary socialist, but a man who believed
nothing. Five years ago my faith came to me.
I believed in the doctrines of Jesus, and my
whole life underwent a sudden transformation.
. . . Life and death ceased to be evil ; instead
of despair I tasted joy and happiness that

82 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
death could not take away. Will anyone,
then, be offended if I tell the story of how all
this came about.
— Count Lyoff Leo Tolstoi,
A Russian Novelist.
In preface to " My Religion."
1828-1910.

Jesus of Nazareth is the universal Homo,
the essential Vir, the Son of human nature,
the blending in himself of all races, ages, sexes,
capacities, temperaments, Jesus is the arche
typal man, the ideal hero, the consummate in
carnation, the symbol of perfected human
nature, the sum total of unfolded, fulfilled hu
manity, the Son of mankind.
— George Dana Boardman,
1828-1913. Baptist Divine.
Christ in subsequent history is more mar
velous than Christ in Galilee.
— George Lorimer,
1828-1904. American Baptist Divine.
But detach Christianity from Christ, and it
vanishes before your eyes into intellectual va
pour. For it is of the essence of Christianity

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 83

that, day by day, hour by hour, the Christian
should live in conscious, felt, sustained relation
ship to the Ever-living Author of his creed and
of his life. Christianity is non-existent apart
from Christ; it centres in Christ; it radiates,
now as at the first, from Christ. It is not a
mere doctrine bequeathed by Him to a world
with which He has ceased to have dealings; it
perishes outright when men attempt to ab
stract it from the Living Person of its Founder.
He is felt by His people to be their Living
Lord, really present with them now, and even
unto the end of the world.
— Henry Parry Liddon,
English Preacher and Educator.
1829-1890.

After reading the doctrines of Plato, Soc
rates or Aristotle, we feel the specific difference
between their words and Christ's is the differ
ence between an inquiry and a revelation.
— Joseph Parker,
An English Preacher and Orator.
1830-1902.Shall we call him an orator or philosopher or
poet ? He was all. His philosophy of life was
ornamented with lilies. He was an orator, for

84 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
his words have sweetly disturbed the air for
eighteen centuries; He was a philosopher, for
Statesmen turn to Him for the basis of their
laws; He was a poet, for he communed with
nature. He wept in the lonely garden of olives.
He was full of love and visions of a redeemed
and transfigured earth. The world was
changed by His lighting upon it. The earth
has enjoyed more of summer time and moves in
an orbit millions of miles nearer to God. The
walks of life have all been richer and more
flowery since He passed along. He opened a
Court of such splendor that beggars entering it
were turned into Kings, and sinners crossing
its threshold became Saints.
— David Swing, American Clergyman.
1830-1894.

I suppose that seasons of religious doubt come
to every man. But I have noticed this in my
own internal experience, that the older I grow
the less do I care about the dogmas and theories,
and the more do I care for the beauty and
force that are a part of Jesus Christ. There
is no possible means by which any man or any
number of men could have created in fiction a
character like this. It is the very highest type

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 85
of manhood, and the high ideal which any man
feels he has the right to imitate, even when he
knows he cannot reach it.
— James A. Garfield,
Twentieth President of the
1831-1881. United States.

Did not the prayer of the great Master of
Nazareth teach all men and all ages that prayer
must be the stirring of love ?
— Maurice B. Hiesch,
1831-1896. Hebrew Philanthropist.

Hebe is the noblest exhibition of love; here
is a perfect example; here are all the highest
virtues in their highest exercise; here is the
fulfillment of ages of prophecy; here is the
atonement in progress for the redemption of
man ; here is the central battle, and here is to be
the central victory of the universe.
— F. N. Peloubet,
1831 — American Commentator.

It was but thirty-three short years of a short
lifetime that he lived on earth, it was but three
broken and troubled years that he preached the

86 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
gospel of the kingdom; but forever even until
all the eons have been closed, and the earth
itself, with the things that now are, have passed
away, shall every one of his true children find
peace and hope and forgiveness in His name;
and that name shall be Immanuel, which is,
being interpreted, God with us.
— Feedeeick W. Farrar,
1831-1903. Dean of Canterbury.

Who is it that is coming again to judge the
world ? If it is not the uncreated eternal Son
of God himself, then the world is still lying
in sin, unransomed, and without hope of sal
vation. We must believe that our Lord and
our God is our brother man, or lose our glimpse
of the invisible, and never hear another echo
from the eternal world.
— Wolcott Calkins,
1831 — American Clergyman.

Christ was either the greatest and guiltiest
of impostors or he was God manifested in the
flesh. Other men have said " If I could only live, I

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 87
would establish and perpetuate an empire."
This Christ of Galilee says " My death shall do
it."
— Herrick Johnson,
1832-1913. American Clergyman.

Jesus Christ simply lived his life, and acted
on the Jewish world, as an electric current upon
water; separated its elements.
— Stopford A. Brooke,
1832 — English Divine and Author.

