The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1882-12-30
Thoughts on Christmas.

Thoughts on Christmas.
(From the London Daily Telegraph, Dec. rs, 1861
1t is now some eighteen hundred years
since the world began to count its
Christmas tides. If chronology had not
Numbered we might call the present by
it's actual numerical; but it is out by
some three or four years in the annals
of our Christian era. However, we are
certainly verging fast towards the two
thousandth anniversary of the birth of
Christ. Far back in time, but neal by
familiarity seems that epoch, that point
which divides the past into ancient and
modern. AS long ago as stretched the
ages of Assyrian and Egyptian dynas-
ties, twice as long as the rule of Rome
and still the story is as ~"household to
us as the things which happened yester-
day. Who cannot conjure. up, at a word,
it's scenes? Jerusalem +; Nazareth the
long file of camels. striding over the
dark desert by night, towards that soil
tary star glittering SO suddenly and
with such mystery to beckon these
swarthy lords from the Orient hills!
Who has not made from all the old and
new masters his own picture of the way
side inn at Bethlehem? The crowding
pilgrims, the patient cattle, the traffic,
the dust, the tumult; and in the midst
of all the Christ and His Hebrew
mother? And how quietly we receive,
on the strength of a story made for all
times and peoples, Il" the alteration of the
Wise Men" We never wonder to find
these grave and reverend seniors clad
in early Italian or medieval costume, pre-
senting on Bonded knee-a salutation
unknown to the East-jewels and con-
f~ections of the manufacture of "the
streets of the jewellers" at Florence,
or the Dom Platz of Cologne. What,
if under porticoes which the Romans
only built, horses are waiting which
the Magi would not ride and the Ma
donna smiles upon the wistful travellers
in a Greek "peplus," her features and
the features of her Divine Child pro-
foundry European? What of all this?
We are no more disconnected than to
know that the three wise men were
buried at Aix-la-C hapelle. We listen to
the tale like children, who heal an under
meaning in every word of their mar
rator's story. Beyond and behind it all
is that eternal revelation, that ineffable
message of love, which is the heart and
soul of the religion which sprang from
the manger and blossomed at the Cross.
Worlds wisdom falters in the presence
of that truth which the best of US can
only half comprehend. Tell it as ye
will, signori, the painters! Tell it as We
list, monsignori, the preachers! At this
season of Christmas we shall listen as
to our children, who say that on Christ
mas Eve the dark-eyed oxen talk to-
gether in the stall, and the bird who
stained his breast red with chirping on
the cross sings all night long in the fir
thicket. What might not be, indeed, in
picture or reality, on the anniversary of
the night when the shepherds tended
their focks by Jordan, when they heard,
seemed to hear, out of heaven that
voice which frighted Pan from his Greek
and Apollo from his oracles?
d" Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, goodwill toward men,"
Divine ambassagel-august and awful
misunderstanding down to all times
and languages the diapason of the har-
mony of heaven and sarthl Two thou
sand years Or so agone, too!-and war as
much in fashion as when Titus sowed
salt on the foundation of the Temple.
Two thousand years ago the shepherds
heard that song, known for Divine to
them and to US as soon as uttered and
transmitted. And since then ever SO
many wars. History indeed is over
powered with them, and shuffies Minerva
out of her page to make
room for Mars. Only in our time some
half dozen good imperial dueUa have
been begun and ended, and one is now
pending (the American civil wary which
may eclipse them all in horror and in
evil consequences. Better war than
peace" sings indeed the laureate, and
a body corporate, over-fed
with luxury and ~self-conceit, has needed
the regimen of bloodletting. X 4 x
But meanwhile two thousand years have
with all their sowing of good
seed. partly talked of, and partly got
under ground, and out of all this spiritual
no blossom so frequent as
that "blood-red blossom of war;
What if we tried our own hand at q
this Christmas-tide? 4 semi-laic
we observe, is preparing
to furnish the clergy with sketches of
sermons-hebdomadal sermons, where
upon they may pile the muscular argu-
and the integumentaltrope. We
have a skeleton sermon which we
should like to bring to notice. 1t is a
too practical for the age--a thought
perhaps too just and charitable-and it
.denounces some fashionable p~eccadilloes