Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1898-12-24
Christmas.

anniversary.
1t is the day appointed to commem-
crate that on which God rested from
creative labor.
ait is the day saith one of the eld-
est of apocryphal traditions, ION which
the angels were born
1t is the full-orbed memorial of an
event which has made the profoundest
of all impressions upon human history.
From beyond Jordan, the river
whose flow sings through the centuries
the story of the Fathers recognition of
His Son, still comes the announcement
of the Heavenly crusade against Phar-
isaism-a movement which is to go on
until the dynasties of Superstition,
Materialism and Mammonism are over
thrown, ground to dust and swept out
of the universe.
The same axe that was Laid at the
root of the tree of your nation and re-
ligion' still threatens every travesty
upon piety which turns to Dead Sea
fruit the substance of JOY to save the
hollow trunk of dogma.
Christmas is not, therefore, merely
a great rth-day. 1t is the annual re-
currence of pledge, Divinely made,
that the work of reform, begun eighteen
centuries ago, shall be completed. 1t
is yet true statement that Christian
civilization, the product of tifty-seven
generations of human development,
is still youngling on the lap of Time.
phalanxes of liberty who in this great
Yeal of Grace, 1898, assailed and
pulled down the bars of cruel power in
Cuba-who knows aught but that these,
thrilling as they were, may have been
enactments only of the prologue to the
measureless plot of crossing fates and
intersecting fortunes to be revealed in
the evolution of Destiny?
But speculation in a field so far
reaching is vain.
Be it ours, therefore, to turn with
humber mien to Christmas as the
rainbow emblem of life and rest in
ages to come-not of drift along on
prismatic tides of Letheau worthless
ness, but of the recreation which comes
with and in active, useful performance
of duties, multiplying and magnifying
perhaps, as one by one they appear,
and in this connection let Christians
remember that the same Power which
inspires and energies religious life to
day is all III force and effect that it
was in the times Of old.
But it comes within another environ
ment and must be recognized and well
coined without waiting under the aus
plces Of temple rituals, nor for those
experiences which glorifed the upper
chamber in Jerusalem. 1t comes to us
as we walk these streets, dig in these
busy mines, sit in our comfortable
homes, as we'll as churches-it comes
in social functions, commercial condi-
tions and political corruptions.
Hercules cleansed the earth of myth
zeal evils.
But that era of vain faith is past.
1t will take some force of regenera-
tive efficacy, therefore, operating in
current American politics, to exercise
those three giantesque sentimentalities
known by all and worsbipped by many
as "expansion," "imperialism," and
"free coinage"
In the crisis brought to the thresh-
old Of popular government by those
stupendous deluslons the Christian 10y.
alist may we'll pray for messengers
from Paradise to fan anew the flame
which Illuminated the wisdom of the
fathers as Gabriel did the prisons of
Daniel.
This is a time, therefore, for watch
ing and praying as well as feasting and
praising.
Meanwhile, forget not to ''lend to the
Lord" by ''giving to the poor"