For the man Christ who loved his fellow-
men and believed in the Infinite Father, who
would shield the innocent and protect the just ;
for the martyr who expected to be rescued from
the cruel cross, and who at last, finding that his
hope was dust, cried out in the gathering gloom,
" My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken
me ? " — for that great and suffering man I have
the highest admiration and respect. They
crucified a kind and perfectly innocent man.
Had I lived in his day I would have been his
friend. His life is worth its example — its
moral force, its heroism of benevolence. For
that name I have infinite respect and love. To

88 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
that great and serene man I gladly pay my
homage of admiration and my tears. The
place where man has died for man is holy
ground. — Robert G. Ingersoll,
1833-1899. American Infidel Orator.

Christ alone of all religious founders had
the courage to say to his disciples : " Go, teach
all nations."
— Cardinal James Gibbons,
1834 — American Clergyman.

Suppose that Christ were now to come in at
yonder door, and should ask as He asked His
disciples once, " Whom do men say that I, the
Son of Man, am ? " O, if I might be your joy
ful spokesman, I would tell him, " O, blessed
Christ, the world has not forgotten Thee.
Biographies of Thee are in all the libraries."
" But whom do men say that I am ? " If my
tongue did not cling to the roof of my mouth, I
would say, " Some say that Thou art a myth, a
fancy portrait, and that a myth has changed the
face of the world ! " And then suppose he
should demand of us, " But whom say ye that I

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 89
am ? " O, if again I might be your happy
spokesman, on bended knees and with streaming
eyes I would cry, " Thou art Christ, the Son of
the Living God. Thyself very man and very
God." — Cyrus D. Foss,
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
1834-1910.

Christ is the great central fact in the world's
history. To him everything looks forward or
backward. All the lines of history converge
upon him. All the great purposes of God
culminate in him. The greatest and most mo
mentous fact which the history of the world
records is the fact of his birth.
— Charles H. Spurgeon,
1834-1892. English Clergyman.

We have found the Christ and loved Him,
and revered Him, and accepted Him; . . .
We found in this Christ, in His patience, in His
courage, in His heroism, in His self-sacrifice, in
His unbounded mercy and love an ideal that
transcends all other ideals written by the pen

90 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
of poet, painted by the brush of artist, or graven
into the life of human history.
We believe that no other revelation transcends
and no other equals that which God has made
to man in the one transcendental human life
that was lived Eighteen Centuries ago in
Palestine.
— Lyman Abbott,
1835 — American Pulpit Orator.

For Christ is bom of Mary
And, gathered all above
While mortals sleep, and angels keep
Their watch, of wondering love.
How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessing of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming ;
But in this world of Sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
— Phillips Brooks,
1835-1893. American Pulpit Orator.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 91
This character, of which Christ was the per
fect model, is in itself so attractive, so " alto
gether lovely," that I cannot describe in lan
guage the admiration with which I regard it;
nor can I express the gratitude I feel for the
dispensation which bestowed that example on
mankind, for the truths which he taught, and
the sufferings he endured for our sakes. I
tremble to think what the world would be with
out him.

O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free ;
Tell me thy secret ; help me to bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
In hope that sends a shining ray
Far down the future's broadening way ;
In peace that only thou canst give ;
With thee, O Master, let me live.
— Washington Gladden,
1836 — American Author.

I commit my soul into the hands of my
Saviour, in full confidence that having redeemed
it and washed it in his most precious blood, he
will present it faultless before the throne of my

92 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
heavenly father, and I intreat my children to
maintain and defend at all hazard and at any
cost of personal sacrifice the blessed doctrine of
the complete atonement for sin through the blood .
of Jesus Christ, once offered, and through that
alone.
— John Pierpont Morgan,
1837-1913. American Capitalist.
{First paragraph of his will.)

Our nation would not be in existence and it
could not hope to live if it were not Christian in
every fibre. That is what has made it and
what will save it in all its perils. Whenever we
have departed from this conception of life and
thought, nationality has suffered, character has
declined and difficulties have increased. In its
essentials we stand by our Faith, exercise pa
tience, show charity, tolerate all beliefs, but al
ways with the conviction that our own will soon
conquer in the end so as to extend its influence
more and more over men in every part of the
world.
— Grover Cleveland,
Twenty-Second President of the United States.
1837-1908.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 93
What think ye of Christ ? It is of little im
portance what the world thinks of any one else :
but every living soul on the face of this earth is
concerned with this man.
As a preacher and a teacher; he spake as
never man spake. How fresh those wonderful
sermons are, how they live to-day. As a physi
cian ; there were no incurable diseases with him.
As a comforter see him in the little town of
Bethany binding up the wounded hearts. The
weary may find a resting place upon his breast
and the friendless may reckon him their friend.
He never varies, he never fails, he never dies.
His sympathy is ever fresh, his love is ever free.
— Dwight L. Moody,
1837-1908. American Evangelist.

What if a man should appear filled with a
life that leaves him in constant communication
with God? What if there should come into
existence a sinless soul ? What if there should
appear in history a being in this sense above
nature? Is it not to be expected that he will
have power over nature, and perform works
above nature? Endowed as the Author of
Christianity was, we should naturally expect,

94 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
from that supernatural endowment, works not
natural, but supernatural. — Joseph Cook,
1838-1901. American Lecturer.

It was reserved for Christianity to present
to the world an Ideal Character, which, through
all the changes of eighteen centuries, has filled
the hearts of man with an impassioned love, and
has shown itself capable of acting on all ages,
nations, temperaments, conditions; and which
has not only been the highest pattern of virtue,
but the highest incentive to its practice.
— William E. H. Lecky,
Irish Author and Historian.
1838-1903.

