#433 - Napoleon's Opinion of Christ.

Napoleon's Opinion of Christ.

  When Napoleon was at Saint Helena, in the enforced retirement that followed his boisterous campaigns, he faced, with all the powers of his mighty intellect, the problem of the Unaccountable Man. Not a few of his devoted friends had been carried away on the flood-tide of infidelity which, at that time, was sweeping everything before it. On one occasion, when General Bertrand had been speaking of Jesus as a man of commanding genius, Napoleon interrupted him and said:
  “I know men; and I tell you Jesus Christ was more than a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between him and the founders of empires; but there is the distance of infinity between them. As for me I recognize those great men as beings like myself; they have performed their lofty parts, but there was nothing to prove them divine. They have had foibles which ally them with me. It is not so with Christ. Everything in Him astonishes me. His spirit overawes me; His will confounds me; He stands a being by Himself. His thoughts and principles are not to be explained by human organization or the nature of things. His birth and the history of His life, the profundity of His doctrine which grapples with the mightiest difficulties and solves them; His gospel, His kingdom, His march across the ages; these are too deep a mystery for me! They plunge me into reveries from which I find no escape. The nearer I approach Him, the more I perceive that everything is above me.
  “Who will presume to lift his voice against an intrepid voyager who recounts the marvels of lands which he alone has had the boldness to visit? Christ is that voyager. I search in vain through history to find his peer. He died an object of contempt, and left a Gospel which has been called 'the foolishness of the cross.' What a mysterious symbol! And what a tempest it provoked! On the one side all the furies; on the other gentleness and infinite resignation. And with what result? You speak of Caesar and Alexander, of their conquests and the enthusiasm which they enkindled in the hearts of their soldiers; but can you conceive of a dead man making conquests with an army devoted to his memory? Can you conceive of Caesar from the depth of his mausoleum watching over the destinies of Rome? Yet such is the history of the Christian invasion and the conquest of the world. Such is the power of the Christian's Gods!
  “We have founded empires, Caesar and Alexander and Charlemagne and I; we have founded empires upon force; but Christ has founded an empire on love. And at this hour, millions would die for him. What a proof of his divinity! Now that I am at Saint Helena, chained upon this rock, where are my friends? My life once shone with a royal brilliance; but disaster overtook me and the gold became dim. Behold the destiny of him whom the world calls Napoleon the Great! What an abyss between my misery and the eternal reign of Christ!”
  For a moment the exiled Emperor was silent and then, with a broken voice, he added, “My friends, if you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, I did wrong to place you in command of my army.”--David James Burrell, D.D.

Illustrative Anecdotes for Preachers, Sunday School Teachers, and the Family Circle. Henry M. Tyndall. 1925. #433 (Page 232).