Jesus, the Perfect Man

Author Unknown
From The Commercial Appeal, 22 December 1912

There is no other character in history like that of Jesus. As a preacher, as a doer of things, and as a philosopher, no man ever had the sweep and the vision of Jesus. The human analysis of the human actions of Jesus brings to view a rule of life that is amazing in its perfect detail. The system of ethics Jesus taught during His earthly sojourn 2,000 years ago was true then, has been true in every century since, and will be true forever.

• Plato was a great thinker and learned in his age, but his teachings did not stand the test of time. In big things and in little things, time and human experience have shown that he erred.
• Marcus Aurelius touched the reflective mind of the world, but he was as cold and austere as brown marble.
• The doctrine of Confucius gave a great nation moral and mental dry rot.
• The teachings of Buddha resulted in mental and moral chaos, which led to India's decline.
• Mohammed offered a system of ethics that was adopted by millions of people. Now their children live in deserts where once there were cities, along dry rivers where once there was moisture, and in the shadows of gray, barren hills where once there was greenness.
• Thomas Aquinas was a profound philosopher, but parts of his system have been abandoned.
• Francis of Assisi was Christlike in his saintliness, but in some things he was childish.
• Thomas A. Kempis’ Imitation of Christ is a thing of rare beauty and sympathy, but it is, as its name indicates, only an imitation.
• Sir Thomas More’s Utopia is yet a dream that can not be realized.
• Lord Bacon, writing on chemistry and medicine under the guise of a man working in a twentieth-century laboratory, is puerile.
• The world’s most learned doctors, until a hundred and fifty years ago, gave dragon’s blood and the ground dried tails of lizards and shells of eggs for certain ailments. The great surgeons a hundred years ago bled a man if he were wounded.
• Napoleon had the world at his feet for four years, and when he died, the world continued on its way as if he had never lived.

Jesus taught little about property because He knew there were things of more importance than property. He measured property and life, the body and soul, at their exact relative value. He taught a great deal about character, because character is of greater importance than money. Other men taught us to develop systems of government. Jesus taught so that the minds of men might be perfected. Jesus looked to the soul, while other men dwelt on material things. After 2,000 years of experience, no one can find a flaw in the government system as outlined by Jesus. Czar and Kaiser, president and Socialist, give their admiration to its complete merit. No man today, no matter whether he follows the doctrine of Mills, Marx, or George as to property, can find a false principle in Jesus’ theory of property.

In the duty of a man to his fellows, no sociologist has ever approximated the perfection of the doctrine laid down by Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount.

Not all the investigation of chemists, not all the discoveries of explorers, not all the experiences of rulers, not all the historical facts that go to make up the sum of human knowledge on this day in 1912 are in contradiction to one word uttered or one principle laid down by Jesus.

The human experiences of 2,000 years show that Jesus never made a mistake. Jesus never uttered a doctrine that was true at the time and then became obsolete. Jesus spoke the truth; He lived the truth; and truth is eternal.

History has no record of any other man leading a perfect life or doing everything in logical order. Jesus is the only person whose every action and every utterance strikes a true note in the heart and mind of every man born of a woman. He never said a foolish thing; never did a foolish act, and never dissembled.

No poet, no dreamer, no philosopher loved humanity with the love that Jesus bore toward all men.

Who, then, was Jesus?

He could not have been merely a man, for there never was a man who had two consecutive thoughts absolute in truthful perfection. Jesus must have been what Christendom proclaims Him to be, a divine being, or He could not have been what He was. No mind but an infinite mind could have left behind those things which Jesus gave to the world as a heritage.