A Christmas Message.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 December 1921, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Christmas Message.

BETHLEHEM. (By Rev. A. H. Collins.) Places linked with the memory of great men and noble deeds have a significance and charm peculiarly their own, and east a spell over successive generations. In imagination, we re-visit these sacred shrines, and re-tell the stories which make them classic. Westminster and St. Paul’s are deal' to the heart of Britishers the world over, for beneath the marble floor of the one sleeps the dust of England’s mighty dead, and from the glorious dome of the other the princes of the English pulpit have proclaimed the Evangel of the Christ. Who has not read, with laughter and with tears, the idyllie stories of Drumtoehty and Thrums, and given thanks for lives so simple and gentle, and so altogether true? As empty vessels retain the odor of the sweet perfumes they once contained, so places abide fragrant with the life and deeds of men and women long since departed. This ‘is emphatically true of the Land of the Ideal and the Holy. There is hardly a spot in all “those holy fields that is not made immortal by some word of piercing insight,■ or some glorious deed of love; and now that the Christmas bells are chiming, the thoughts of men will instinctively turn to the little town far away in the uplands of Judezi, and con over anew the idylls of Bethlehem—stories more ancient and more moving than any merely human records have to tell. There, on a narrow limestone ridge, six miles to the south-west of Jerusalem, and three thousand feet above sea level, stands the straggling village of flat-roofed, lime-washed cottages once known as “Ephrath,” and now as “Bethlehem.” Lovely stories cluster round that spot, simple stories of human joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, loves and losses; stories which earey us back to the dim past, and the drowsy, slumberous, unchanging East, where life was so unlike our own, though human nature was ever the same. It was there Jacob emptied his heart to fill a grave. In its fertile fields Ruth gleaned, and Boaz told his tale of love to a simple maiden whose cheeks grew roses. It was the home of Israel’s greatest warrior, bard end king. By the Bethlehem gate David’s rough men wrought one of the most chivalrous deeds of ancient story, and David himself one of the most romantic and bravely unselfish. When ihe Roman yoke galled the necks of Abraham’s sons, and the Roman lash cut into their quivering fleshy there came to the little hill-town of Bethlehem one whose advent was heralded by choirs of angels, singing in sweet antiphony: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” Poetry and art have idealised the story, and robbed it of some

cf its native grace and charm. Heathen mythology tells how the bees gathered to suck honey from His lips, and strangled serpents lay about His cradle. Christian legend of His supernormal Majesty, and the halo of celestial light that circled His brow, as in “the Holy Night” of Coreggio; thus flooding the cattle stall with unearthly brightness. But God’s visitations are seldom according to human imaginings and :he Messiah’s birth was no exception. It was “the hiding of His power,” yet in that coming a world was born. In the words of Jean Paul Richter, “the life . of Christ concerns One who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hands Empires off their hinges and turned the stream of centuries out of its channels, and still governs the ages.” Well might the sad and weary world celebrate in song and story and roundelay the coming of the Wonder Child, for His advent has changed the face of life and death. It has put a song on lips long drawn with pain, and kindled in our midmost dark the quenchless flame of a new and immortal hope. For Christmas is not only historic, it is prophetic, too. ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men!” Yet Europe is still an armed eamp, with millions of men trained and disciplined in the science of slaughter, and prepared at a moment’s notice, and with no personal provocation, to fly at one another’s throat and tear and slay till fields and vineyards run red 1 Is this the sequel to the first Christmas hymn? To answer “Yes” would be as false and shallow as the taunt flung into the face of the advocates of peace that they are “the-peace-at-any-priee party.” No! The Prince of Peace has tvrought marvels, and some of his greatest achievements have been according to the herald angels’ song. The history of nations shows conclusively that the teachings of that beautiful Syrian saint are winning their way. A gentler spirit is being incorporated in the life < f the world. History tells how the great Roman world, corrupt as it was, and ready to perish, lived long enough to see initiated within its borders some of the great reforms of which Christ spoke. History tells how chattel slavery died out? of civilised society; how marriage became honorable; how the brutal sports of the Colossium came to an end; how wreckage and piracy on the high seas gave place to friendly lights on every dangerous coast; how blood feuds and duelling eame to tn end; how prisons have been cleansed; how foul diseases have been attacked, and nursing raised to a fine art; how drunkenness, instead of being a subject of coarse and ribald jest, is now regarded with abhorrence. These are some of the fruits of the Christian spirit, and if it be objected that in neither of these directions is reform complete be it remembered Christianity has not spoken its last word, nor will its last word he spoken until the weapons of war have been transformed into the instruments of peaceful industry. One day a blaze of moral illumination will flood the minds of men on the subject of international strife, and they will come to see the shocking profanity of thirsting for the 'blood of men, who, like themselves, ushered in the battle morning with the voice of prayer. Events at Washington and “the League of Nations” are big with promise and hope. Meanwhile we do well to possess our souls in patience. In the ancient world/the sense of human brotherhood was a lost chord; indeed, the very string seemed lacking from the lute of life. To-day it is the “note” men are straining their ears to catch, and, catching, to repeat. The pilgrim of the ages will yet struggle out of “the slough of despond” on the side of the city celestial, “whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise.” And so, in the classic phrase of the classic Bob Crachitt, we greet our readers and say: •‘God Bless Everybody.”