The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning. Saturday, December 24, 1887. CHRISTMAS DAY.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 84, 24 December 1887, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning.

Saturday, December 24, 1887. CHRISTMAS DAY.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s. Thy God's, and truth’s.

Once again the festive season is nigh—-to-morrow is Christmas Day, and the bells of all Christendom will ring out the old familiar carol of peace on earth, goodwill toward men in one long unbroken song.

Christmas with its merry-making, its good cheer and gladness, and as the old familiar carols strike the ear what associations will come with it, our childhood’s home in some other part of the earth (most of us to the British Isles) is brought vividly to our mind, and our hearts will be glad or sad as it may be, But as the bells do chime the chant another scene is being enacted—the armies of the great nations preparing to wage their dreadful trade of wholesale murder. Millions of men trained to the use of arms for the destruction of their fellow men will be eagerly waiting for the signal to commence, and in many a place the chime of " peace on earth, goodwill toward men ” will be drowned by the tread of armed men pushing to the frontier in case of the sudden declaration of war, which, when it comes, will rent the hearthstone of the whole continent. And. perhaps, before the last echo of the chime will have died away, we will hear the cry of the friendless orphan, and will read the ghastly train of woes that follow at the heels of war.

But to how many in this world will the word Christmas bring nothing but unpleasant remembrances. The year has been one of depression, and many who did a year or two ago look forward to Christmas time as the happiest portion of the year, will now listen to the carols and feel almost overpowered by the sadness that rush upon them. What a hollow mockery the words "goodwill toward men" will seem to thousands, Goodwill toward men ; but very few have goodwill toward the starved and cold thousands in the large centres in the Northern Hemisphere. The poor wretches will have no gladness, and instead of the merry-making and good cheer that is associated with the season, they will eat a crust of bread, perhaps unable to obtain even that, and while they are sick and tired and hungry, the rest of the world will be making merry. How thankful we ought to be that we are not surrounded by that abject poverty that exists in the old countries. 1 is easy for us in this country to say with singleness of heart “ Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,” for there is not one family in Poverty Bay, if they have but the true spirit, but can make it “ A merry Christmas.” And we hope all will feel the peculiar blessings of this season and have A Merry Christmas.