A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas Part 3

What would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days.

The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor.

The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.

Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar.

There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through the world and destroy every church and Christian inst.i.tution: nearly every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and be wrapped in night.

Do we want such a world? Can we believe that G.o.d would make such a world and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the light, and with no language but a cry"?

XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?

But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes of glory to G.o.d in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may well give us pause.

But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.

The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm pa.s.ses their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.

The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up in the heart of humanity as a pa.s.sion and is at the work of clearing away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon and the Kaiser--mark the anticlimax!--are gone, their swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a majestic voice to-day to all these nations and a.s.serting the waste and wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never a.s.serted before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its notes, "Glory to G.o.d in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased."

XXI. The Light of the World

Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.

Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions, pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.

Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the human heart cried out that life

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor cert.i.tude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck in the vast ma.s.s of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle--symbol and prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.

This Light has been s.h.i.+ning nineteen hundred years and it has made a wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and its bright s.p.a.ces correspond with and are largely caused by the s.h.i.+ning of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.

As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so from the pierced hand of Christ there s.h.i.+nes a blaze of light that penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are scintillations of this Light.

O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of bitterness and despair. s.h.i.+ne upon us with the light of thy truth and thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our Father's house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.