The author of this familiar passage about Christ is almost universally thought to be unknown. A quick search of the World Wide Web (“One Solitary Life”) will show: first, how familiar and loved this passage is; second, how commonly it is attributed to an anonymous author; and third, how many variations there are (further evidence that most people are ignorant of the existence of an original source in print).

However, there is a known author, and the source is available in print at many libraries. I owe my knowledge of this to the efforts of a Mr. Palmer Brown (recently deceased?). You can read about his search and discovery of the author in a Los Angeles Times article of Saturday, December 1, 1973 (Part I, pg. 32).

The author is Dr. James Allan Francis. It can be found in his book called “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons,” published by “The Judson Press” (Phil.) in 1926. It is in the last chapter titled “Arise, Sir Knight!” on page 123. There is a short biography of Dr. Francis in the article mentioned above.

The article and the book can be obtained at your local public library. Ask your friendly neighborhood reference librarian for assistance.

I obtained my copy from the Los Angeles Public Library. I have it right here beside me. I find it very interesting to compare the original passage with the many variations that I have seen. Anyway, here it is:

Let us turn now to the story. A child is born in an obscure village. He is brought up in another obscure village. He works in a carpenter shop until he is thirty, and then for three brief years is an itinerant preacher, proclaiming a message and living a life. He never writes a book. He never holds an office. He never raises an army. He never has a family of his own. He never owns a home. He never goes to college. He never travels two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He gathers a little group of friends about him and teaches them his way of life. While still a young man, the tide of popular feeling turns against him. One denies him; another betrays him. He is turned over to his enemies. He goes through the mockery of a trial; he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, and when dead is laid in a borrowed grave by the kindness of a friend.

Those are the facts of his human life. He rises from the dead. Today we look back across nineteen hundred years and ask, What kind of trail has he left across the centuries? When we try to sum up his influence, all the armies that ever marched, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned are absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with that of this one solitary life…

And the paragraph continues on from here. It is embedded in a chapter. There is no title “One Solitary Life.” It would be interesting to try to discover when it picked this up. Maybe this is the same time when it became (un)officially “anonymous.”