The Express.
London, England, 1865-12-25 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(THIS DAY.)

CHRISTMAS.
The papers to-day give Christmas the usual ready
welcome, and point oat the blessiop it should bring. The
Post wishes there was more coesciouseees amongst WI that,
N Christian people, we succeed, each in his own degree,
to a share in those works of benevolence and sympathy
which made even the human iota of Christ so great &blessing
to mankind. Our Great Master did all well ; we do what we
do with msny mistakes ; still, good is done, and if we would
but enlarge our sympathies we might do more. Try the
experiment, good reader ; make somebody the happier this
Christmas time. There is some poor relation who
would be glad of a substantial token of your remem-
brance ; or, if you are in town, there are a hundred
hard-up fellow-creatures within tea minutes' walk of your
house who would be grateful for a little neighbourly
help ; or, if you are in the country, you need not walk far
to find the cottage where some Christmas sot of good may
be acceptably done for love of Him who did so much for
love of us. But, failing these, look at the homes for the
honselees, and refuges for the lost, sod hospitals for the
sick and injured, and asylums for the blind, and deaf, and
dumb, and crippled, and idiot, and orphan. There is no
leek of scope for your bounty if you have but half a heart

and an open hand.
The Herald lids us remember the dreadful fact that
hundreds, if not thousands, die annually in London from
starvation, cold, and fatigue, the results of poverty. You
meet them in the streets at night; homeless wanderers.
shivering in scanty clothing, with pale, haggard
faces, and an eager sort of despair in their eyes:
some woman, even yet more wretched, with an expression
in which the memory of the good and the knowledge of the
1)&3 seem to strive desperately for the mastery, and the
bad has the best of it from the force of circumstances,
and her very hatred of a world which has used her so
ill; some child, perhaps, old before its time, with
features sharpened and made almost inhuman by
want. It is for us to think of these things,
and on
Christmas-day, of all days, to consider it our business, as
it should be our pleasure, to make others happy—to con
trive that even the sorrow which cannot wane may be for-
' gotten for a day, the grief which cannot change supplanted
for this once by a paasiog glimpse of joy.
The Advertiser is sure no broad churchman can enjoy his
Chriatinu-day. Let it always be bathe in mind, It says,
that to a thoroughgoing " broad churchman," a disciple of
Coleus° and Baden Powell, this celebration of the birth of
Chriat must seem • mere absurdity. To them His
birth was an ordinary event. The child born was
merely the son of • Jewish father and mother
—a teacher only • little better than Socrates. To cele-
brate His birth with so great • joy, when the birth
of Socrates or Plato is never thought of, must be, in their
eyes, • most irrational proceeding. Could their views
prevail, we should keep no more Christmas•days, no more
Easters. They acknowledge no "Saviour," inasmuch as
they want no salvation !
The Telegraph borrows from the pulpit a text, " On
earth pesos, goodwill to men," and preaches from it,
avowedly, a Christmas day sermon. We take the perora-
tion : " We have passed almost two thousand years in lis-
tening to the sublime message of this morning, and we
are very little way as yet to the ' peace on earth,' let alone
the ' goodwill in Heaves.' But two thousand years,
after all, are but a day of geology, and not even an hour of
Heaven's calendar. Nearer at least by one Christmas-II
to the perfect ' time of the glad tidings' are we this
morning ; it shines, distant but distinct, as each
star did to the Syrian shepherds—a point of pale
and trembling light in seeming, an existent, splendid,
God-made world in reality. And, best of all, as it comes
nearer, it must VMS faster. The blessed day-light is surely
approaching all that weary while when the watcher, gazing
into the Extern sky, cannot see • gleam of morning;
but when the first dubious grey tinge has once touched
the horizon, bow the glory leaps up after it into the
clouds, and how the fountains of the golden East seem to
burst forth and bathe the heavens ! It must be so, too'
with the coming of this time of happy promise; it will be
so! Never count the Chriatmas•tides ! Enough, that at
the beginning of them the secret of their ending was let
fall in music out of Heaven ! "
The Star observes that, however times and fashions
change, the Christmas celebration remains in its essence
unaltered. The boar's head bedecked with rosemary does
not now adorn many tables, the village does not turn out
to the bringing home of the yule log, and a London
woekly paper of high authority on the ways of correct so.
ciety told us some time ago that the mistletoe has long
sines been banished from the homes of all bat the moss
hopelessly vulgar. The old fashion, however, which is the
fundamental idea of the festival, remains the same as ever,
and we are glad to believe that never in England was it
more loyally and tenderly held in reverence than to-day.
It is the fashion of putting aside for the time all the meaner
and harder details of life, the mouemetting and the bar-
gaining, the striving for advancement, the competing for
prize or power, and devoting the energies and the heart
and the hand to the joyous duty of doing good.