This true soul, the ruler of nations, sinless
and infinite, a God and a man, is an established
fact.
— Luther Tracy Townsend,
1838 — American Clergyman.

Jesus Christ, the Person that literature felt
to be its loftiest ideal, philosophy conceived as
its highest personality, criticism as its supreme

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 95
problem, theology as its fundamental doctrine,
religion as its cardinal necessity.
— Andrew Martin Fairbairn,
1838 — Scottish Clergyman.

I love Jesus Christ because he loved men.
— Henry Geoege,
American Political Economist.
1839-1897.

I am safe with Him. He has other worlds
and I want to go. I have always believed in
Christ. He is the incarnate God. . . . How
beautiful it is to be with God.
— Frances E. Willard,
1839-1898. {Her last words.)
American Temperance Reformer.

Where, in all the past, has there arisen a
lawgiver, prophet or teacher fairly comparable
to this Man of Nazareth? We take no laurel
from another's brow, but we show, beyond a
question, that Jesus is supreme.
— Milton S. Terry, A.M., D.D., LL.D.,
American Educator and Author.
1840-1914.

96 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
The movement of the gospel is the miracle
of history; its progressive conquest of its en
vironment is the mightiest victory recorded in
the annals of mankind: here are displays of
heroism that Alexander might have envied and
Caesar would have listened to, amazed. The
Tenth Legion of Jesus Christ, His glorious com
pany of martyrs recruited from all countries
and from all ages, marches across the centuries,
trampling triumphantly upon the slaveries and
barbarisms, the organized unrighteousness and
the disorganizing brutality of the ancient and
mediaeval world. Yet the splendor and variety
of this historic miracle, of this unfolding power
of an endless life, is too little known or scarcely
known at all. The splendor of it and the in
spiration of it both are lost.
— Charles J. Little,
American Clergyman and Educator.
1840-1911.

Jesus of Nazareth is worthy to be the per
petual text of all preaching, the perpetual theme
of all religionists, and the perpetual object of
devout studentship. The same cannot be said
of any other man that ever lived, no matter what

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 97
was the extent of his genius, the order of his
talents or the fashion of their exercise.
— W. H. H. Murray,
American Congregational Divine.
1840-1904.

If the Son of God only inhabited the man
Jesus, He might save that man, but how could
He accomplish the salvation of the human race ?
Such an inhabitation of the Son of God would
not differ in principle from the indwelling of the
divine spirit in a man. The man Jesus would
be a prophet, a hero, a great exemplar, but not
the Saviour of mankind.
— Prof. C. A. Briggs,
American Clergyman and Theologian.
1841-1913.

But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or
Priest, —
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what
lapse
What least defect or shadow of defect,

98 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's or death's, —
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ ?
— Sidney Lanier,
1842-1881. American Poet.

We cannot close our eyes to the one great
fact that this man Jesus must have made a won
derful impression upon his hearers, by the thou
sand and one sweet things that he said. . . .
His greatness belonged to no school. He was a
man of the people. The Essene ideal of love
and brotherly kindness took new form in him.
He felt that divine power of pity which cares
not for the pollution of sinners, if only the sins
can be wiped out by the tears of penitence. He
had, unlike any other teacher or prophet, a mes
sage, a gospel of heavenly redemption for the
despised, the illiterate, the forsaken, and they
crowned him with the diadem of the Messiah.
— Kaufmann Kohler,
1843 — Hebrew Theologian.
It is far more important to know who Jesus
was than to know what Jesus said. The moral
ity of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testa-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 99
ment would not rest upon any adequate founda
tion if Jesus had no authority. But if we be
lieve in the divinity of Christ we need give our
selves no trouble about his teachings. When
you leave out the divinity of Christ the author
ity for his teachings goes also.
— Francis L. Patton,
1843 — Ex-President of Princeton.
From address delivered at
St. Louis, Oct. 24, 1915.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, D. O, May 25, 1899.
My belief embraces the Divinity of Christ
and a recognition of Christianity as the might
iest factor in the world's civilization.
— William McKinley,
Twenty-Fourth President of the United States.
1843-1901.

Thus vanished from the earth Jesus of
Nazareth, the Son of God.
Evil never touched his spirit. Corruption
did not approach his body. Even his ashes
were not permitted to remain in the soil of the
land that had slain him.
He was born in denial of the laws of life.

100 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus .Christ
He died in defiance of the laws of death. He
was Lord of law. Ideal of sacrifice, Master of
suffering, the grandest intellect, the purest heart
that this low world has known — its Supreme
Soul — he passed.
He has left us the faith which bears his name.
He has left us the august opportunity of ever
lasting life.
There is not, there never was, there never
may be, a miracle as strange as the life of Jesus
the Christ. He was the miracle. Explain
Him. There will be no difficulty with any
lesser wonder.
— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
1844-1911. American Author.
Christ is the Son of God. He is this in the
pre-eminent sense ; in a sense which is not true
of any and all other beings. He is the one re-
vealer of God to man. He is equally the re-
vealer to man of what God would have man to
be, of what God purposes that he shall be. Con
cerning the supreme problems of the redemp
tion and salvation of humanity, problems with
which unlimited divinity alone can deal, Christ
alone furnishes the only solution. While the
name of Christ is acknowledged as the greatest
of names there is proof abundant that as yet the

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 101
world has very little comprehended His great
ness. He is the one transcendent and inde
scribable Personality of History.
— George P. Mains,
1844 — Methodist Clergyman.

