The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-24

1 to reveal a secret they did not possess ! Ambition had stalzed over the wide world | in the persons of Greek and Roman and Carthaginian generals. but only to leave | behind the stiffness and solitude and the peace of universal ruin. 1'or a time a | semblance of happiness was set up-the peace of Rome, made up of all the crushed | hearts and hopeless sorrows of the world, l and therefore carrying in itself the re- | sponse of death. Already Epictetus could | exclaim: 70 Caesar, in thy peace what woes l suffer- Was it not high time that | the Prince of Peace should at least ap- | pear and reveal the secret of the divine | dealings of God with man? No wonder that as the hour of the nativity ap- breaches, holy church cries out in ma ternal anguish.
 70 king of nations, o Emmanuel, our klngi O the desired of all peoples thou cornerstone, which dost make the twain to be one. come and save mankind which thou hast created from the dust"
 Truly, He made the twain to be one when He healed so potently the evil bias of our hearts and the perverse darkness of our minds; when He called himself the Son of God and accepted the name of friends of sinners when He took the title of King of the Jews and yet sent Ills apostles to the ends of the earth:
 
 and rebuked the proud and lofty Phari- sees. He made the twain to be one when He ignored the narrow lines of nationality and created a Heavenly fatherland. in which all men could hold a citizenship that transacted whatever was highest in the political world made by men. Truly He was the cornerstone of unity when He proclaimed the hehceforth ineradic- able principles of the fatherhood of God and tho hrOtbersh md pf ThrN1i iu h long and painful ages some men like the Stoics had come within sight of these holy principles, but their Insight, their suspicious were only velleities, rude , mental sketches of an Utopia beyond the grasp of humanity The people were sunk in a malebolge of sin and wrong and ignorance; their rulers were men of blood and iron. skilled in the sole logic of despotism-the logic of the sword The birth of Jesus changed all this. What wonder that tradition soon arose to the effect that a fountain of oil broke forth in the heart of Rome on the night of Christ's birth and flowed for days in unbroken sweetness to the Tiber? It was a symbol, say acient fathers, of the source of joy and benedction henceforth opened in the heart of that larger city, the city of God.
 Truly our brother was born today, and with him we too are born in the sweet bond and union of brotherhood Perhaps by the lapse of ages and the very com monness of the Christian name we have ceased to be moved by the mighty con- cept that lies in the birth of Jesus Christ among men, as a man, with real human nature and manner. It was our maker, our governor, our final judge. who this day put on flesh, compressed the fires of His Godhead, and entered the cycle of our poor life. If was no mere chance or whim that He did so; 1t was the re- suit of divine counsel, foreseen from the beginning and fore-o ordained. He came i as man and a brother to relieve the awful pressure of inequality and injus- tice; to reassure men of the equal dignity of the human soul, in whatever frame it has it's being; to rekndle in such hu- man souls as would listen to Him a mutual respect for one another and, based on that a tender love for one an- other-a love the world then first heard of the love of Christian charity. How the first men who seized on the import of this great fact were moved by it you may see in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul. At once all the pitiful barriers that men had been build ing against one another fell away, and they knew themselves for one In Christ Jesus. Human nature, hitherto a scoff- ing for the synlc, a yoke for the pessi- mist, a toy for the epicurean, rose trans figured before their eyes, and every one could say with St. Paul, "I live, not I, but Christ liveth in me" Here was the re- generating principle of humanity: here was the force that shook the false and unjust society of the ancient world, and rent 1t apart, and covered it with oblivion here was the power that built up again on the ruins of the Roman state the medieval Christendom, here the core of resistance that a thousand shocks cannot overcome In the society founded by Jesus God was made man, put on our flesh, and dwelt amongst us.
 Is this truth fading from our social consciousness? Are we dealing now with one another as men who recognize the Christian dignity in one another that dignity which Leo the Great could appeal to as a warning not to fall back upon the former vileness of our state? In our incredible passion for wealth, in our reckless crushing of the poor mans equal right to life and its comforts, in the ex- pansion of our commerce and industry, in our legislation, in our public opinion in the estimate we set upon the good of life, in the uses we find for our activities, in the ideals we follow or encourage oth- CTS to follow, do we keep in mind that we are all brethren of Jesus Christ and children of new life, new state, the kingdom of heaven?
 Or has the idea of the kingdom of heaven perished from among us? And is it true, as to the critics of our country so often tell us, that we are the least Christian of peoples, that we are sunk to the lowest plane of naturalism, and that we bound man life, the spirit. God, and the things of the soul by the cir conference of yellow coin?
 No! in spite of all that appears upon the surface, we are still, and we know ourselves for the brethren of that little infant, who this day was born for the welfare of mankind And if we have per- chance, allowed this thought to slumber; if we have not translated it into our deal ings with one another with the world about us, with the false, the empty and the insufficient ideals of existence, we shall, God willing, do so henceforth. None of us will again say with Cain, "Am I my Der that this little babe. grown to man hood, left to the world the parable of the good samaritan: that He went about doing good that He healed and consoled and blessed and encouraged all sorts and conditions of men and women; that His whole activity went out into the social betterment of the world about Him, that He is the author of the golden rule, and that He transformed a degenerate world not with praise or promise, but by deed and example.
 What wonder that the angels, weary of the endless round of human wrong and 4x.+A Io n1.o 70 ffN4.