Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The real conviction of the living Christ was not carried to the world by a book nor by a story. Men might allege that they had seen the risen Lord; that was nothing till they themselves were known. The witness of the resurrection was not the word of Paul (as we see at Athens) nor of the Eleven; it was the new power in life and death that the world saw in changed men...

The legend of a reputed resurrection of some unknown person in Palestine nobody needed to consider; but what were you to do with the people who died in the arena, the re-born slaves with their newness of life in your own house? And when you “looked into the story,” it was no mere somebody or other of whom they told it. The conviction of the people you knew, amazing in its power of transforming character and winning first the goodwill and the trust and then the conversion of others, was supported and confirmed by the nature and personality of the Man of whom they spoke, of whom you read in their books. “Never man spake like this man,” you read, nor thought like this man, nor like this man believed in God. I can not but think that the factors that make a man Christian to-day were those that won the world then. Our age and that age, in culture, in hopes and fears, in loss of nerve, are not unlike. [Continued tomorrow]

... T. R. Glover (1869-1943), The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 96,98-99 (see the book; see also John 7:46; 5:21; Acts 17:18,32; 1 Cor. 2:4-5; 2 Cor. 10:5; Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:3-4; more at Apologetics, Christ, Conviction, Culture, Fear, Resurrection, Thought)

 
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        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
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Last updated: 03/28/16

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