If Jesus Christ is a man,
And only man, I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him
And to Him I will cleave alway.
If Jesus Christ is a God
And the only God, I swear
I will follow Him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air.
— Richard Watson Gilder,
American poet and editor.
1844-1909.
Jesus Christ challenges the faith of the
world because he is the Son of Man. He could
not be the Son of God if he were not the Son
of Man. If there were the slightest fragments
of this race that he ignored, or for whom his
instructions were not intended, or for whom he
did not suffer, then he is not the Saviour of
Mankind. He that comes as the Sun of righteousness

102 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
comes with healing in his wings for all the na
tions of the earth, and he who comes announcing
his mighty programme, comes announcing him
self as the world's one hope and Redeemer and
Saviour. The universality of his claim is
fundamental. He stakes everything upon it.
And in so doing, he has broadened the minds of
his disciples and taught us to believe that this
religion which he promulgated and which he
lived, which springs from his open sepulcher,
is intended to be universal.
— Eugene R. Hendrlx,
1847 — Bishop M. E. Church, South.

He spent his life among the narrowest and
most exclusive of all races ; and yet, without the
broadening influences of reading or travel or
educated companionship, he presents a charac
ter, a spirit, a sympathy, a doctrine, as broad as
mankind and as profound as human need.
— Josiah Strong,
1847 — American Clergyman and Author.

Christ is a rare jewel, but men know not his
value; a sun which ever shines but men per
ceive not his brightness nor walk in his light.
He is a garden full of sweets, a hive full of

M. Munkacsy
WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME? "

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 103
honey, a sun without a spot, a star ever bright, a
fountain ever full, a brook which ever flows, a
rose which ever blooms, a foundation which
never yields, a guide who never errs, a friend
who never forsakes.
No mind can fully grasp his glory: his
beauty, his worth, his importance. No tongue
can fully declare. He is the source of all good,
the fountain of all excellency, the mirror of per
fection, the light of heaven, the wonder of earth,
time's master-piece and eternity's glory ; the sun
of bliss, the way of life, and life's fair way.
— Arthur James Balfour,
1848 — British Statesman and Essayist.
Every one of these New Testament teachers
held and taught the Divinity of Christ. That
great truth is wrought into the warp and woof
of the New Testament. You must tear the book
to shreds, and scatter the fragments to the four
winds if you would get rid of it.
— Walter Frederick Adeney,
English Clergyman and Author.
1849 —
" Thou art the Christ," said a Jewish peasant
with instinctive conviction, "the Son of the
Living God." Centuries have only confirmed

104 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
this spontaneous tribute to Jesus' life. No one
has yet discovered the word which Jesus ought
not to have said; none suggested a better word
that he might have said. No action of his has
fallen short of the ideal. This man alone never
made a false step, never struck a jarring note.
— John Watson,
English Clergyman and Author.
1850-1907.

The Divinity of Jesus is the truth which now
requires to be reperceived, to be illumined
afresh by new knowledge, to be cleansed and
revivified by the wholesome flood of scepticism
which has poured over it ; it can be freed now
from all trace of grovelling superstition, and
can be recognized freely and enthusiastically.
— Sir Oliver J. Lodge,
1851 — : English Scientist.
Very often the prophet did not stand the test
of being himself an example of his message.
But in this case the message brought was of the
profoundest and most comprehensive character ;
it went to the very root of mankind and, al
though set in the framework of the Jewish na
tion, it addressed itself to the whole of human
ity — the message from God the Father. De-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 105
fective it is not, and its real kernel may be read
ily freed from the inevitable husk of contem
porary form. Antiquated it is not, and in life
and strength it still triumphs today over all the
past. He who delivered it has as yet yielded
His place to no man, and to human life He still
today gives a meaning and an aim — He the
Son of God.
— Adolf Harnack,
1851 — German Theologian.
Jesus comes, not only with a new standard
of greatness, but with a new greatness; not
simply with a new precept, but with a new per
sonality. In the greatness of His personality
and in the personality of His greatness, He
transcends all the historic ideals.
When this Nazarene, this sweet-toned
Prophet, stood on Calvary, with all the purpose
and willingness of self-sacrifice in Him, He rose
above men, out of the realm of mere humanity,
into the higher Sonship of God, with a name
supreme above every name.
— Frank M. Bristol,
1851— Bishop of M. E. Church.
Christ built no church, wrote no book, left
no money, and erected no monuments ; yet show

106 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
me ten square miles in the whole earth without
Christianity where the life of man or the purity
of women are respected and I will give up
Christianity.
— Henry Drummond,
Scotch Religious Author.
1851-1897. November 27, 1915.

