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Products>Selected Works on the Life of Christ (6 vols.)

Selected Works on the Life of Christ (6 vols.)

Publishers:
and
, 1874–1936
(1)

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Overview

"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." So begins Stalker's biography of the greatest life ever lived.

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.

Resource Experts
  • Title: Selected Works on the Life of Christ
  • Volumes: 6
  • Pages: 2,909

Life of Christ

  • Author: F. W. Farrar
  • Publisher: Cassell Publishing Company
  • Publication Date: 1888
  • Pages: 996
  • Biographical info at Pitts Theology Library

"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 …)

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.

—From the Preface to the Print Edition

Frederic William Farrar was an important biblical scholar, a minister at London's famous Westminster Abbey, and the Dean of Canterbury. He wrote prolifically on the life of Jesus and the life of Paul.

The Life of Lives

  • Author: F. W. Farrar
  • Publisher: Dodd, Mead, and Co.
  • Publication Date: 1900
  • Pages: 461

Farrar’s follow-up work to the popular Life of Christ. provides further application of Christ’ s life and teachings to today’s Christian. Special attention is given to Jesus’ external influences: education, home life, and political dynamics of the world in which he lived. Contrary to a typical commentary, this book looks at Christ’s life from a topical angle.

The Life of Jesus Christ

  • Author: James Stalker
  • Publisher: Henry A. Sumner and Company
  • Publication Date: 1882
  • Pages: 166

Many biographies of Christ’s life have been published through the years, but most have lasted only a short time. This volume, first printed in 1880, continues to be in demand. The Life of Jesus Christ is known in every English-speaking country and has been translated into many foreign languages. The reasons for its continued success are not hard to find. The details of Christ’s life are presented in a clear and flowing style and are molded into an easily comprehended whole. Doctrinally sound, vivid in detail, as authentic as study and research can make it, this work will long hold the place it won when first written by this noted Scottish theologian.

James Stalker was a prominent biblical scholar, and wrote extensively on the life of Jesus and the life of Paul.

The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ

  • Author: James Stalker
  • Publisher: George H. Doran Company
  • Publication Date: 1894
  • Pages: 185

Beginning in Gethsemane, this resource analyzes Jesus' trial and crucifixion. Stalker's work is applicable and enjoyable because it reads more like a novel than a commentary. The author's eloquent style provides a great companion to any Bible study of the events leading to Jesus' death.

The Life of Our Lord upon the Earth

  • Author: Samuel J. Andrews
  • Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
  • Publication Date: 1889
  • Pages: 624

The author states in his preface, "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." That goal is clearly achieved because of the author's ability to blend historical accuracy and spiritual insight.

The Crises of the Christ

  • Author: G. Campbell Morgan
  • Publisher: Fleming H. Revell Company
  • Publication Date: 1903
  • Pages: 477

While much Christian literature is devoted to the human work of Christ, Morgan’s The Crises of the Christ focuses on the Divine work of Jesus on earth. This resource will aid your understanding of the mystery of Christ’s person, the graciousness of His teaching, the beauty of His character and the wonder of His deeds.

English-born George Campbell Morgan (1863-1945), a contemporary of Rodney “Gipsy” Smith, preached his first sermon at age 13. He was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1904-1919 and then from 1933-1943, pausing for a brief period between those timeframes to work at Biola in Los Angeles. In 1939, he began to mentor Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who would eventually become his successor. Morgan’s essay entitled The Purposes of the Incarnation are included in a collection called The Fundamentals, a set of 90 essays that is widely considered to be the foundation of the modern Fundamentalist movement.

