Octavius Frothingham

Octavius Frothingham (November 26, 1822 – November 27, 1895) was an American clergyman and author.

The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity (1877)

 * New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, online at gutenberg.org


 * The unfashionable faith is the very one to attract worldly people on their first awakening to spiritual sensibility. The show of worldliness is then, to the worldly, particularly offensive. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life," delight in abasing themselves before rags and filth, wishing to reach the opposite extreme. The graces of the religious character, humility, meekness, self-accusation, contrition, find in associations with the coarse, the hard, the repulsive, their fittest expression. Hence it was that Judaism, heretofore the faith of the despised, became the faith of the despisers.
 * p. 173


 * If it be asked why Judaism, then, was not made the religion of the empire, instead of Christianity, which it hated with all the fervor of close relationship, the answer is at hand: Judaism laid no emphasis on its cosmopolitan features, and discouraged belief in the historical fulfilment of its own prophecy.
 * p. 174