Christ Our Example

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 edition. Excerpt: ... thought a great deal about influence and opportunity, and the effect to be produced by a descent from princely greatness to a malefactor's grave; with all the contrast to be exhibited by the way, between the humility of his deportment and the dignity of his station. God judged otherwise He has judged always otherwise. Whether to manifest that while the instrument is nothing, all power and all effect depends on the hand that wields it, or with intent to pour contempt on whatever seems great and glorious to us, He has never chosen the great things, or the great ones of this world to do his work with, even when they seem the fittest for his purpose. What an effect, as we should think, would have been produced, had Jesus made the throne of the Roman Empire the stepping-stone to the cross, and exhibited hi3 passion and humiliation before the delegates of the universe assembled there, through whom the report would have gone forth to every nation under heaven! But this was not what He intended: He chose his birth-place in a tributary province, distinguished indeed above every other, but with a distinction nothing thought of in the world; and He chose it not in the capital of that province, but in an inferior city; and not among the great ones there, but with its meanest and most unknown. All that was striking, all that was remarkable in the Redeemer's birth was supernatural. He deigned not to make any use of temporal signs to distinguish it from others, as if He were determined to derive no evidence of his greatness from the world, and to give it none but of a miraculous kind. Nor was it for himself alone, that Jesus chose poverty and meanness of condition. He chose the same for the companions and instruments of his work. He took his disciples...