One Solitary Life

Phillips Brooks wrote this memorable passage:

“HERE IS A MAN who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a house. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His feet inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credential but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth while He was dying and that was His coat. When He was dead He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone, and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the Armies that ever marched and all the Navies that were ever built, and that all the parliaments that ever sat and all the Kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as did that one Solitary life.”

Excerpted from: “God Speaks to Modern Man”, by Arthur E. Lickey