The commonwealth. (Scotland Neck, N.C.) 1896-1929, 1896-12-24
CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS.
ALL THROUGH JESUS.
.EMMANUEL--GoD WITH U.s."
Some Rambling Thoughts.
BY "NEMO."
(Copyrighted.)

, (Copyrighted.)
(These "Thoughts," by layman
are read in five hundred thousanc
homes, scattered in every State of the
Union. In this county they will be
found week by week In the columns o1
this paper only, as we have made ar
rangements with the author for theil
exclusive publication.)
To you whose hearts are crushed
with dumb sorrows that you cannot
tell to you whose burdens are heavy
and chafing; to you whose way Is mar
row and dark to you who are puzzled
as to the meaning of lite and your own
existence to you write.
| Be patient at this season OF rest and
diversion to ponder the words of a hum
ble soul gazing upward to interpret to
himself the lightning-fash of unani-
NOUS thought that leaps from country
to country at Christmas-tide.
The great and the head-wise are often
wrong while the humble and obscure
serve to make and transmit the public
opinion that gradually overthrows error
Note that the wise men were turned
aside to Jerusalem while the simple
shepherds, patiently doing their weari-
some duties by night, untroubled by
the puzzling questions of the Magl.
learned more than these about "peace
and goodwill"
Since their day each age has through
its ecisest tried to recreate and interpret
anew the fragmentary career of the
Iowly man. They have darkened his
counsel with words, they have smoth-
cred the breadth of his purpose, they
have tried to wall around the sea of his
goodness, they have attempted to seal
up and cunhne the sunshine of truth
But over against tho inaiters of light
the monopolists of heaven, the head
wise interpreters, must be set the heart
of the common people, who, like the
man born blind, cannot argue down
sophistries and puzzle out intricate
faiths, but can simply fall back upon
,eace and goodwill, ''whereas / was
blind now [ see." Because he was so
real man, tempted like themselves,
the great common heart has held fast
to him through centuries of rapine and
licentiousness among his professed In
terpreters, through ages of creed-mak-
ing and creed breaking, through cycles
If bloodshed and persecution by the
professed exponents OF "peace and good
will" Have miracles ceased? 1t is
miracle that any of his plain teachings
should still live; yet steadily the light
has climbed the mountain sides of per-
version and now shines full strongly
down into the valley of the shadow of
death that we traverse.
Because then his friends were the
lowly, his mourners the tainted and the
bereft, his most faithful servants
through all ages the outcasts and the
obscure because all this Is the Peoples
Age, the age of democracy when the
right to think and to learn Is no longer
denied to us by the lofty ones. may it
rot have come to pass that this time OF
Ill times most remote from the customs,
the ideas that surrounded Jesus, Is the
best fitted after all to measure the length
and breadth Of the announcement of
''peace and goodwill that has so long
remained echoless.
burdened workers? Whatever else Sec
tarles may discover in him, to this soul
he seems to be "just one of u.s." We
believe that his temptations we're not
mere theatric displays, that his suffer
ing was not feigned. We know what
agony is, not less did he; in our cases
we can too often trace it back to a
breach of law, but not so could he, and
thus the greater poignancy in his suf-
ferings. We do not lower him by thus
thinking of him, but we raise ourselves
to higher, nobler humanity. Surely
that was the work he came to do
Because he was a man, manhood is
glorious; because he triumphed over
evil, manhood is helped to trample
temptation under foot because he re-
mained pure and undefiled, there is
ever just before us an exemplar to copy.
We discover him to be no splitter of
theological hairs no creator and enfor-
Ger of a set belief save in God, the IA
ther of all, from which cause we are
His sons, and brothers to Jesus. Deeds,
not creeds deeds are creeds,'' his for
ward cry. Ills creed enough to see in
him a career to initiate. "Creeds first,