Thomas Carlyle:
How different is that honey-mouthed, tear-stained, soup-kitchen Jesus Christ of our poor shovel-hatted modern Christians from that stern-visaged Christ of the gospels, proclaiming aloud in the marketplace (with such a total contempt of the social respectabilities): “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”! Descend from your Gigs, ye wretched scoundrels, for the hour is come! . . .
Jesus of Nazareth was of all men the least of a “Penny Lady,” or comprehensive universal Soup-Kitchen character; he pitied sorrow and sin and pain, with an infinite, outbursting, helpful pity, wheresoever he met with it; but so likewise did he smite with an infinite, withering indignation whatsoever deserved that; and on the whole went about with a quite other object that consciously seeking either of these. “To do the will of my Father,”—were it even that of being scourged out of existence, as a failure and a nonentity, and disgrace to the world.
Thomas Carlyle, The Carlyle Encyclopedia p. 251 (as quoted in The Jesus You Can’t Ignore by John MacArthur p. 199)
Aaron Armstrong is the author of Awaiting a Savior and Contend. He is a writer, speaker, and stereotype Instagrammer. Aaron blogs daily at Blogging Theologically.