We reverently acknowledge Jesus Christ as
the Supreme Author of all that is greatest and
best in this world.
— Charles W. Fairbanks,
1852— Ex-Vice President U. S.
{In a letter to the author.)
The career of Jesus was a romantic poem, an
epic of passion and an heroic hope — one of the
terrific tragedies in the wars of God. It every
where touches the ideal, the one eternal King
dom of poesy. It begins with a soft idyl of
wonder and joy, passes through whirlwind and
earthquake, rising at last to the white calm of
eternity. Up these perilous paths of ascension, passing
forever on, this Lover and Hero won the right
to be our God! And may we not believe too,
that all these centuries he has been faithful to

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 107
love, preparing the many mansions, setting in
order the nations of the dead and fighting for
mankind as the Invisible warrior in the world-
battle ?
— Edwin Markham,
1852 — American Poet.

He was Son of Man as only realizing all
which in the idea of man was contained as the
Second Adam, the head and representative of
the race, — the one true and perfect flower which
ever unfolded itself out of the root and stock of
humanity.
— Henry Jackson Vandyke,
American Educator and Author.
1852—

O Brother mine of birth Divine,
Upon this natal day of Thine,
Bear with our stress of happiness
Nor count our reverence less,
Because with glee and jubilee,
Our hearts go singing up to thee.
— James Whitcomb Riley,
1853-1916. American Poet.

108 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Every word of his in public or private, every
action, every look and gesture was a lesson in
life. His acts of life-giving in the lower
(physical) sphere were the foundation of his
life-giving in the higher (spiritual) sphere.
— Albert Bushnell Hart,
1854 — American Historian.

The wise men ask, " What language did Christ
speak ? "
They cavil, argue, search, and little prove.
Oh Sages, leave your Syriac and your Greek!
Christ spoke the universal language — LOVE.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
1855 — American Poet.

All the greatest men of the past generation
seemed to have joined Christ's triumphal pro
cession. The waxing fame of Christ is the
most striking fact of our era. The time seems
rapidly approaching when society will have but
one Hero and King, at whose feet humanity
will empty all its songs and flowers, its prayers
and its tears.
— Newell Dwight Hillis,
1858 — American Pulpit Orator.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 109
He alone stands at the absolute center of hu
manity, the one completed harmonious man, un
folding all which was in humanity, equally and
fully on all sides, the only one in whom the real
and ideal met and were absolutely one. He is
the absolute and perfect truth, the highest that
humanity can reach; at once its perfect image
and supreme Lord.
— Charles W. French,
1858 — American Educator.

The character of Jesus tremendously rein
forces his beliefs. He was sane and wise,
wholly free from all foolishness; He was free
from even the suspicion of evil ; His life was all
that a life should be, when judged by the high
est standards. He was the master of living, of
character-making in Himself and other men.
I do not know of any better way yet than to live
with Him and to live like Him, to submit your
selves wholly to His influence and to His ideals.
The way to cure our condition is to put on
Christ as a garment and to have Him formed in
us as a power as well as a hope. He is the
solvent of life's moral contradictions.
— William F. McDowell,
Bishop of Methodist Episcopal Church.
1858 —

110 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Crown Him, monarchs, seers and sages,
Crown Him, bards in deathless pages :
Crown Him King of all the ages !
Let the mighty anthem rise.
Hark ! the crash of tuneful noises ;
Hark ! the children's thrilling voices,
Hark ! the world in song rejoices,
Till the chorus shakes the skies.
— George Lansing Taylor,
1859 — American Educator.

He was the glowing hope toward which the
Hebrews turned for twenty-five hundred years,
and is the inspiration of the great hopes human
ity now cherishes — a righteous world, univer
sal peace and immortality.
— Edwin A. Schell,
American Educator and Preacher.
1859—

What the German peoples have become, they
have become under the banner of the cross.
Our confidence is in Jesus Christ and in the
God of Hosts ; there is no other help for us and
we will hold our posts. — William II,
1859 — Emperor of Germany.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 111
The Prince's power makes him God. He
mastered every foe that ever mastered men.
He gave the deathblow to sin. He smote the
shackles from the slave's soul. He discrowned
man's destroyer and laid him low. He has
turned the sluices of salvation into the souls of
sinners and made them singing saints. The
record is spread over the pages of history for the
critic's keenest scrutiny; let men read and re
joice. He has wrenched the precious prey from
the teeth of death. He has sung the lyrics of
life into the grave's gloom. Hail, great Gali
lean ! — Great God.
— Charles Coke Woods,
American Clergyman and Author.
{From " Our Spiritual Skies.")
1860—

Reared in the home of a carpenter, never hav
ing access to the wisdom of the past, never com
ing in contact with the sages of other lands, and
yet, when only thirty years of age He gave to
the world a code of morality the like of which
the world has never seen. He preached for a
few months and gathered around him a few
disciples. Then he was crucified ; his disciples
scattered and most of them put to death. And
yet from this beginning His religion has spread

112 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
until hundreds of millions have taken His name
with reverence upon their lips, and millions
have been ready to die rather than surrender
the faith He put in their hearts. How do you
explain this fact in history? It is easier to
believe Him divine than to explain in any other
way what he said and did and was. Christ has
earned the title of " Prince of Peace."
— William Jennings Bryan,
American Statesman and Orator.
1860^

There was ever a wistfulness in Jesus' voice.
A wistful look was in his eyes, a wistful mood
was in his tears, a wistful cadence gave his
words a rainy sweetness of tears and laughter
intermingled. His custom was compassion. He was not
ominous or despairing, for his prophecy swung
golden bells in a blue sky and rung them as a
holy hymnic chime.
Christ was wistful for a world; he dwelt
among races of provincials. The Jew, the
Greek, the Roman were all provincials. Then
provinces differed a little, but only a little.
Christ whispered, trumpeted, wept, sung,
preached, lived, died — all framing a wide, un-
provincial word — the WORLD. Christ, God-

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 113
man, blood of our blood and the mingled blood
spilled for the world has produced a World
Brotherhood. — Wm. A. Quayle,
1861— Bishop of M. E. Church.

