Here Was A Man

(album: The Christmas Spirit - 1963)

(Joy to the world, the Lord is come)
Here was a man, a man
Who was born in a small village
The son of a peasant woman
He grew up in another small village
Until he reached the age of thirty
He worked as a carpenter

Then for three years
He was a traveling minister
But he never traveled more
Than two hundred miles from
Where he was born and
Where he did go he usually walked

He never held political office
He never wrote a book
Never bought a home
Never had a family
He never went to college
And he never set foot inside a big city

Yes, here was a man

Though he never did one on the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He had nothing to do with this world
Except through the divine purpose
That brought him to this world

While he was still a young man
The tide of popular opinion turned against him
Most of his friends ran away
One of them denied him
One of them betrayed him
And turned him over to his enemies
Then he went through the mockery of a trial

And was nailed to a cross between two thieves
And even while he was dying
His executioners gambled
For the only piece of property
That he had in this world
And that was his robe his purple robe

When he was dead
He was taken down from the cross
And laid in a borrowed grave
Provided by compassionate friends
More than nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today he's a centerpiece of the human race
Our leader in the column to human destiny

I think, I'm well within the mark when I say
That all of the armies that ever marched
All of the navies that ever sailed the seas
All of the legislative bodies that ever sat
And all of the kings that ever reigned
All of them put together have not affected
The life of man on this earth
So powerfully as that one solitary life

Here was a man
(Joy to the world, the Lord is come)