He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He grew up in another village.  He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book.

He never held an office.

He never owned a home.

He never had a family.

He never went to college.

He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born.

He never did any of the things that usually accompany greatness.

He had no credentials but himself.

While he was still a young man, 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 the only piece of property he had on earth, and that was his coat.  When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the kindness of a friend.

Nearly twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is still the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that...

all the armies that have ever marched,

all the navies that have ever sailed,

all the parliaments that have ever reigned,

all put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as much as that One Solitary Life.

Adapted from James Allen Francis