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  1. Russ White

    Russ White

    6/3/2012

    Farrar's Life of Christ is one of the classic texts on the subject, published in 1886, and used by seminaries and students ever since that time. To understand Farrar's text, the reader needs to begin with it's social context. In the late 1800's, there were many different movements that dramatically impacted the Church's view of the Scriptures, as well as the Church's view of the relationship between religion and science. Particularly notable were the higher critical schools of thought about the Scriptures, the strong wave of the application of scientific principles to the practice of medicine, and the emergence of naturalism (using evolution as a vehicle) on the world stage. Given these contexts, it is no surprise that Ferrar's view of the Scriptures is only moderately high. For example, Ferrar says: "And the Gospels, always truthful and bearing on every page that simplicity which is the stamp of honest narrative, indicate this fact without comment. There is in them nothing of the exuberance of marvel, and mystery, and miracle, which appears alike in the Jewish imaginations about their coming Messiah, and in the apocryphal narratives about the Infant Christ." -Page 13 But in another place: "I have here attempted to combine, as far as it is possible, in one continuous narrative, the perfectly comprehensible, but slightly differing accounts of the Synoptists (Matt. 4:18–22; Mark 1:16–20; Luke 5:1–11). Let me remark—(1) that any one whose faith is shaken by the so-called “discrepancies” of these and similar stories must (a) either hold some very rigid, untenable, and superstitious view of inspiration, or (b) be wholly unacquainted with the different aspects assumed by perfectly truthful but confessedly fragmentary testimonies; and (2) that the very variety in the narratives, being in no respect inconsistent with essential and truthful unity, is a valuable proof of the independence of the Gospel witnesses." -Footnote on Page 193 So Ferrar holds what is probably a higher view of the Scriptures than many modern scholars, but not so high a view as to admit they are without error. The second point the modern reader will probably be put off about is Farrar's clear chronological snobbery. "A very early popular legend, which has crept by interpolation into the text of St. John, attributed the healing qualities of the water to the descent of an angel who troubled the pool at irregular intervals, leaving the first persons who could scramble into it to profit by the immersion. This solution of the phenomenon was in fact so entirely in accordance with the Semitic habit of mind, that, in the universal ignorance of all scientific phenomena, and the utter indifference to close investigation which characterise most Orientals, the populace would not be likely to trouble themselves about the possibility of any other explanation. But whatever may have been the general belief about the cause, the fact that the water was found at certain intervals to be impregnated with gases which gave it a strengthening property, was sufficient to attract a concourse of many sufferers." -Pages 372-3 Here, and in many other places, Ferrar discusses the state of the "oriental mind," as if people who lived in the "prescientific age" really just didn't know that demon posession is really a form of mental illness, or that it was more than just a habit of the "oriental mind," that a man's demons could really run into a herd of swine. This entire line of thinking goes hand in hand with his moderate view of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The positive outcome of Farrar's thinking along these lines, however, should not be passed over —his insistence on the humanity of Christ. Given as he to cutting miracles down to size, Ferrar brings the human side of Jesus into focus very clearly. The mdoern Church can use a large dose of Jesus' humanity, and his ability, just within his perfect humanity, to effect many of the scenes we read as miraculous. For instance, the passing of Jesus out of a crowd that wanted to throw him over the brow of a hill need not be a miracle. Farrar also does a good deal of work in providing the background behind each event in the life of Christ, explaining the position of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and providing the Rabbinical background to a number of incidents. This background information helps to clear up some misconceptions, and to add depth to the narrative in a way few other writings in this genre do. The appendixes (Excurses) are tremendiously helpful, particularly on the oral verses written law, the Sanhedrin, and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He does seem to miss the point in a few places; for instance, he misses the reason behind the sudden use of parables at the end of Matthew 12. Rather than seeing parables as an intentional method designed to hide truth from those who aren't willing to hear, he sees them as a way to more widely express truth. The author does an excellent job of interconnecting the Feasts to the proclamations of Christ, and in showing the bad motives of the leadership in the nature and manner of their questions. Overall, for those seeking a solid representation of the Life of Christ, and can handle the watermelon seeds with the watermelon, this is a good, if long, book, to read.
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Collection value: $79.94
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