One Solitary Life
Anonymous
 

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He grew up in another obscure village.  He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for years he was an itinerant preacher.  He never wrote a book.  He never held any office.  He never went to college.  He never put his food inside a big city.  He never traveled 200 miles from the place of his birth.  He never did one of the things that accompany greatness.  He had no credentials but himself.  While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him.  His friends ran away.  One of them denied him; another betrayed him.  He was turned over to his enemies.  He went through the mockery of a trial.  He was nailed on a cross between two thieves.  His executors gambled for the one piece of property he had on earth while he was dying, and that was his coat.  When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. 

Twenty wide centuries have come and gone, and today He is the center of the human race, the leader of the column of progress.  I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies of the world that ever marched, and that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of a man upon this earth as did that one solitary life.