Rejecting all the miracles of Christ, we still
have the miracle of Christ himself.
— Charles W. Bovee,
1861 — American Educator.
Wherein does Jesus Christ fail to come up
to your standard and the highest conception of
the greatest Godlike Spirit? Show me one
flaw in his character. I challenge any infidel
on earth to make good his claims that Christ
was an ordinary man. The name of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, is greater than any. It
is holding five hundred million people by its
majestic spell and enduring power.
— William A. Sunday,
1862 — American Evangelist.
Jesus started the mightiest revolution of all
times. It has not ended ; it will never end —
never can end. For it is not enough that na
tions formally shall adopt the faith of the

114 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Crucified One ; it is not enough that the world
nominally shall become Christian; it will be
enough only when every human being in the
sanctuary of his soul shall acknowledge and in
his daily life shall practice every teaching of
the Nazarine.
— Albert J. Beveridge,
1862— U. S. Senator.

I have been trying for thirty-five years to
tell what I have seen in Christ. How much can
be put in a sentence ? His life is a pattern ; His
word is law; His love is inspiration; and to
exalt Him makes life worth living and death
worth dying.
— William O. Shephard,
1862— Bishop of M. E. Church.
He always did the things that pleased God.
The great ideal has come from the air to the
earth. The fair vision has become concrete in
a man. Now I want to see that man ; and if I
see that man I shall see in him a revelation of
what God's purpose is for men and I shall see
therefore, a revelation of what the highest pos
sibility of life is. I want to see him; I want
to catch the notes of the music that makes up
the perfect harmony which was the dropping of

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 115
a song out of God's heaven upon man's earth,
that man might catch the key-note of it and
make music in his own life. He says, " I al
ways do the things that are pleasing to Him "
and history has vindicated his statement.
— G. Campbell Morgan,
English Congregational Preacher.
1863—

The net result of the fierce conflict which has
raged for the last seventy-five years around the
New Testament documents has been to make
clearer than ever the solidity of the historical
basis of Christianity and the incomparable posi
tion of Christ as the supreme Person of history.
— George Jackson,
American Clergyman and Theologian.
1864—

Where I love Christ most is on the other side
of Calvary ; when it was all hazard and He was
man and God because He did so much, dared
so much ; gave up His life without counting on
any other victory than the one which would be
His when it would be all mankind's.
— Edward Lincoln Atkinson,
1865-1902. American Author.

116 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Do we find in the Bible not only a way to be
followed, and a goal of arrival to be gained, but
a Life that will help lives along the way toward
the goal ? Does the Bible really reveal the way
to Truth and the Life? The evidences of dy
namic are in the realms of human experience.
More and more the students of holy scriptures,
who scan the pages with a religious purpose,
will find that all departments of human lives
wait on Jesus for their meaning and come to
Him for their power. He is the Saviour. He
lifts men out of their sins up into a trembling
and glorious idealism and still up into a passion
for efficient goodness.
— Edwin H. Hughes,
Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church.
1866 —

Let me point you to a power which even to
day can cope with any emergency: Christ, the
power of righteousness. He makes men right
with God. He places them in harmony with
the eternal, in tune with the infinite. He takes
the weary, wayward child by the hand and leads
it back to the Father's house. He clears the
conscience of the awful, raking, embittering,
debilitating consciousness of unforgiven guilt.
He gives peace to the soul, peace that makes us

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 117
calm and strong. He blots out the record of our
folly and sin and shame which we wrote down
upon the pages of life's story. He brings us
into fellowship with God, so that his life be
comes ours and our life is wrapped up in His.
— John L. Nuelsen, D.D.,
1867— Bishop of M. E. Church.

Christ we may be sure will never be less to
thought, He must always be more. He will be
more, always more human, and in the light of
His human achievement His little brothers will
do deeds hitherto counted too glorious even for
dreams. And He will be always more divine;
so that men seeing, as never before, the Godli
ness of God in His loving, simple peasant life,
will rise to sing their trust and happiness, and
then will, like lovers and saints, as in a frenzy
of gratitude, go forth, for His sake, to give life,
death, and joy — if only they may tell another
of their Saviour and their God.
— Charles Lewis Slattery,
American Clergyman and Author.
1867 —
And he shall charm and soothe, and breathe
and bless,
The roaring of war shall cease upon the air,

118 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
Falling of tears and all the voices of sorrow,
And he shall take the terror from the grave.
And he shall still that old sob of the sea,
And heal the unhappy fancies of the wind,
And turn the moon from all that hopeless quest ;
Trees without care shall blossom, and all the
fields
Shall without labour unto harvest come.
— Stephen Phillips,
English poet and dramatist.
1868-1916. Executive Department State of Ohio,
Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 17, 1915.
The steadily advancing world conquest of the
message of Jesus Christ is history's outstanding
characteristic of the last two thousand years.
It has been a gradual progress, not without its
handicaps and discouragements. Sometimes, as
now in the world's greatest war, it has appar
ently suffered most in the example set by its fol
lowers and friends. But steadily it has gone
ahead, eliminating inhumanity, teaching men
how better to live, developing the civilization of
both the individual man and the races, bringing
the whole world to a sense of the infinite possi
bilities both of life and of death. It may not
be tomorrow but surely and eventually it will

H. Hofmann, 1824-
" LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAYl "

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 119
come to pass that the world will pay true hom
age, render true acceptance, to the religion of
the great Master, Jesus Christ.

