We have collected a half dozen of the most well-known works on the life of Christ, from four eminent writers whose work has stood the test of time: F. W. Farrar, James Stalker, Samuel J. Andrews, and G. Campbell Morgan. The study of Christ's life holds great rewards for those who will embark upon it, as each of these authors testifies. We hope that your own life will be enriched and transformed through these works.
Electronic Books Included
Life of Christ
"Of the great men from Cambridge's Trinity College who have made a significant contribution to the cause of Christ, F. W. Farrar (1831-1903), at one time a minister in London's famous Westminster Abbey and later Dean of Canterbury, deserves to be remembered.… The value of Dr. Farrar's writings lay in his ability to combine 'an honest and robust faith with wide and accurate scholarship.' So much so that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the out-spoken Baptist preacher, said that his study of the life of Christ was 'THE work on the subject. Fresh and full. The price [of the 1874 edition] is very high, and yet the sale has been enormous."
"… In the case of the published works of Dr. Farrar, and particularly in connection with his Life of Christ, we have such excellence of coverage, such a beautiful blending of piety and scholarship, such vividness of description, and such a dramatic portrayal of the events as they unfold in the Gospels, that few readers could ever hope to produce a work of such literary and theological excellence. Within the pages of this book we are treated to the best scholarship of the period. This discussion of Christ's life and teaching, person and work, will amply repay the reader for the time he spends reading this book."
—Cyril J. Barber, Author, The Minister's Library
"I collect books about the life of Christ. I look for the best authors, the best texts, and then make my purchase. I have been buying them for several years...This text, by Farrar, is the best I have read. All others pale in contrast.… If you are looking for a doctrinal treatise, look elsewhere; for this text is a history in every sense. The people, the culture, the atmosphere, the food, the dress, everything becomes alive and clear. Farrar is a talented writer...whose perfectly clear and subtle style is fully compensated with a historian's touch. Its greatest strength is in the details and objectivity. Any person wondering 'what it was like' when Jesus lived should read this text …" (more …)
—Amazon reviewer
From the Preface to the Print Edition
"It has long been the desire and aim of the publishers of this work to spread as widely as possible the blessings of knowledge; and, in special furtherance of this design, they wished to place in the hands of their readers such a sketch of the Life of Christ on earth as should enable them to realise it more clearly, and to enter more thoroughly into the details and sequence of the Gospel narratives.… If the following pages in any measure fulfill the objects with which such a Life ought to be written, they should fill the minds of those who read them with solemn and not ignoble thoughts; they should 'add sunlight to daylight by making the happy happier;' they should encourage the toiler; they should console the sorrowful; they should point the weak to the one true source of moral strength. But whether this book be thus blessed to high ends, or whether it be received with harshness and indifference, nothing at least can rob me of the deep and constant happiness which I have felt during almost every hour that has been spent upon it. Though, owing to serious and absorbing duties, months have often passed without my finding an opportunity to write a single line, yet, even in the midst of incessant labour at other things, nothing forbade that the subject on which I was engaged should be often in my thoughts, or that I should find in it a source of peace and happiness different, alike in kind and in degree, from any which other interests could either give or take away."
The Life of Lives (Further Studies in the Life of Christ)
- Author: F. W. Farrar
- Date: 1900
- Pages: 461
The Life of Jesus Christ
"The ease, the lucidity, the crystalline clearness with which the familiar story is retold are the last result of years of patient study and deep meditation. Dr. Stalker writes clearly because he sees clearly. The dead past has lived again before him; and it lives still for us in these graphic, vivid pages. Yet, throughout, the imagination works under wise restraints. The small canvas is never overcrowded. The leading facts of the history are seized and fixed with a master hand; the rest is forgotten. In nothing is the touch of the true literary artist more clearly seen than in the skill with which the writer has first selected and then grasped his materials. His book is a miracle of condensation, a miniature masterpiece."
—Dr. George Jackson
Stalker's work includes a section at the back entitled "Hints for Teachers and Questions for Pupils." This supplement contains notes and "further reading" suggestions for those teaching on the life of Christ, along with a number of questions over each chapter for students to discuss.
