Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1901-12-25
THE DAY OF ALL DAYS.
Celebrating tho Greatest Of All Events "A
Christmas Meditation.
[B;shop Warren A. Gambler, in the At
lanta Daily Journal.

lanta Daily Journal
II somewhere upon our world huge
meteoric stone, charged with magnetic
qualities, should fall, 1t would attract
worldwide attention. If upon it were
found impressed evidences that it had
been projected from the hand of God upon
our world, and that it's touch impaired
healing for mans worst woes, how the
multitudes would flock to see it and to
touch it'll
In the coming Of Jesus among men we
have an event far more wonderful than
all this; for the most conclusive evidences
show that he came from God, that he
brings healing t0the nations, and that
he has magnetic qualities which tend to
draw all men unto him. He comes as no
inanimate stone might fall, strange,
mateless mass of once molten matter
found in some unknown quarter of the
universe. He is the word made flesh,
dwelling among us full of grace and
truth. 'In him is the fullness of the
Godhead bodily" as st Paul teaches,
and in him is the perfection of manhood
spiritually. He shows how deep divine
love can stoop to rescue men and how
high humanity can rise when touched
with heavenly powers.
The incarnation begun by the birth
and eternalized by the resurrection and
ascension of Jesus, is the most sublime
and influential fact in the history of our
world. 1t is this fact we celebrate at
Christmas.
1t is a matter of small moment whe-
ther men have or have not fixed upon the
correct date for the annual celebration of
the birth of our Lord. 1t remains too
clear for doubt that some nineteen hun
dred years ago an event occurred in Pal
estine which has been more influential
for good among men than all the cam
paigns of the high captains of the earth
and all the sages and statesmen of the
ages. A brief life with manger cradle
at ono end and borrowed tomb at the
other, was spent in poverty deeper
than that of the birds of the air and the
foxes of the forest, and yet from it has
immaterial, found in what we call Christ
ian civilization. The outcome of that
life is the miracle of history.
Men need not perplex themselves about
the phenomenon of Bethlehem's star and
the wonder of the singing angels lowering
above the amazed shepherds. The lights
of civilization lit by His hand which
every night are far greater and more mys-
terious, if he be not God, than the lumi-
nary which the entranced Wise Men fol-
lowed. The music which from cathedral
to cottage pours itself forth upon the
evening air everywhere throughout
Christendom to-day is a greater
marvel than the angelic strains which
tured shepherds. Whence all this
brightness in Christian lands, with thick
darkness everywhere else in the worldp
Whence all these H;.ndels and Beeth-
ovens and II adyns and this innumerable
company of signers and players on in
struments which no man can number,
making Christian lands resonant with
strains of unearthly gladness, while in
the regions beyond these lands humanity
sits disconsolate with harp unstrung
upon the willows which grow by the
streams of earthly griefp
Surely there has broken in upon our
world a supernatural life of love which
seeks to encompass all mankind in it's
warm embrace. AS one has said, "The
world itself is changed, and is no more
the same that it was; it has never been
the same since Jesus left it, The air is
charged with heavenly odors, and a kind
of celestial consciousness, sense of
other worlds, is waited on us in its
BREATH"
The facts of contemporaneous history
show that superhuman energy, issuing
from the man Christ Jesus, is active in
the world, working for the amelioration
g 6t, nc nd fl,ao Oh. 6
human perfection. No marvel of by
gone age can exceed in magnitude this
manifest miracle before our eyes.
Christian history, after every just sub
traction is made for all possible hypocri-
sizes and infidelities, is result of such
stupendous power and worth that moth
ing but an incarnation of God is ade-
The Son of God became the Son of Man
that every son of man might be empow-
cred to become q son of God. Other
wise all the stock of godliness in Chris
tian lands is an inexplicable mystery.
Here as nowhere else are seen the visible
effects of a vivid sense of the divine i'm
pressed upon manners, literatures, codes
of laws, national institutions and ma
tional characters. The contrast between
Christian and pagan lands in this par.
ticular Is as marked as the difference be-
tween the palm groves of the tropics and
the dwarfed shrubbery of the frigid
zones.
Uninspired human intellects could
never have conceived the idea of the
incarnation any more than unaided
human powers could have executed the
plan of salvation or unassisted human
agents could have achieved the results of
Christian history. T he highest thought
of kindred nature OF which ancient or
modern paganism has been capable has
been deified man losing his humanity
by his apotheosis or a humanized god
transcendently appearing as man, beset
with human infirmities and bereft of
heavenly character. Its Jupiter misbe-
having in the heavens or its Hercules
disappearing in the clouds is the best
god 1t can manufacture. But in Jesus
we have neither god become man nor
a man become a god, but the God-M
He is Immanuel--"God be with u.s."
He bridges the tremendous chasm be-
Stween God and man, revealing to us the
depths to which divine love can descend
and the heights to which divine love can
descend and the heights to which human
nature may rise. 1t is no wonder that
the angels saw disclosed at His birth the
highest glory of God and the noblest
hope of man. Even the inanimate forces
of nature themselves might well have
responded to the. appearance on earth of
was with God, and without whom was
not anything made that was made.
Stars might we'll como bending in
stately obeisance before Him who set
them in their places at the first and who
laid before them their pathways in the
traok]ess spaces of the ornament. One
radiant Wanderer NAV yVe1l haya baan