New-York tribune., 1891-12-25
WHAT CHRISTMAS DAY MEANS.

That Birth nearly nineteen centuries ago,
whose anniversary we observe to-day, what
means it? To Christianity, far more than can
be expressed, most surely. God revealing Him
self as man, an atonement for sin. salvation
through suffering hope Of immortality, and
that wondrous organism, the Church, which,
perssting through so many vicissitudes and
changes, has played 50 large part in the drama
Of human life. All this and vastly more Christ
mas Day means to the Christian. But we will
leave the exposition of these great themes to
the clergy, to whom they more properly belong,
and will confne ourselves to thought or two
in regard to the influence which the birth of
Christ has had on the great secular world.
What then, does the world owe to Christian
ity? A better and higher moral code than it
possessed before? Surely not. Much of that
code is found imbedded in the old Mosaic legis-
lation, and even the Lords Prayer is said to
have been compiled from similar prayer in the
synagogue worship. The lofty moral maxims
of Christianity may be paralleled in the teach
ings of COnfucus and OF Buddha and of Braha-
manism. A learned Anglican divine has lately
written book to prove that the Greek dramatists
taught an essentially Christian morality, and it
logans that Socrates was not far from the
Kingdom Of Heaven. We no longer hear whole
sale denunciatOns Of heather morality; on
the contrary, there is full and generous recog-
milton of all that was true and good in it.
But though we may even find suggestions of
the Golden Rule long before Christ built His
ethical system on it, there is no evidence that
it bore any ethical fruit The moral codes that
preceded Christianity lofty and pure as they
were in many respects, We're singularly barren
of results. Their teachings were esoteric, and
appealed only to tie few. Their noble philOso-
ply of life and conduct had no power to seize
and mould masses of men into forms Of good
ness and righteousness There was 10 divine
leaven in it, capable of leavening tho whole
lump Of humanity. All it did was to produce
here and there few sages and philosophers, and
moraists, who stood OH a lofty eminence, and
surveyed with cold disdain the moral degi ada
tion of the world. Nor were they themselves
always proof against the seductions Of evil.
Indeed the whole history of the old philosophers
may be summed in that tragic confession of the
great apostle to the Genties al know that in
me Gwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me but how to perform that which
is good, find not. For the good that would,
do not but the evil which l would not that |
do Oh, wretched man that | am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death 2'
We would not be understood as saying that
Christianity introduced absolutely no new moral
teaching. What we do say is that much of its
moral teaching had been familiar 30 men for
agas and had done little or nothing 10 regen-
crate the world. Plainly, therefore, it is not its
teaching alone that has made Christianity what
ii is to-day, but something back of that teach
ing which has given it life and potency The
theolesians describe this something by various