The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-12-23
BELLEVUE, La,
THURSDAY, ::::DECEMBER q, 1886.
christmas--Peace and Good Will.

Cnr1SImaS--f0dC6 anu uUOu WILL
The changeful weeks and months
have come and gone with all their
alternating shade and shine, and the
great Festal Day of Christendom
will soon dawn again. Everywhere
throughout the Christian world men
and women and children are awaken
ing again to the thought and memo
DRY OF
"ThOse holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross
Next Saturday from Christian pull
pits throughout the world the glad
tidings of great joy will be repub-
ished to listening thousands, and
men will hear, heedful Or unheedfully
according to their kind, and will go
their ways with grateful or indiffer-
ent hearts as they have ever done and
ever will do to the end of the chap
ter. On the province of the pulpit we
will not trespass. There is preaching
enough in the world, for "great is the
company Of the preachers" Our
sphere is an humble one, aud our
moralizing of a less didactic sort
But we, too, have something to say
about Christmas. It is one of the
landmarks of life, and we, who are
:sthe abstract and brief chronicle of
the time," cannot pass it by without
a commemorative word.
It is not in human nature, perhaps,
TO contemplate anniversaries of any
sort without a certain kind of sad
ness. The mile stones that mark the
road of life are mute but eloquent
signs of the transformers of exis-
tence. Onward forever, ceaselessly,
pauselessly, flows the tide of time
bearing us with it to the hidden
bourn. Every Christmas day marks
another year travelled on the inevita-
BE journey, and there are few
to whom the advancing shades do
not speak word of warning. The
true significance of life is long mis-
understood, often missed, never per-
haps fully appreciated even by the
wisest. Sometimes it is "a spot of
sunlight travelling over a dark ground,
sometimes it is the black shadow of
single cloud, the one speck in the
great ocean of light, one wonders
which, after all, human life is" And
this life we see slipping away from
us faster as the years go by and the
Christmas days multiply behind us.
The thought must startle whenever
it comes.
But there is another and deeper
element of sadness even than this.
AS each memorial day arrives it is
greeted by fewer eyes that love us,
and to none of us is the new day
quite the same as the old. Some
there may be to whom it is brighter,
but to many-ah! how many-it is
dark with the darkness of death
There are some to whom we gave our
Christmas greeting year ago whom
to-day we cannot reach with any hui
man message of peace and good will.
They have broken the bands of NOR
tallty, they have solved the eternal
mystery, they cannot hear any longer
our sobs or our laughter.
So it must ever be with our festi-
walls somewhere and to some of U.S.
Life is built On death, and side by
side with Joy walks Grief with equal
foot. Only the very needless or the
exceptionally fortunate can speak of
sthe pleasures of memory" and not
sigh involuntarily at the irony of the
words. "Give us, oh! give us but
yesterday" is the cry of many
more than the prodigals who have
wasted their youth It is the cry of
desolate love, of bereaved humanity,
Of the stricken and despairing heart.
The shadow on the dial will not go