From the Introduction to the Print Edition
"THE LIFE OF CHRIST IS an exhaustless theme. It reveals a character of greater massiveness than the hills, of serener beauty than the stars, of sweeter fragrance than the flowers; higher than the heavens in sublimity and deeper than the seas in mystery. As good Jean Paul has eloquently said, 'It concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries out of its channels, and still governs the ages.'
"… His name and the power of His name, are written in the learning, art, science, government of all these ages, and they blaze conspicuously on the fair brow of modern civilization. How intensely interesting, and how immensely important then must be the biography that explains th secret of such measureless potency, and that lays bare the cause of such gigantic and practically boundless sovereignty. Only in the faithful record of the Life in the narrative of its origin, surroundings, vicissitudes, peculiarities and consummation can the true solution of the problem involved be discovered; and it is this conviction that leads so many thoughtful students to lavish the wealth of their learning on biographies of Jesus, and that constrains so many more earnest inquirers to ponder unweariedly the results of their labors. They alike delve among the roots that they may understand the flower; they dive into the spring that they may comprehend the stream; they uncover the footprints that they may measure the feet, and they lift once more the dead hand into life that they may ascertain how it sways so mighty a scepter."
The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ
- Author: James Stalker
- Date: 1894
- Pages: 185
The Life of Our Lord Upon the Earth
- Author: Samuel J. Andrews
- Date: 1889
- Pages: 624
From the Preface to the Print Edition
"The simple purpose of this book is to arrange the events of the Lord's life, as given us by the Evangelists, so far as possible, in a chronological order; and to consider the difficulties as to matters of fact which the several narratives, when compared together, present; or are supposed by modern criticism to present.… I trust that … the general arrangement will facilitate the inquiries of those who seek to know as much as is possible of the external history of the Lord's works and words, that they may the better penetrate into their spiritual meaning."
The Crises of the Christ
- Author: G. Campbell Morgan
- Date: 1903
- Pages: 477
From the Introductory to the Print Edition
"The literature of the Church has been enriched by many lives of Jesus. Some of these have emphasized the facts of His humanity, while others have emphasized the truth of His Deity. All have been of value. They have however been largely devoted to the contemplation of the Person of Jesus, rather than to a consideration of the accomplishment of a Divine work. It is to this particular aspect of the life of Jesus Christ that the present volume is devoted. Interest in Jesus Himself is of preeminent importance. The mystery of His Person, the graciousness of His teaching, the beauty of His character, the wonder of His deeds, all these are of such value that it is impossible to attend to them too closely, or to write too much concerning them. It is, however, of equal importance that this wonderful life should be seen as that of the anointed Servant of God, the Christ, Who in all the details of the passing days, was working a larger work, and towards a mightier issue than a mere contemplation of the human life might seem to suggest. Indeed, the beauty of the life itself is only fully appreciated when it is seen as related in its every part to this mighty movement of God towards the redemption of man.
"Here therefore attention is to be fixed, not so much upon the words of His lips, or His working of wonders and signs, as upon His uttering of a Divine word, and His accomplishment of a Divine work.
"It is for this reason that the volume is entitled “The Crises of the Christ.” In all the works of God there is to be discovered an unvarying method of process and crisis. The process is slow, and difficult to watch in its progress. The crisis is sudden, and flames with a light, which flashing back upon the process, explains it; and forward, indicates a new line of action, which after all is the continuity of that which has preceded it. This might certainly be illustrated by reference to the observation of all natural phenomena. The story of the earth, as read by scientists, is the story of slow movements, and of mighty upheavals. The history of the butterfly of many hues, is that of the pupa, dormant to all appearance, which through crisis emerges into the flower of the air. The crisis is not an accident, not a catastrophe, in the sense of disaster, but a stage in an orderly method. This method, it may be said in passing, is also to be seen in God’s revelation of Him self to men, the history of which is recorded in the Divine Library."
For more from F.W. Farrar check out: The Expositor's Bible (Contrubutor)
Sample Page Scans from the Print Editions