I often wonder whether Jesus was a man of flesh and blood like ourselves, or a thought without a body, in the mind, or an idea that visits the vision of man.
Often it seems to me that He was but a dream dreamed by the countless men and women at the same time in a sleep deeper than sleep and a dawn more serene than all dawns.
And it seems that in relating the dream, the one to the other, we began to deem it a reality that had indeed come to pass; and in giving it body of our fancy and a voice of our longing we made it a substance of our own substance.
But in truth He was not a dream. We knew Him for three years and beheld Him with our open eyes in the high tide of noon.
We touched His hands, and we followed Him from one place to another. We heard His discourses and witnessed His deeds.
Think you that we were a thought seeking after more thought, or a dream in the region of dreams?
Great events always seem alien to our daily lives, though their nature may be rooted in our nature. But though they appear sudden in their coming and sudden in their passing, their true span is for years and for generations.
Jesus of Nazareth was Himself the Great Event. That man, whose father and mother and brothers we know, was Himself a miracle wrought in Judea. Yea, all His own miracles, if placed at His feet, would not rise to the height of His ankles.