Christianity stands today for what it has al
ways stood and will continue to stand through
the ages. Where there is civilization there is
love and reverence for Jesus Christ. As there
could be no shadow were it not for the light so
there could be no Christianity were it not for
the love of Jesus. — FrankT B. Willis,
1871 — ¦¦ Governor of Ohio.
In a letter to the author.

It will be strange indeed if we do not arrive
at the conclusion that the world has still in
Jesus Christ something to grow into instead of
out of, and that when we shall have reached the
new boundaries he has set, it will be time enough
to think of a new prophet and a new religion.
— Winston Churchill,
English Author and Statesman.
1874—

120 Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ
We accept Jesus for what he was — a Jewish
teacher, a Jewish leader, a prophet in Israel,
clear-visioned, tenderly loving, selfless, God
like. More than that, we do not believe Jesus
to have been.

Jesus was not humanly divine, but he was
divinely human : not divinely humanized but a
Godward-bent human soul. It is no mean joy
and no ignoble pride in us of the House of
Israel to recognize, to honor and to cherish
among our brothers — Jesus the Jew.
— Rabbi Stephen S. Wise,
1872 — American Jewish Rabbi.

The abiding and eternal in Jesus is abso
lutely independent of historic knowledge and
can only be understood by contact with his
spirit, which is still at work in the world. In
proportion as we have the spirit of Jesus we
have the true knowledge of Jesus.
— Albert Schweitzer,
1875 — Theologian.

Tributes of Great Men to Jesus Christ 121
With us, as with the disciples, the road to
the acceptance of the deity of Jesus is to open
the life to the whole impression he makes upon
us. Larger and larger this personality then
grows until only one word is great enough to
describe him. The Church has never been able
to rest without this great word when it has
spoken of Jesus. The testimony of the Chris
tian centuries is that to feel the full impact of
his life involves the necessity of calling him
God.
— Lynn Harold Hough,
1877 — American Educator.

INDEX

Abbott, John S. C, 59
Abbott, Lyman, 90
Abraham, Patriarch, 11
Adams, John, 44
Adams, John Quincy, 49
Adeney, W. F., 103
Alfred the Great, 30
Ambrose, St., 29
Andrew, the Disciple, 19
Angels of Heaven, 17-24
Arnold, Matthew, 78
Atkinson, Edward Lincoln,
115
Augustine, St. of Hippo, 30
Bailey, Samuel, 54
Bakewell, John, 42
Balaam, Prophet, 12
Balfour, Arthur J., 103
Bancroft, George, 58
Beecher, Henry Ward, 71
Bernard of Clairvaux, 31
Beveridge, Albert J., 114
Binney, Thomas, 57
Bismarck, Otto Von, 73
Boardman, George Dana,
82
Bolingbroke, Henry St.
John, 38
Bovee, Charles, 113
Bowen, Francis, 74
Bridge, William, 34
Bridges, Matthew, 57
Briggs, C. A., 97 123

Bristol, Frank M., 105
Brooke, Stopford A., 87
Brooks, Phillips, 90
Browning, Elizabeth Bar
rett, 65
Browning, Robert, 70
Bryan, William J., 112
Bryant, William Cullen, 55
Burns, Robert, 48
Butler, Joseph, 39
Byron, Lord, 54
Caiphas, High Priest, 22
Calkins, Wolcott, 86
Carlyle, Thomas, 5.6
Carpenter, William Benja
min, 72
Centurion, Roman, 23
Channing, William Ellery,
53
Chateaubriand, Francia, 49
Chatterton, Thomas, 46
Chubb, Thomas, 38
Churchill, Winston, 119
Claims of Jesus, 21
Clark, James Freeman, 67
Claudius, Matthias, 45
Clay, Henry, 52
Cleopas, a Disciple, 23
Cleveland, Grover, 92
Coleridge, Samuel T., 52
Cook, Joseph, 94
David, the King, 12

124

Index

Decker, Thomas, 34
De Witte, Wilhelm Martin,
53
Dickens, Charles, 71
Diderot, Denis, 41
Disciples of Jesus, 19
Disraeli, Benjamin, 60
Drummond, Henry, 106
Dryden, John, 35
Edwards, Jonathan, 39
Elizabeth, Mother of John,
16
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 59
Enoch, Book of, 15
Epiphanius, 28
Fairbairn, Andrew M., 95
Fairbanks, Charles W., 106
Farrar, Frederick W., 86
Fichte, Immamiel H., 56
Foss, Cyrus D., 89
Foster, Randolph S., 76
Franklin, Benjamin, 40
French, Charles W., 109
Garfield, James A., 85
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 64
George, Henry, 95
Gibbons, James ( Cardi
nal), 88
Gilder, Richard W., 101
Gladden, Washington, 91
Gladstone, William E., 66
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
Von, 46
Gregory, Nazianzen, 29
Haggai, the Prophet, 13
Harnack, Adolf, 105
Hart, Albert B., 108

