It seems to be a previous
necessity that He who most fastens the heart and life of man, who seems
to be most necessary to the soul of men, shall so attract their thought,
shall so draw them all to Himself that their crudest speculations, that
their most erroneous conceptions, shall fasten upon him, and they shall
be in some true way a testimony of the way in which He has always held
the human heart. This is the way in which all crudities of theology, all
the weaknesses of speculation, all even of the most strange and foul
thoughts in regard to the life of Jesus and His manifestation in the
world, have accumulated around that gracious figure, so simple and
strong, which walks through our human life and manifests to us the God.
Surely it is in one conception of it, and the true conception of it, the
great perpetual testimony of how men have cared about Jesus, that they
have speculated about Him in such strange perplexing ways. But He about
whom the world does not care walks through the world and bears His
simple being. There is nothing that fastens upon Him, that perplexes His
life, that makes mysterious and strange the life He lives. But where is
the great man in all the history of human kind that has not gathered
about his person and work the speculations of those whom we find, with
their crude and unguided minds, have formed their theories in regard to
Him? It is the very abundance of the strange speculations with regard to
Christ, it is the very strangeness of the theories that have been formed
with regard to Him, that has shown me how He has drawn the hearts of
men, how He has not let them go, but compelled them to fasten themselves
to Him, to think about Him and try to follow Him in such poor, blind
ways as they were able to give themselves to Him in.
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