rs--the divinity of
Christ's origin and the eternal reality of His status as Lord and God.

Christian and unbeliever alike acknowledge His supremacy as a Man, and
respect the epoch-making significance of His birth. Christ was born in
the meridian of time;[2] and His life on earth marked at once the
culmination of the past and the inauguration of an era distinctive in
human hope, endeavor, and achievement. His advent determined a new order
in the reckoning of the years; and by common consent the centuries
antedating His birth have been counted backward from the pivotal event
and are designated accordingly. The rise and fall of dynasties, the
birth and dissolution of nations, all the cycles of history as to war
and peace, as to prosperity and adversity, as to health and pestilence,
seasons of plenty and of famine, the awful happenings of earthquake and
storm, the triumphs of invention and discovery, the epochs of man's
development in godliness and the long periods of his dwindling in
unbelief--all the occurrences that make history--are chronicled
throughout Christendom by reference to the year before or after the
birth of Jesus Christ.

His earthly life covered a period of thirty-three years; and of these
but three were spent by Him as an acknowledged Teacher openly engaged in
the activities of public ministry. He was brought to a violent death
before He had attained what we now regard as the age of manhood's prime.
As an individual He was personally known to but few; and His fame as a
world character became general only after His death.

Brief account of some of His words and works has been preserved to us;
and this record, fragmentary and incomplete though it be, is rightly
esteemed as the world's greatest treasure. The earliest and most
extended history of His mortal existence is embodied within the
compilation of scriptures known as the New Testament; indeed but little
is said of Him by secular historians of His time. Few and short as are
the allusions to Him made by non-scriptural writers in the period
immediately following that of His ministry, enough is found to
corroborate the sacred record as to the actuality and period of Christ's
earthly existence.

No adequate biography of Jesus as Boy and Man has been or can be
written, for the sufficing reason that a fulness of data is lacking.
Nevertheless, man never lived of whom more has been said and sung, none
to whom is devoted a greater proportion of the world's l