The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-24

en the final life and by that act of fate had forfeited his own life, which should be a sacrifice to propitiate the god of the harvest and secure his fav- or in the harvest to come. While he lived, therefore, he was king because he gay e his life that the others might be blessed. Such was their yule-tide- now our Christmas.
 When the gospel came to those men and women Christianity was accepted by them; they kept their customs but put them into a new meaning. No longer did they offer human sacrifice; for one sacrifice had been offered for the sins of men and they knew God to be their father and friend. No longer did they celebrate the return of the sun but the birth of the son of man, who was their saviour.
 The nations of southern Europe, even those of sunny Italy, had been wont to celebrate the return of the sun and when they became Christians they adopted the birth of Jesus instead of the sun as the fact to be celebrated and made the same day, December 25, the day on which to commemorate his bi2th.
 The exact date of the birth of Christ is not known; but it was most natural for the Christian church to come to celebrate the event itself In Europe, not in Asia; in the western, not in the eastern church, the birth of the Say four was first annually celebrated. As the celebration moved northward, the customs which had formerly prevailed were continued and the methods of ob- serving the day were in the main pre- served. Christian in spirit it remained, properly speaking, pagan in practice. Even in the church, in England, an abbot of misrule" was chosen for the time and in Scotland he was named the "abbot of unreason" and priests and people largely gave themselves on Christmas to festivity and even to fo1llshness. Writing of the prevailing customs Prynne says: Our Christmas lords of misrule, together with danc- ing, masks mummeries, stake-players, and such other Christmas disorders, now in use with Christians. were de- rived from Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian festivals, which should cause all pious Christians eternally ot abominate them.'
 When the Puritans came into mower they abolished such customs by act of parliament in 1855. The Purltans who seeded from the Church of England would have none of them. This ac- counts for the fact that save in .he few Episcopal churches, there was no Christmas in New England until some time in the last century. Henry Ward Beecher once said: q believe in Christi mas and regard it's observance as proper But Christmas can never be to me what Thanksgiving is, because in all my childhood I never knew Christmas"
 The power of blood and the strength of custom are nowhere more clearly shown than in the fact that with the return of the custom of observing Christmas we have again introduced the customs of our light-haired. blue- eyed strong4limbed Scandinavian an- cestors, those splendid sailors whom stormy seas could not terrify, those unconquerable soldiers who trampled even proud Rome beneath them. who settled in northern France and became the Normans, the conquerors of Saxon England, and whose blood mingled with that of Angle and Saxon and Celt has made Great Britain and America the nations which to-day they are.
 We note, therefore, simply as history and fact, that the form of our Christi mas the evergreens, the pine and the holly and the fir, with which 1ur homes and stores and even churches are decorated, the blazing fire, the lighted candles, the festal board and the dance, are from our ancient ances- tors in the days when they knew not Christ
 But with us Christmas is more than form-it is memory. Herein is a sing ular thing, namely that while on Christmas day we put on the garments of our pagan ancestlry we rarely ever think of them, their religion. their worship.
 Nay. Christmas day, with the won derful power of thoughts which time and space cannot contain, but which travels with the swiftness of the morning light bears us back from our business, our pleasures. our phil osophles; back from the scholar s lamp, the statesman's scheme, the merchants plans, the boys big hope, the girls fair dream-back over the ocean, and continent and sea. back through the long years of nineteen centuries. back t1 the rugged hill of Judea, her people, her olive trees, her fields where sheep feed and where shepherds lie, her starlit skies, her It. town of Bethlehem and the lowly man. ger where the maid Mary-virgin wife of Joseph by divine appointment, bore in Him who came from heaven to save the earth and who made our Christ mas our Christendom by making us the sons of God.
 And the memory is this: The s.arlit sky, the unwonted light, the angelic sage-''unto you is born a Saviour the heavenly song, "Glory to God in the highest the wakened and won dering shepherds, the visit to the stone stable and the lowly manager the silent but happy mother, the wise men from the east who had followed the light of a star to find q king, the wonderful babe, looking like any child but or dained to speak the language of earth