Connecticut western news., 1898-12-29

WaIu COuTs6, t6llluB us buab npIluB anu summer are coming. Oh, what forest of Christmas trees-trees bearing 12 manner of fruits-now standing throughout the households of Christen- dom r Oh, what hosannas are ascending on this day, the Christmas of Saw tours birth, this year blending with the Sabbath of Saviour's resurrection Do you not feel the thrill, the glow, the enlargement, the triumph of this day, and will not your charities go forth un- til you sympathize with the quaint old Christmas carol-so old do not know who wrote it---its title, "Scatter Your Crumbs:"
 Midst the freezing sleet and snow
 The timid robin comes.
 In pity drive him not away,
 But scatter out your crumbs
 And leave your door upon the latch
 For whosoever comes.
 The poorer they, more welcome give
 And scatter out your crumbs.
 All have to spare, none are too poor,
 When want with winter comes,
 And life is never all your own.
 Then scatter out the crumbs.
 Soon winter falls upon your life,
 The day of reckoning comes;
 Against your sins by high decree,
 Are weighed those scattered crumbs.
 Christmas Bells.
 Can the angel which St. John saw with measuring rod measuring heaven or hath any seraphio intelligence fac ulty enough to calculate the magnifi- cent effect which 1,898 Christmas mornings and 1898 Christmas moons and 1898 Christmas nights have had on our poor old planet? Let us thank God that we live to see this Christmas, the bells of which ring out so clear, so inspiring, so jubilant-bells of family reunion, bells of church jubilee, bells of national victory. But had either Mel chior or Balthasar or Caspar, the three wise men of the east, who had put down the sacks of aromatic frankincense or bags of chinking gold by the bare feet of the infant Lord, reported to Herod' $ palace the place where they found the child the swift horses of executioners would have carried death to that babe cradled in Mary's arm, and the Bethle- hem star would have been a star of tragedy, and instead of song of nativ- ity, which the nations are now chant ing, this day would be chiefly memora- ble for the shriek of bereft motherhood.
 Still further remarking upon the mar row escape which you and 1 had and all the world had in that babes escape, let me say that had that Herodic plot been successful the one instance of ab- solutely perfect character would never have been unfolded. The world had enjoyed the lives of many splendid men before Christ came. It had admired its Plato among philosophers, its Mithri- dates among heroes, it's Herodotus among historians, its Phidias among sculptors, its Homer among poets, its Esop among fabulists, its Eschylus among dramatists, it's Demosthenes among orators, it's Asculapi1s among physicians, yet among the contempora- ries of those men there were two opin- ions, as now there are two opinions, concerning every remarkable man. There were plenty in those days who said of them, "He cannot speak," or He cannot sing" or "He cannot phi losophize, or "His military achieve ment was a mere accident" or "His chisel, his pen, his medical prescrip- tim, never deserved the applause giv- en." But concerning this full grown Christ, whose life was launched three dr,ades before that first Christmas, the moan of camels and the bleat of sheep and the low of cattle mingled with the babe's first cry. while clouds that night were resonant with music, and star pointing down whispered to star, Look, there he isl''
 A Perfect Life.
 That Christ, after the detectives of Herod and Pilate and sanhedrin had watched him by day and watched him by night, year after year, was reported innocent. It was found out that when he talked to the vagrant woman in the temple it was to tell her to Ego and sin no more," and that if he spoke with the penitent thief it was to prom ise him paradise within 24 hours, and that as he moved about he dropped ease of pain upon the invalid's pillow, or light upon the eye that lacked optic nerve, or put bread into the hands of the hungry, or took from the oriental hearse the dead young man and vitaliz- ed him and said to the widowed moth- CT, Here he js, alive and well," and she cried, My boy, my boyp' and he responded, Mother, mother p' And the sea, tossing too roughly some of his friends, by word easier than nurses word to petulant child he made it keep still. The very judge who for oth- CTS reasons allowed him to be put to death declared, "I find no fault in him." Was there ever life so thor oughly ransacked and hypercriticised that turned out to be so perfect life? Now, can you imagine what would have been the calamity to earth and heaven, what bereavement to all his tory, what swindling not only of the human race, but of cherubim and sera- phim and arohangel. if because of infer nal incursion upon the bed of that Beth- lehem babe this life of divine and glo- rious manhood had never been lived? The Christie parables would never have been uttered; the sermon on the mount, all adrip with benedictions, never preached; the golden rule, in picture frame of everlasting love, would never have been hung up for the universe to gaze upon and admire.
 Can you imagine what a soarification of the worlds literature would be the removal of all Christ ever did and said? It would tear down the most important shelves of yonder Congressional library, and of the Vatican library, and of Brit ish museum, and Berlin and Bonn and Vienna and Madrid and St. Petersburg libraries, and St. Paul's life would have been an impossibility, and his epistles would never have been written, and St. John, from the basaltic caverns of Patmos, would never have beard the seven trumpets or seen the heavenly walls with 12 layers of illnminsd orys- Q wiss sss at ths saxaI !