One Solitary Life

One Solitary Life by Henry Drummond

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city.

He never traveled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away.

He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing--the only property he had on earth. After he died, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of man's progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on earth as much as that one solitary life.