Christmas Message From The Pulpit

Chronicle (Levin), 20 December 1948, Page 4

Christmas Message From The Pulpit

In the world and in the nation in which Jesus was born there, were acient religious systems With elaborate religious philosophies and carefully tende'd rituals and observanees, said- Rev. A. Salmond, pfeachirig in St. ' Ahrew's PhesSyterian Church * yesterday. "Tne Temple in Jerusalem and the priesthood there had great prestige and importance in the national life, but when God broke into human life He did not use i What had great prestige and . im- : portance. JesuS" was born into the 'heart of ordinary, everyday secular life. It was an imperial edict Involving taxation that brought Joseph and Mary. to- .Bethlehem arid taxation and religion had ndthing'in common. r "Our Lord," said the preacher, "was born in a ; stahle, not a Temple, and stables have beeh the scenes of the rawest, roug-h-esit actions of ordinary life. Too often men and women give way to I restlessness and self-pity in the iface of ordinary life experience bcause they feel that ordinary life 'has fallen short of their expectaitions. Elements of roughness -and i rawness they had not bargained on jcorne into ,the foreground.- Elements they" counted on, they find 'are missing and the proporbions of the varied elemerits are entirely different from what they considered they deserved.-. j "That Jesus Christ was born jhot according to human calculation, and not into the realm of What men regarded as the specirfically religious, shouid be a clear, reminder that God can break into the secular and the ordinary, and by His breaking in completely transform them."