The Heroism of Christ

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 27.

The Heroism of Christ.

INDIVIDUAL examples of heroism are not so conspicuous in the rank and file of contending armies as in single, hand-to-hand combats. In the rank and file individuality is lost in the general mass, and each one partakes only of his little share of the meed of praise that is meted out to the heroic army. But when a call is made for a Marcus Curtius to voluntarily step out from among his comrades and go down to death alone in the forlorn hope, then we have a hero worthy of the plaudits of his fellow-men, which he receives. So the heroism of Jesus is brought out in the solitariness of his conflicts and sufferings. In his heroic resistance to the triple temptation in the wilderness, on the mountain, and the temple pinnacle, he was alone with Satan. Alone, patiently, and unmurmuringly, he trod the wine-press of God's wrath. Of the people none were with him. Alone, we behold him triumphing over the fiercest opposition—over the tyranny of the magistrate, the subtlety of the philosopher and the bigotry of the Jew. Alone he met and routed the Sanhedrim. Alone, with heroic fortitude, he endured the contradiction of sinners and the desertion of friends. Alone, before Herod and before Pilate, he told the truth and asked no favors at a time when to tell the truth was death. He was alone in the noble purpose to permit them to crucify him, himself conscious, meantime, of the possession of an omnipotence exerting which he could have blotted the blood-thirsty and blood-shedding mob from the face of the earth, but which he reserved for his final victory over death, the last enemy that should be destroyed. Heroism! Produce another such as Jesus of Nazareth from the long list of the world's illustrious!

—Christian Intelligencer.