A CHRISTMAS TALK

N Christmas day it is difficult for a man

ON

who has any of the spirit of the gracious season in him to think of anything else than Christmas. And if he thinks to any purpose, he must see that the festival is based on something more than a mere beautiful sentiment. The world has kept it in reverent remembrance for centuries, not because men have always been kind-hearted, gentle, loving and generous, but rather because they were deeply convinced that something of transcendent importance happened in Bethlehem two thousand years. ago. So far is Christmas from being the product of the good qualities of human nature, that the fact is that those qualities are themselves very largely the result of the great event which is commemorated on Christmas day. Men did not create the feast because they had its spirit in them-it was the feast that created the spirit in which it is kept. If that is so, it is well for

us all to try to realize as far as we can the significance of the coming into the world of the Founder of our religion. For the day is fundamentally a religious day—a holy day. To strip it of that significance is to rob it of all its power and beauty-to put it, indeed, in process of extinction. As a day of mere secular rejoicing it can not survive, for such rejoicing is certain, sooner or later, to become selfish, and when selfishness reigns, Christmas will be gone. Our Fourth of July has largely ceased to mean anything, for the reason that we have lost the sense of what it stands for. It has suffered as a great and dignified national festival by our very method of celebrating it. This is largely true also of Thanksgiving day and Memorial day. The same fate will befall Christmas unless we are careful to keep in mind all that the great festival means. It can not outlive the overthrow of the sacred principle on which it rests. A secular Christmas would be no Christmas at all.

If it be true, as is held by some, that it is difficult to-day to get this thought into the minds of men, the fact only proves that we have already lost the true Christmas

idea. That this is so to some extent can hardly be doubted. Many of us have been captivated by the material aspect of the festival, and it means little to us except a season of eating and drinking. Since the days of Dickens the social element-which is, however, vastly important—has been exaggerated. Or rather this is true of one side of the social element. For the day is social-social because religious -in the deep as well as in the superficial sense. The Christmas spirit is a social spirit. We can not, for instance, be kind, unless we are kind to some one else, kindness being a matter of relationships. We are, therefore, not wrong in emphasizing the social element. But we are wrong in making so much of the purely secular side of the festival. As has been said, if men do not see this it is because they are blind to the deeper truth, the truth on which everything else rests. Christmas means Christ, and the question for us all to ask is, what does Christ mean? For on the answer to that age-old question depends, as is believed, the fate of the feast. To this conclusion logic seems inevitably to lead. We are not honoring a sentiment, not merely giving play to our emotions,

but celebrating a birthday, the birthday of a Being who has meant more to the world than any other being who was ever born into it. That is why the day is Christmas, and that is why it is a great church feast-one of the greatest of her feasts. If the birth had never taken place there would have been no Christmas. It is a holy day because it is the birthday of a King, of One who gave a new impetus and a new direction to human life. No man can keep the feast properly unless his soul is filled with reverence and bowed with humility. Joy, of course, there must be-but a solemn and a Christian joy.

Of course, it is true that the narrowly orthodox often make very large claims—claims that can not fairly be allowed. For many, if not most, of what are known as the great Christian virtues, existed in the world long before Christianity was born. Nothing is gained by ignoring that very obvious truth. God was always in man, and so of the godlike qualities. The light of which St. John writes always lightened men-never was wholly obscured. Even the golden rule is, we are told, found in earlier religions. Sacrifice has been the law ever since

the conscious life of man began on earth. Men have under all religions sacrificed themselves for their families, their country and their God -or their gods. The capacity for sacrifice is, therefore, native to all men. Gentleness, kindliness and love are much more than two thousand years old. They are human traits-human precisely because they are divine. All this must be frankly conceded. What would have happened had Christ not been born, we can not know. It is certain that what was then known as civilization was on the eve of a great breakdown. The old religions-except the Jewish —had failed, and were passing away. Reference is now made only to the Western world. Something, perhaps much, might have been saved. The Jewish religion at least would not have perished, and there is in that much that might have helped humanity to rise. But what would have taken the place of the religions of Greece and Rome? Even with them gone it is possible that humanity, which in one way or another would have been guided, controlled and inspired by God, would have pulled itself together and gone forward on its conquering march. As to that we can not say. All that