The world of Jesus is the world of sunlight by comparison with that of all the sages and philosophers and the schoolmen of any country. Like the Jungfrau which stands above the glaciers in the world of snow and seems to touch heaven itself, Jesus’ teachings have that immediacy and clarity and simplicity which puts to shame all other efforts of men’s minds to know God or to inquire after God.
Whence came this dazzling light of Jesus, which put Him in a special category by Himself among all teachers of men? Whence came the “prepossessing” power of Jesus, as Emerson called it?
Quite apart from the content of Jesus’ teachings, I think the light and the power (dazzling light always has power) of Jesus came from the manner and the voice of His teaching and from His personal example. Jesus spoke as no teacher of men ever spoke. Jesus never expounded His faith, never reasoned it out. He spoke with the simplicity and certainty of clear knowledge.
Thus it is that the world of Jesus contains both that power, and something else—the absolute clarity of light, without the self-limitation of Confucius, the intellectual analysis of Buddha, or the mysticism of Chuangtse. Where others reasoned, Jesus taught, and where others taught, Jesus commanded. He spoke out of the fullness of the knowledge and love of God. Jesus communicated the feeling of the immediate knowledge and love of God, and further, immediately and without qualification, equated that love of God with obeying His commandment, which is to love one another. If all great truths are simple, we stand here in the presence of a simple truth which contains the germ of the principle for all human development, and is sufficient.
Laotse and Jesus are brothers in spirit. Jesus said, “I am meek and lowly,” and Laotse said, “Hold on to meekness and the lowly position.”
Jesus has no dogmas, no creeds, no rites, and no rituals. Jesus taught a principle, or rather two principles in one: that the kingdom of God is within you, and, almost in the same breath, that the meek and the humble shall inherit the earth. The first teaches the inner freedom of man’s spirit; the second, the worthiness of the “least of these my brethren.” In other words, the humblest man is free in spirit, and the humblest man shall win. These are the spiritual principles behind all freedom and all democracy.
This sublime person, who each day still presides over the destiny of the world, we may call divine, not in the sense that Jesus has absorbed all the divine, or has been adequate to it (to employ an expression of the schoolmen), but in the sense that Jesus is the one who has caused his fellow-men to make the greatest step toward the divine. Mankind in its totality offers an assemblage of low beings, selfish, and superior to the animal only in that its selfishness is more reflective. From the midst of this uniform mediocrity, there are pillars that rise toward the sky, and bear witness to a nobler destiny. Jesus is the highest of these pillars which show to man whence he comes, and whither he ought to tend. In him was condensed all that is good and elevated in our nature. . . .
But whatever may be the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will not be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew its youth, the tale of his life will cause ceaseless tears, his sufferings will soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that, among the sons of men, there is none born who is greater than Jesus.
– Renan
Who but a Frenchman with the delicacy and depth of the French could express it so well and so eloquently?
In actual fact, Christianity in China never made converts by doctrines, but it did make converts whenever a Chinese came into personal contact with a Christian personality who followed the Christian teachings; namely, those few words “Love ye one another.”
Christians breed Christians, but Christian theology does not.