endeared by daily use...

Frederic Henry Hedge continues, today, on authority and speaks of the qualities that gave Jesus his. A special thanks to batbogey for yesterday's comment relating the words of Rev. Susan Smith-well worth reading...

Hedge's "Authorities and Scribes" cont...

"What the world requires in its spiritual leaders is not intellectual acuteness, but truth incarnate in the life. Such a leader, a teacher with authority, the Christian world acknowledges in its Founder. It finds him pre-eminent in those respects in which philosophers and philosophy fail.

1. Universality. Jesus represents no school or epoch or race. he speaks a universal dialect, the dialect of the heart; addressing himself not to a few select and disciplined natures, but to universal man. 'Come unto me,all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' 'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'...

There is no philosophy here; but what consciousness, what authority! Who else ever uttered words like these? Translatable into every idiom and losing little or nothing by translation, the words which were uttered so long ago in the solitudes of Galilee or the streets of Jerusalem are household words to-day in the remotest corners of the globe, endeared by daily use and consecrated by centuries of faith and worship, wholesome as daily bread, and still revered as bread from heaven."

Blessings