The age-herald., 1900-12-23

Prince of Wales, his son, and of the ann bassadors of kings and princes residing in London" So splendidly was he entertain ed that they write that on the day of his reception he had four tables, with fifty covers each, and that the Duke of Lennox, Grand Master of England, served them with magnificent order.
 "The following Sunday" (which at Ply mouth we could not spend on shore) me was conducted to an audience by the Mar quis of Buckingham (for shame, Jamie! audience on SuHday what would John Knox have said to thatD where the French and English nobility were dressed as for a great feast day. The following days were all receptions, banquets, visits and hunting parties, till the embassy de- parted.''
 "On the 9th of January was a masque at Whitehall" "A Puritan was fiouted and abused at the Masque which was thought unseemly, considering the state of the French Protestants" Tt is thought the Ambassador proposed Mad. enriette for the Prince" "At Lord Doncasters house the feast cost three thousand pounds-besde three hundred pounds worth of ambergris used in the cooking"
 On the one side Christmas is celebrated by fifty outcasts chopping wood for their fires-and out of the celebration springs an empire. On the other side it is celebrated by the noblesse of two nations and the pomp of two courts. And out of the cele- bration spring two civil wars, the execution of one king and the exile of another the downfall twice repeated of the royal house, which came to the English throne under farer auspices than any before it. The whole, as we look at It, is the tale of ruin. Those are the only two Christmas celebra- tons of that year that have found any where written down.
 It is the contrast between poverty and wealth. It is the contrast between hard ship and luxury. Of all the subjects of King James that day, there were not fifty posed to every peril as were the hundred men and women at Plymouth
 On the other hand, the court of St. James and their guests who celebrated Christmas at Whitehall thought themselves that they were the finest and greatest people in the world. They spent their own money and other peoples money with lavishness inde- scribable. They carried a boar's head or they "fiouted Puritan with equal gayety and indifference.
 And now, two hundred and eighty years have gone by. And every year has taught us more or less about hundreds less or more of those people celebrating Christmas on that side of the ocean and the hundred people on this side; and history has taught us of what has followed on the plans and hopes and deeds of that day
 James the First has gone into history as James the Fool. And to speak of the par ticular folly in which he was then en-
 
 him and the King of France, 1t was like the coquetry of finder already on fire, with gunpowder. When the final issue came his family were beggars in France, his dynasty was overthrown forever and England was principles which that Christmas of his governed by her own people, under the hated and flouted.
 And on this side the water William Brad ford and John Carver and William Brew ster worked all the day. No man rested. :" With mattock and axe and pick-aXe the Governor labored and the preacher labored and the historian labored. No man rested all that day. In fact, they had waited for this day to come before they began, that they might work on what they called Popish holiday.
 And they "builded better than they knew" They dug post holes for their block house They rived and sawed timber and so they laid the foundations of an empire. For these hundred men, women and chil- dren who were shivering there, they estab- lished the home of government of the peo- ple for the people. by the people" What followed wasNfirst the pure democracy of Massachusetts Bay; second, the American Revolution; third, the constitution of the United States.
 Today there Is not nation in the world which has a constitutional government in Asia, Africa, Europe, North or South America, or the islands of the ocean, but in its constitution it renews and repeats the principles which bound those woodcut- ters together, and on which they establish ed their commonwealth.
 Such are the things which follow when men and women seek first the Kingdom of God and Is righteousness. They follow when men highly determine to live togeth- CT for the glory of God and to enjoy Him forever.