Hurlbut"s Life of Christ For Young and Old.

by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut.

Preface

IN the preparation of this volume the aim in view has been to tell the story of Jesus Christ in a manner that will be attractive to both young and old, to children and their teachers. While the purpose of the writer has been to adapt the narrative to the understanding of a child of ten years, so that he will not need to ask the meaning of a sentence or a word: yet it has also been his desire to make it not childish, but simple, so that older readers may find it interesting and profitable.

In order that this book may not lead its younger readers or listeners away from the Bible, but directly toward it, no imaginary scenes or conversations have been introduced. The design has been to write the biography of Jesus, not a romance founded upon his life.

The order of events has been carefully considered; and follows that of the best authorities, accepting as historical _all_ the four gospels and _all_ their contents; raising no questions concerning miracles or the relative values of different portions of the record. The first purpose of every student or reader of the Bible, whether young or old, should be to become thoroughly familiar with its contents. Without a full knowledge of the Scriptures as they are, he is absolutely unfit to cope with the questions of authorship or the credibility of the sacred writings.

No attempt has been made to formulate from the record of Christ"s life a doctrinal system. Theology is the loftiest study for the human intellect; but it belongs to the mature mind, not to the realm of childhood. Nor has it been the writer"s aim to find in this story moral lessons for the young. The works and words of Jesus will make their own application to their reader, whether they be children or adults.

The typography, the ill.u.s.trations, and the mechanical execution of such a work as this are of almost equal importance with its literary material. All that diligent effort, artistic taste, and abundant resources can do to make this book attractive and helpful to its readers, has been done by the Publishers.

That this volume may awaken a new interest in that Life of lives, which has brought the light of life to untold millions since it was lived upon the earth: that the children of this generation, who are to become the pillars of the coming years, may learn to love and follow Him who is the Elder Brother and Saviour of us all, is the prayer of the author of these pages.

Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

August 28, 1915.

Why Everybody Should Know the Life of Christ

THERE HAVE been many famous men in this world, and every one wishes to know who they were and why they are called great. In almost every city in America may be seen a statue of George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or Benjamin Franklin, or General Lee, or General Grant.

Whenever you see one of these statues, you ask--if you do not know already--who this man was and why his statue has been set up. In Canada, every house has on the wall a portrait of the great and good Queen Victoria, and when a child sees it he wishes to know something of her life and her greatness. You see pictures of a man standing on the deck of a ship, or going ash.o.r.e under palm trees on an island, and are told that he is Christopher Columbus--and every child in America knows something of his story. Men like Napoleon Bonaparte, and Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great, are written about, and talked about; and every child should know who these men were and why they are famous.

Did you ever think that there is one man who has been talked about, and written about, and sung about, more than any other man in all the world; and that man is Jesus? For one book telling of Washington, or Napoleon, or Columbus, there are hundreds of books telling of Jesus. Every year at least fifteen million copies of the Bible are printed and sent out into the world, in every language spoken on this earth. Why does everybody wish to have a Bible in his house? It is because that book tells of Jesus. If the pages that tell of Jesus should be torn out of the Bible, few people would care to have it or to read it.

There are more portraits of Jesus Christ, painted and drawn and printed, than of any other man who has ever lived. Everybody knows the picture of Jesus as soon as he sees it, whether it be of the baby Jesus in his mother"s arms, or the boy Jesus in the Temple, or the Saviour teaching, or dying upon the cross. You do not need to be told which one in any picture is Jesus--his face is so well known that you know it at once. No other face among all the men who have ever lived from Adam the first man down to today, is known to as many people as the face of Jesus. Then, too, look in the hymn books of the churches and the song books of the Sunday-schools, and see how many of the hymns and songs are in praise of Jesus Christ. You do not find songs in praise of Julius Caesar, nor of Christopher Columbus, nor even of George Washington. No one who gives it thought doubts that the most famous man in all the world is Jesus Christ; and because he is so famous and so great, every one should know something of his life.

Then, too, everybody likes to hear stories of wonderful things. Even though we know that they are not true stories, every one listens to fairy tales and the stories of the "Arabian Nights." But how often, when the story is ended, the child looks up to the story-teller"s face and says, "Is it all true?" Now, the story of Jesus is full of wonders. You read of his turning water into wine when the guests at the feast needed it, of his touching the eyes of a blind man and giving him sight, of his speaking to the storm and bringing peace, of his walking upon the waters in another storm to help his friends in danger, and, most wonderful of all, of his coming out of his own tomb living, after he had died.

Wonderful indeed are the stories told of Jesus; and the greatest wonder is that they are all true. You would like to hear those stories, I am sure; and every child should know them and be able to tell them to others.

