The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1897-12-22
MoRGANTowN, VIRGINIA,
A Lay mau's Christmas.
BY MEMO. -

BY MEMO
A LAYMAN'ss CHRISTMAS.
Join again the angel chorus;
Tell Of Gods great gift to men;
For the time is now before us,
When the Christchild comes again.
Ever bringing to the nations
Thoughts Of sweet simplicity,
As they pour their glad oblations,
At the shrine OF infancy.
Sing the Joyous Christmas carol,
How the great one came TO earth,
Not in glorious apparel
But by Iowly human birth.
Unto all men manifesting.
That Gods greatest gift is still
Nothing but spirit resting,
Child-like, on Fathers will.
So we vain and hayward morials,
In earth's wilderness beguiled,
Safe may reach the golden portals
Helped and guided by child.
Seasons revolye and we once more
greet the festival OF ssTbe Child"
Who can exaggerate its hold upon the
people who celebrate it? There is not
a mother whose birth-pangs are vivid
in her memory but that is moved with
compassion for out-cast Mary, remote
from tender ministrations in the
hour of her anguish; there is not
child whose little fingers reach out in
awe to touch the latest tiny babe in
the household, but that 1t finds the
manger cradle at Bethlehem thing
to marvel at; there is not a man who
surrenders himself to thought but
that sees world transformation re-
sulting from this squalid birth and
the legions that have gathered
around it; there is not a childless
woman whose heart is hungry for the
pressure of little face against her
bosom, but that can hear in the mes
sage of the virgin angels. her own
errand to the world - to proclaim
peace and good will, and to ever see
deeper even than the contented moth
er into the holiness and possibilities
of all children.
So
Over all virtues let us set simple
ity. Great messages, great truths,
great happenings are ever simple in
their elements. Simplicity is the
grandeur OF the great and the great
ness of the obscure. 1t is the charm
of prattling childhood: it is the dia-
dem OF the learned.
Now if we divest Jesus of the CON-
pick theories of warning commenta-
tors, strip him OF bewildering creeds,
which in any event never came into
existence until hundreds of years af-
ter his death, we find his message to
the world ore of intense simplicity.
Drawing in our minds from the cares
of the conflict of life for few mo-
ments, possibly we may find an inspir-
alton to effort by looking back at this
man who led the world into broad
truth whose simple character is after
ages of thought forcing itself to the
front just because it is so simple.
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Onward from the narrow thought
of the Jews who selfishly regarded the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as
their own peculiar possession and
whose character VS. often outlined
as little more than that Of blood
thirsty leader of a lighting nation
onward from the myriad deities of
reverential Asiatic and European
minds who sought by the very mul
titude of Gods to include ali truth
onward with greater clearness than
all seekers who had preceded him, he
led the worlds thought to assert the
existence OF one God of one universe.
He did not argue him to exist; he as
sumed him as the simplest explana-
tion Of the powers, visible and invisi-
BILE, of mighty creation.
-
Furthermore, as omniscience, om-
Impotence, omnipresence are beyond
the powers of our finite minds to
grasp, Jesus makes God greater than
the widest theories of eager souls.
and yet simpler than the simplest in
depreciation Of him, by announcing
him as "Father" and as Love"
The troubled soul can understand
that, and rest. The !" Father" chas-
tens his little ones that they may de-
velop. He breaks down his truth into
small fragments to suit their growing
powers, he interprets thorny ways
into upward paths, his love makes all
things work together for good to those
who love him. Every woman heart
can understand him as "Love," for
in her love has been the ascent Of
man" and in his love has been the as
cent of the soul.
More simple by infinite extent than
the complicated sacrifices and PEN
ances of other and earlier Interpreters,
was his answer to those who inquired
the way to eternal life. The simple
acts of every day kindness done to the
least of Gods children. were the pass
ports thither. He made "the child"
the thing for humanity to reverence.
While other systems cast children to
the beasts He made of them moral
monarchs whose service called furth
meekness and gentleness, and whose
worship united men and women on
equal terms.
-
After nineteen centuries we are
only drifting back to his simple
standards of the first. Out of the fer
ment of thought and the fury of con-
flict that men have waged, is surging
up like the dry land out Of chaos,
greater simplicity and therefore great
er power. We see that to have been
a ruler of a nation is less than to
have lived to hate evil; that to live
without purpose, though never so
luxuriously, is less in the Divine es-
innate than the hesitating caress Of
the least of US who would sooth an
others sorrow: that it is better to
die for truth than to live by a lie:
that our Father watches our feeble
efforts with tender eye and judges ac-
tions by aspirations and not by re-
suits. that Glove" is over all, guild
ing where reason fails.
~
Not like Buddha, did he preach
inaction, nor like Confucius did he