JESUS' words and deeds . . . produced a profound impression on his followers. ... In analyzing this impression probably the first thing to recognize, as it was first and most widely felt, was his "grace." Luke, describing the natural growth of the boy, records that "he increased in wisdom and stature, and in grace before God and man." And the Synoptic Gospels provide many illustrations of that attractiveness which is the by-product of "grace." Negatively there was nothing about him of superiority, of aloofness, of self-consciousness or of indifference to the common life of common men. Positively, there was a ready sympathy, an understanding tenderness, a way of meeting men, as if each one, even the degraded and the outcast, had already a place in his interest. . . . Grace is in fact the atmosphere which love creates around itself. And the fourth Gospel, which so often concentrates to the glittering pin-point of a star what we have seen shimmering like a nebula in the Synoptic Gospels, sums up the impression produced by a thousand contacts, "We beheld his glory . . . full of grace and reality"; John thus witnessing to the discovery that the divine glory was no longer to be sought in material splendor but in qualities of character.
—From "Jesus Christ," in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
THE most superficial perusal of the teaching of Christ [Jesus] must convince how deeply sympathetic he was with nature, and how keenly observant of man. ... He had watched the sower or the vinedresser as he went forth to his labor, and read the teaching of the tares which sprang up among the wheat. To him the vocation of the shepherd must have been full of meaning, as he led, and fed, and watched his flock, spoke to his sheep with well-known voice, brought them to the fold, or followed, and tenderly carried back, those that had strayed. . . . But he also equally knew the joys, the sorrows, the wants and sufferings of the busy multitude. The play in the market, the marriage processions, the funeral rites, the wrongs of injustice and oppression, the urgent harshness of the creditor, the bonds and prison of the debtor, . . . had all made an indelible impression on his mind. And yet this evil world was not one which he hated, and from which he would withdraw himself with his disciples, though ever and again he felt the need of periods of meditation and prayer. On the contrary, while he confronted all the evil in it, he would fain pervade the mass with the new leaven; not cast it away, but renew it. He recognized the good and the hopeful, even in those who seemed most lost; he quenched not the dimly burning flax, nor brake the bruised reed. It was not contempt of the world, but sadness over it; ... not despising of the little and the poor, whether outwardly or inwardly such, but encouragement and adoption of them — together with keen insight into the real under the mask of the apparent, and withering denunciation and unsparing exposure of all that was evil, mean, and unreal, wherever it might appear. Such were some of the results gathered from his past life, as presented in his teaching.
—From "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," by A. Edersheim.