Let me give you another reason why every one should know the story of Jesus. He came to show us who G.o.d is, what G.o.d is to us, and how G.o.d feels toward us. Every one, even every child, thinks of G.o.d and in his heart wishes to know about G.o.d. How terribly some people have mistaken G.o.d! They have thought of him as an enemy, not as a friend. You can see in some countries images of a person with forty arms, and on every hand something to kill a man with--a sword, a spear, an arrow, a club, a cup of poison, or some other fearful thing--and that is the thought of G.o.d in that land: a mighty being who hates men! In old times, many people thought that their G.o.ds were pleased when men killed their own children and burned their bodies on an altar as an offering to G.o.d. G.o.d saw all over the earth that men had wrong and cruel thoughts of him; and he sent his Son Jesus Christ to teach men by his words, and to show men in his life what G.o.d is, how G.o.d feels toward us, and how we should feel toward G.o.d. If Jesus had done no more for us than to teach us the Lord"s Prayer, beginning with the words "Our Father who art in heaven," he would have done enough to make us love him. He showed people that G.o.d is their Father, the Father of every one in all the world, and that as a Father we may call upon him, just as any child can go to his father for whatever he needs.

There was once an artist who was called upon to paint the portrait of a good man. But the man had died ten years before; the artist had never seen him, and there was no picture of him to be used as a copy. At first the artist did not know what to do. Then a thought occurred to him.

"Is there no one," he said, "who looks like this man, so that I can see him and know something of the man"s face?"

"Why, yes," they answered. "He has left a son, a man grown, who looks exactly like his father."

The artist studied the face of the son, and from it painted a likeness of the father, whom he had never seen. No one has ever seen G.o.d, but if we would know, not his face, which we cannot know, but his nature, how kind, and loving, and helpful, and willing G.o.d is, we have only to think of Christ; and if we know Christ, the Son of G.o.d, we know G.o.d, his Father and our Father. For this reason, because in Jesus we may know G.o.d, everybody should know about Jesus.

But Jesus came to this world, not only to show us what G.o.d is, but to show us what we should be and how we should live. Whatever his work may be, every one needs a copy which he can look at and follow. The child who is learning to write must have a copy, so that he may know how to shape his letters. The boy or girl learning to draw has a copy or a model to guide him in his drawing. When a man is about to build a ship, he first makes a model and then shapes his great ship exactly like it.

Perhaps you have heard the lines in Longfellow"s poem, "The Building of the Ship."

"In the shipyard stood the Master, With the model of the vessel That should laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle."

Well, we are all builders. Each one of us, boy or girl, man or woman, is building for himself what no one else can build for him: his character, what he is to be, whether good or bad, whether wise or ignorant, whether n.o.ble or selfish. And in building up ourselves we need a model, one perfect man, on whom we can look and whose life we can copy. That model we can find in Jesus. He lived our life, and in living showed us how we should live. Even a little child may say, "Jesus was once a little child; and I will try my best to be just such a child as he was." A boy of twelve may think of Jesus as a boy and resolve to live as Jesus lived. The young man, working in a shop, or office, or in the field, may take Jesus the workingman for his pattern. When Jesus was on the earth, he said many times, and to different people, "Follow me!" He says it to every one of us. But if we are to follow Jesus and to be like him, the best man that ever lived, we must study him, must know about his life, must have every story of him in our mind and in our heart; and that is another reason why every one should know the story of Jesus.

It is now almost two thousand years since Jesus lived on the earth and walked among men. Since he came, the world has become a different world, just as far as they have heard the story of Jesus and have learned to follow him. People have become less selfish and more thoughtful of others, more willing to help others, more generous in giving to others.

Think of all the homes for the poor, of all the hospitals for the sick, of all the places where little children are cared for, of the playgrounds, of the love shown at Christmas time, of ten thousand ways in which the world is better. And then remember that all these good things come from Jesus Christ and his love in the hearts of men. But for Jesus, this would have been a dark world. The proof of this is that these good things are to be seen only in the lands where Jesus is known and loved and followed. Look at the lands where Christ is unknown and you find them dark and sad. There is still much to be done to make this a perfect world. We see terrible wars, and the poor still suffering wrong, and many people still selfish and cruel to their fellow-men. What can we do to make this a better and a brighter world? We can do as Jesus did. It was said of him, "He went about doing good"; and that may be said of us if we will follow Christ. But to make this world good, we must know him who is its power for goodness; and that is another reason why every one should know the story of Jesus.

