Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-24
By lFX Dl. EDyVARD EVERETT HALE.

you this City of David Saviour
who is Christ the Locd.-I-uke h:11.
1t is the birth of little baby child of these hill
people who have taken refuge in stable
1t is the birth of the King of Kings and Lord
of Lords
The shepherds look upon the baby and return
every man to his own home. The travellers from
the east look at the baby and go back to their
homes
The Roman sentinel, as Mr.. Domett tells us,
the crack of light under the door and forgets
it in the morning That is the birth of the child.
And today every home and every church,
every hamlet and every palace in every city are
prasing the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
What is it which in thirty years makes the
change. and reveals the world the baby child of
Bethlehem as the worlds Saviour, King and
Lord? Read your four Gospels and you will see.
On the other hand, if you only read the his
tory of thousand or two years you will not
understand For in half of those thousand years
you will find that world which pretended to fol-
low Him chose to follow its own tmid habits of
the past and was satisfied with the machinery of
religion. For century after century the ecclesias-
tics of the world made the church degrade its Sa-
viour In degrading its Saviour, the well-beloved
Son of God, the church degraded all Gods sons
and Gods daughters and whenever the ecclesias-
tics have succeeded in such degradation of Jesus
Christ the Church of Christ has faltered, has
stumbled, has even fallen in its pathway.
Does it seem strange thing to say that the
church for thousand.years degraded its Saviour?
1t is unfortunately true. know perfectly WE'LL of
IL - 1T
of men very God of very God" At the same time
l know that when it spoke of Him or when it'rep-
resented Him, it spoke of HIM have right to
say--as whose mission had failed. When it
represented Him it represented Him almost like
"sck girl" to borrow the phrase used Of Caesar
Four out of five of the pictures of the Saviour rep
resent the Anan of sorrows who is acquainted
with grief" Frankly and it is as we'll to say so,
you might make the studies for them in hospital
They enough to account for such cries as that
of the boy Aucassin, that "he does not want to go
to Paradise
And this is no accidental misfortune of hun
dred or two artists, some of them the greatest
whom the world has known 1t is simply the in
struction of the church which trained them. This
church did not say that Jesus lived for the world.
1t rather said simply that He died for the world
1t babe the artists commit that tenet to canvas
The theologians had this to say, that Jesus went
and came for two three years practically with
no purpose and with no success They had to say
that He died on the cross and that this was to
make an infinite compensation somewhere for the
sins of an incapable race which could not even at
His word redeem itself. What this world chose
to remember that He once said that He had
not place to lay His head. He shed tears the
night before His death, in the Garden. And once
more, in prophecy which referred to him,
the Prophet Isaiah, FIVE hundred years before,
spoke of himself as "a man of sorrows who was
acquainted with grief" Of the active, living
Jesus who was sent to the people from their
sins, this church for a thousand years had nothing
to say. OF the Jesus who went about doing good,
the preaching of the church was silent
This church had committed its own ministra-
tons to the voices and hands of men who did not
know human life. They did not know human life
either in its joys its sorrows. The pride of its
preachers was that they not in the world of
men. They did not know their joys or their sor-
rows. They did not know what it was to be ia
Tiers. They did not know what it was to see your
child die. Indeed, they ostentatiously sep
arated from the daily work of vine dressers and
olive yards, of carpenters, or bridge builders, or
sailors, or merchants.
Such church for generation after generation