One Solitary Life

"He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village and worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for just three years he was an itinerant preacher.
"He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did any of the things that we normally associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
"While he was still a young man the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves and his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth, and that was his coat. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
"Two thousand years have come and gone and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of the column of progress.
"All the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever sailed, and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as has that one solitary life."
-- James Allen Francis