Let me name only one reason more why we should know the story of Jesus: through him we have what we need most of all--the forgiveness of our sins. Suppose that someone who watches us all the time should keep a list of every wrong-doing, of every fiery temper, of every angry word, of every blow struck, of every time that one of us failed to do what is right, of every time that one let pa.s.s a chance to do some good act to another--what a long list it would be! There is such a list kept. An eye that never sleeps sees every act, the eye of G.o.d; and he remembers all our deeds, and the things left undone which we ought to have done. Is there any way to have that list against us taken away, blotted out and forgotten? Yes, there is one who can take our sins away and make the black story of our life as white as snow. That one is Jesus Christ, the Son of G.o.d. He can forgive our sins, as he forgave the sins of men while he was on the earth; and he longs to have us ask him for forgiveness.

Should we not love him for this? And should we not wish to hear about him and to know all the tender story of his love?

These, then, are some of the reasons why we should all seek to know the story of Jesus: because he is the greatest and most famous man that ever lived; because his story is full of interest and full of wonders, and is true; because he came to show us how kind and loving G.o.d is, and how willing to have us call upon him; because his life shows us a pattern of what we may be and tells us how we may be like him; because Jesus has made and is still making the world better, and brighter, and happier, wherever he is known; and best of all, because through Jesus our Saviour our sins may be forgiven and taken away, and we may be pure and holy as Jesus was upon the earth.

With these thoughts and aims, this Story of Jesus has been written. May it help many, young and old, to know Jesus better, to love him more, and to follow him more closely!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST

Copyright 1911, by W. A. Wilde & Co.]

The Lord"s Land

CHAPTER 1

FIRST OF ALL, let us take a journey to the land where Jesus lived. We will sail in one of the big ocean steamers across the Atlantic, heading our prow a little to the south, and in eight days will pause at the Rock of Gibraltar, which stands on guard at the gate of the Mediterranean Sea. Do you know what "Mediterranean" means? It means, "among the lands"; and when you look at this sea on the map, you see that it has lands around it on every side, with only a narrow opening at Gibraltar, where its blue waters pour into the Atlantic Ocean.

We will enter the Mediterranean Sea, and sail its entire length, past Spain and France and Italy on the left. We just miss touching the toe of Italy, for you know Italy runs into the sea like a great leg with a high-heeled boot upon its foot. And just beyond Italy we sail by Greece, which looks somewhat like a hand with fingers wide apart.

While we are pa.s.sing by these lands on the left, we are also sailing past Morocco and Algiers, and Tunis and Tripoli on the right. We stop at Alexandria in Egypt, at one of the mouths of the river Nile, and soon after we leave the big steamer at Port Said, where the great Suez Ca.n.a.l begins.

There in the afternoon about ten days after our leaving America, we go on board a smaller ship, and sail northward past the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean Sea. The next morning we awake to find our ship at anchor in front of a city on a hillside, rising up in terraces from the water.

That city is now called Jaffa, or Yafa; and it is the place where the steamers stop to send ash.o.r.e those who are about to visit the Holy Land, for that is the name given to the land where Jesus lived. Do you remember in the Old Testament the story of Jonah, the prophet who tried to run away from G.o.d"s call to preach in the city of Nineveh? Well, it was from this city of Jaffa, then called Joppa, that Jonah started on his voyage, which ended inside the big fish. Perhaps you remember also the story of Dorcas, in the New Testament, that good woman who helped the poor; and after dying was raised to life through the prayer of the Apostle Peter. Dorcas too lived at Joppa; and they show the house where, it is said, Peter stayed while he was visiting in that city.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mediterranean Sea]

Here at Jaffa or Joppa we end our long sea-voyage of about six thousand miles. We go ash.o.r.e in a small boat, tossing up and down on the waves, for there is no wharf where a steamer can land its pa.s.sengers. And now we are standing on the soil of the Holy Land, where Jesus lived. In Christ"s time this land was called Judea. In our day its name is Palestine.

It is a small country. If you will turn to the map of the United States, and look at New Hampshire, you will see a state in form quite like Palestine, and only a little smaller in size; for Palestine, or the Holy Land, contains about twelve thousand square miles, and New Hampshire a little more than nine thousand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: There is no real harbor at Jaffa. Steamers must anchor some distance out, and pa.s.sengers are landed by rowboats]

From Joppa we must go across Palestine if we would look at the part of the land among the mountains where Jesus lived. We can now ride in a railroad train, something that Jesus never saw while he lived on the earth; or we can go in a carriage, or on a horse, or on the back of a camel, as you will see some people riding, or in what they call "a palankeen," which is something like a coach-body set not on wheels, but between two pair of shafts, one in front, the other behind, and a mule harnessed in each pair, so that the rider has one mule in front and the other back of him.