The record-union., 1896-12-20

1
read in five hundred thousand homes, scat
tered in every State of the Union. In this
county they will be found week by week
In the columns of this paper only, as we
/ nave made arrangements with the author
Tor their exclusive publication.)
| To you whose hearts are crushed with
dumb sorrows that you cannot tell; to
you whose burdens are heavy and chat
ing; to you whose way is narrow and
| dark; to you who are puzzled as to the
meaning of life and your own exist
ence; to you write.
| Be patient at this season of rest and
diversion to ponder the words of a
humble soul gazing upward to interpret
to himself the lightning flash 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 err
ror. Note that the wise men were
| turned aside to Jerusalem while the
simple shepherds, patiently doing their
wearisome duties by night, untroubled
by the puzzling questions of the Magi.
learned more than these about peace
and good WILL
| Since their day each age has through
its wisest tried to recreate and inter
pret anew the fragmentary career of
the lowly man. They have darkened
his counsel with words, they have
ia hrao Of,
| have tried to wall around the sea of his
goodness, they have attempted to seal
| up and Confine the sunshine of truth.
But over against the limiters of light,
the monopolists of heaven, the head
wise interpreters, must be set the heart
or the common people, who, like the
man born blind, cannot argue down
sophlstries and puzzle out intricate
faiths, but can simply fall back upon
the unansWerable demonstration of
peace and good will, whereas I was
blind, now I see.'' Because he was so
| real man, tempted like themselves.
the great common heart has held fast
to him through centuries of rapine and
| righteousness among his professed in
terpreters, through ages of creed max
ing and creed breaking, through cycles
OF bloodShed and persecution by the
progressed exponents of peace and good
Will. Have miracles ceased? 1t Is a
miracle that any of his plain teachings
should still live; yet steadily the ligh.
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 also this is the Peo-
pies Age, the age of democracy, when
the right to think and to learn is no
longer denied to US by the lofty ones.
may 1t not have come to pass that this
| tlme OF all 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 good will''
that has so long remained echoless.
|
And what is he to us, we anxious.
burdened workers? Whatever else sec
tries may discover in him, to this soul
ne seems to be ''just one of u.s." We be-
aleve that his temptations were 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, Be-
cause he was man, manhood is glori-
Gus; because he triumphed over evil.
manhood is helped to trample tempta-
ton under foot; because he remained
pure and undefiled, there is Just be-
| fore us an exampler to copy We dis
cover him to be no splitter of theologi-
cal hair; no creator and enforcer of a
set belief save in God, the Father of all.
| from which cause we are His sons. and