One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter-shop until he was thirty.  Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.  He never wrote a book.  He never held an office.  He never had a family or owned a house.  He didn't go to college.  He never visited a big city.  He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born.  He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness.

He had no credentials but himself.  He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him.  His friends ran away.  He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial.  He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.  While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth.  When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress.

All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life.