Heber, Regnald, 54
Hegel, George Wilhelm, 51
Hendricks, Eugene R., 102
Henry, Matthew, 36
Henry, Patrick, 45
Herder, Johann Gottfried
Von, 46
Herod, Antipas, 20
Hill, Thomas H., 73
Hillis, Newell Dwight, 108
Hirsch, Maurice B., 85
Hofmann, Ernest T., 52
Hough, Lynn Harold, 121
Howe, Julia Ward, 75
Hughes, Edwin H., 116
Huss, John, 33
Ignatius, 27
Ingersoll, Robert G., 88
Isaiah, the Prophet, 13
Jackson, George, 115
Jacob, the Patriarch, 11
Jefferson, Thomas, 45
Jesus, the Christ, 21
Jews of Christ's Day, 20
John, St., the Divine, 27
John the Baptist, 19
Johnson, Herrick, 87
Josephus, Flavius, 25
Judas, the Traitor, 22
Julian the Apostate, 29
Kant, Immanuel, 42
Keim, Theodore, 80
Kempis, Thomas a., 33
Kohler, Kaufmann, 98
Lacordaire, Pere, 58
Lanier, Sidney, 98
Lecky, William E. H., 94

Index

125

Le Conte, John, 73
Lee, Robert E. (Gen'l), 63
Lentulus, Publius, 32
LeBsing, Gotthold, 42
Liddon, Henry P., 83
Lincoln, Abraham, 67
Little, Charles J., 96
Lodge, Sir Oliver J., 104
Longfellow, Henry W., 64
Lorimer, George, 82
Lucian, St., 27
Luther, Martin, 34
Macaulay, Thomas B., 58
Macdonald, George, 80
Maclaren, Alexander, 81
Mains, George P., 101
Malachi, the Prophet, 14
Mann, Horace, 56
Markham, Edwin, 107
Martineau, James, 61
Mary, Mother of Jesus, 17
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 61
McDowell, Wm. F., 109
McKinley, William, 99
Mill, John Stuart, 62
Milton, John, 35
Mohammed, the Prophet,
30
Montgomery, James, 51
Montgomery, Robert, 62
Moody, Dwight L., 93
Morgan, George Campbell,
115
Morgan, John Pierpont, 92
Morton, Oliver P., 78
Moses, the Lawgiver, 11
Muller, F. Max, 79
Muller, John Von, 46
Multitude in Jerusalem, 21
Murray, W. H. H., 97

Napoleon I, 51
Nathanael, a Disciple, 19
Nicene Creed, 29
Nicodemus, 21
Nuelson, John L., 117
Officers of the Sanhedrin,
22
Paine, Thomas, 44
Parker, Joseph, 83
Parker, Theodore, 69
Pascal, Blaise, 35
Patton, Francis L., 99
Paul the Apostle, 26
Peloubet, T. N., 85
Peter, Simon, 20
Pharisees, Sect of Jews, 22
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart,
100
Phillips, Stephen, 118
Pilate, Pontius, 23
Pilate's Wife, 23
Plato, the Philosopher, 13
Polycarp, the Martyr, 26
Porter, Noah, 69
Porteus, Beilby, 43
Quayle, William A., 113
Renan, Joseph Ernest, 79
Richter, Jean Paul, 48
Riley, James Whitcomb,
107
Rosseau, Jean Jacques, 41
Ruskin, John, 76
Samaritans, 19
Schaff, Philip, 75
Schell, Edwin A., 110
Schleiermaoher, Frederich,
50

126

Index

Schweitzer, Albert, 120
Seriven, Joseph, 77
Shakespeare, William, 34
Shelley, Percy B., 55
Shephard, William O., 114
Sibylline Oracles, 14
Simeon, Prophet, 18
Simpson, Matthew, 68
Slattery, Charles Lewis,
117
Spinoza, Baruch, 36
Spurgeon, Charles H., 89
Stennet, Joseph, 37
Strauss, David F., 65
Strong, Josiah, 102
Sumner, Charles, 69
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 39
Swing, David, 84
Sunday, Wm. A., 113

Tacitus, Gaius Cornelius,
25
Talleyrand, Charles, 47
Tauler, Johannes, 32
Taylor, George Lansing,
110
Taylor, Jeremy, 35
Taylor, William M., 78
Tennyson, Alfred, 66
Terry, Milton S., 95

Thief on the Cross, 23
Thomas, a Disciple, 24
Tolstoi, Count Lyoff Leo,
82
Townsend, Luther Tracy,
94
Vandyke, Henry Jackson,
107
Wagner, Richard, 72
Wallace, Lew, 81
Washington, George, 43
Watson, John, 104
Watts, Isaac, 37
Webster, Daniel, 54
Webster, Noah, 47
Wescott, Brooke, 80
Wesley, Charles, 40
Wesley, John, 40
Whittier, John Greenleaf,
64
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 108
Willard, Frances E., 95
William I, 57
William II, 110
Willis, Frank B., 119
Wise Men, 18
Wise, Rabbi Stephen, 120
Woman of Samaria, 19
Woods, Charles Coke, 111

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