The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-12-25


government of a most Christian
king" The horror of it is in our ears.
The ghastliness of it is almost before
our very eyes. 1t happens because
those people would go out of bondage.
And is this better or other than the tor
tured death of the other thousands
who do not greet this Christmas morn
on the fair plains or desolate Mills
across the seas because they would not
admit that Of the one great God Ma
homet is the prophet? There Is an
other profoundly Christian nation, on
whose bosom the great spiritual up
rising Of the Reformation was Graded.
and whose observance Of the sacred
proprieties is most complete. Her
Christmas gift to earth Is a sword, the
rape Of q city from an alien and I'M
godly people, and a proclamation by
her war lord that the Almighty has
chosen him specially as military ruler
of his terrestrial provinces. Further
away sits "holy Russia" devoutest
of the peoples, with her sacred images
for reverence in the hut Of the most
wretched peasant. and the orthodox
faith a doctrine of the state. The
Christmas Of good will finds her has
tening to the work Of conquest and
daring deadIiest dangers for the lust
Of power. Then there is that sane
timonious nation whose colonists and
missionaries have girdled the earth
with churches as we'll as military
is due to her consciousness that she
has come late to the feast Of the dt-
vision of the spoil And are our hands
clean of the hint or hope Of taking
this brother Of ours by the throat,
wherever and whomever he may be,
and demanding Of him not his life in
righteous service Of justice and mercy
and love, but his possessions to safe an
appetite and vanity that are as old
and as gross and empty as the records
of mankind?
Let us be assured that this Christmas
motto Of ours was not for a day or
a century; not for black man or white;
not for a simple age or a complicated
life, but for eternity 1t is the law
of life material as we'll as spiritual;
and in history as we'll as in faith 1t is
the wielders Of the sword who perish
by it; it is they who forget Justice and
the weightier matters of the law whose
tomb is with the forgotten dead; it is
they alone who find that love is the
law Of the universe, and seek for peace
and kindly fellowship and the estab-
lishment Of justice and kindness be-
tween man and man, beneath whose
straining hands there grows into fair
and noble proportions either a great
faith or an enduring realm. It is be-
cause the belief in this, the supreme
knowledge Of it is deep down IN every
hollow Of the waves as upon their crest,
toward the dream Of it's sages and
poets and prophets and seers. 1t is
because this Is indeed the infinite
spirit in the plastic hearts Of men that
they go on building the temple of hui
manity, while states rise and fall and
boast their little glories and pass into
oblivion and nothingness. When this
becomes the sole guide of the lawgiver
as we'll as the priest, of a. man in the
counting room as we'll as Of man in the
closet before his Maker, 1ife's mystic
ries will drop away, it's contradictions
unfold in beauty and it's purpose stand
serene and changeless.
Today the man who is reverent in
the face of the unknown, be he loyal
to a creed or simply to the best that
is within him and the power that
gives it its unanswerable sanction.
should have heed to the legend, Good
will toward men" That is the first
and hardest to learn of the Christmas
messages. When he has learned to
love his brother whom he has seen, 1t
will be time for one to consider his
state OF heart toward the God whom
he has not seen. When the nations
have put away with horror the bar
barism of aggression; when to ask for
liberty is to receive it in overlooking
measure: when oppression anywhere
is q signal for a great concert of the
truly Christian powers to end it for
ever; when the visible desire Of ma
tional greatness shall not be the &C
Quirement of the greatest possible
wealth in the least possible time, but
how TO discover the weakest and the
neediest and lift them up to where
they may catch one ray of the light
that does not fail; when individual sue
cess and riches are sought for mainly
that the opportunities of the less for
tunate may be enlarged; when men
have made an Offering of their pas
sions on the high altar above which is
enshrned no hideous idol, ancient or
modern, but only the mystic light
within which there broods the love
of man to man, then and not until then
will human tongue repeat without pro-
fanation the glorious message. Peace
on earth, good will toward men," Then
and then only will 1t not be sacrilege
to ring all the bells and shout to a new