The Life and Words of Christ

by Cunningham Geikie

Excerpt from The Life and Words of Christ
No apology is needed for the publication of another Life of Christ, for the subject, to use the words of Mr. Carlyle, is "of quite perennial, infinite character, and its significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest."
The freshness and interest of the name of Jesus, and its power as a great factor in the spiritual history of the world, increase with each generation. The influence of His life, His words, and His death, have, from the first, been like leaven cast into the mass of humanity. He made religion spiritual instead of ceremonial and external; universal, in stead of local. He gave us the magnificent dowry of a faith in One Common Father of the whole human race, and, thus, of a world-wide brotherhood of all mankind. He confirmed the doctrine of our immortality, and scattered abroad the germs of a heavenly life by His fundamental requirements of love to God and our neighbour. All reforms of individual and public life lie veiled in these principles, awaiting the advance of our moral sense, to apprehend and apply them. They have already given freedom to the slave; raised woman; purified morals; mitigated war; created liberty; and made humanity a growing force, in things private, civil, and political.
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632 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1868

About the author

John Cunningham Geikie was a minister and author. He worked as a Presbyterian missionary in Canada. In 1860 he returned to the U.K. and held a Presbyterian minister position at Sunderland and at Islington Chapel. In 1876 he was ordained deacon in the Church of England and priest next year. He was curate of St. Peter's, Dulwich (1876–79), rector of Christ Church, Neuilly, Paris (1879–81), vicar of St. Mary's, Barnstaple (1883–85), and vicar of St Martin at Palace, Norwich (1885–90). In 1890 he retired for health reasons.

Reviews

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comparing this to Farrar's Life of Christ (and farther away, Talmage's Jesus the Christ and Craig's Jesus As He Was and Is), this book's author takes such a more loving approach to interpreting what the Savior said in his New Testament quotes, and to interpreting the meaning behind what He said. I believe Jesus is love, but I'm definitely inclined to look at the stern matter-of-factness of what He says in scripture, and it's harder for me to see the love. When someone succeeds in helping me actually see the love in it, that's a skilled interpreter.

He also is a bit wordy, especially in describing the history and culture and secular world for quite a long time before he ever mentions Christ; after having read other authors who were themselves wordy sometimes, I wondered if I'd ever actually read this book after all. It took me 14 months to get through it, because even when I'd hit a patch where the reading was easy, sometimes other things I could do with my free time were more appealing, but a lot of places it was dense, and I had to be psyched up to read. If I could have had the right balance of time, interest and place all the time, it wouldn't have taken nearly that long for the whole book.

Geikie believes in Christ as divine, as the Son of God, which many people don't, and he knew the scriptures, and could make a believable interpretation of them, so that taking all his quoting and paraphrasing in context, I could believe that his interpretation of Christ as love would be accurate, and not the same kind of interpretation of Christ and Christianity as the soppy, doormattish, pushover kind of God and religion that so many now take it to be. However, since starting to read, I came across this book in other old "database" books of the time that show that this book was widely known or even read, and recommended as a source of learning Christianity, back when, and I wonder how much Geikie's influence of teaching the loving Christ really has been a major influence in this modern false understanding of how love and Christianity relate. His paraphrases sometimes do lack, not squaring with my understanding of the scriptures or Christ's meaning, and I think perhaps people in the generation who read this book passed on to their children and their children a falser understanding of the scriptures. At least this author was sincere, and could see some symbolism that I had missed in my own study, and he was devout in his surety that Christ's ordinances, covenants, and the events of the Christian worldview are real and vitally important; they can't be done away with if one really understands God and the way things are.

A favorite example of where he isn't so sure, but is just as sincere, is his understanding that John the Baptist must be a central figure to God, because of how he is mentioned in the Bible, but his understanding fails because he doesn't know other dispensations or Christ's real authority in His restored church today, so his lengthy interpretations of John's importance make me smile and feel for him. I'm sure if he's been in heaven now for a century or so, he's been able to have it explained to him.

I liked Farrar, and my summation of that book would be "it's a book you go back and read parts of multiple times," but all in all, I do like Geikie better.