The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1907-12-24

sion carries as its ~corollary an ability
to enjoy.
A not inconsiderabIe asset Of pow
erty is the conceit that it has Of its
own perceptions. Not a man who
struggles, not a man who this Christ
mas season is borne down with the
oppression Of what he would TX 70
do as contrasted with what he may do
but who contempIates the rich with q
superior disgust.
Not d rich man who does not, like
wise, envy the man Of poor means,
balancing possession with response
bility and the lack OF it. Not a rich
man who is not anxious for the light
in which he may spend; not a poor
man who is not master Of the art Of
distribution.
1t has always been so: II viii al
ways be so. The superficial view is
the vanity Of the contrast. the despair
Of inability. Whether rich or poor the
sober brings TO the individ-
ual the sense of things unaccomplish-
ed, of things impossible Of perform
ance, of desires that exist in the inn
agination and are lost in the one in
stance in impossibility and in the 9TH
er in selection.
Everything was vanity until an
event that next Wednesday will find
its thousandth and hundredth rep-
etition. The event was that Of a poor
man, who had the genius not to de-
sire. It was the advent Of the new
spirit of satisfaction in striving. 1t was
the annunciation of effort 2 the
cannonization of faith. In its philOsO-
ply that did not stOop to circumstance
or materially did it speak to the rich
and to the poor alike. 1t put them on
the plane together where artificially
they had been divided in humanity by
superficial barriers. Christmas day,
perverted as it is with the wrongful
practice of a chaste idea, complicated
as it is with false standards in it's OBJ
remains the unselfsh day
on which all together. the lowest n
the highest, may gather in hope and
reverence that the hope exists.
How wonderfully does it work out
in practice, this abstraction. How it
does adjust itself and meet its require
ments. How does it level the mass
and elevate it. How self-sufficient it
is, and how simple. A heart to be
glad, a hand to give, a thought to cen
ter on a child.
That symbol of the child. Christ.
who raised the standard, knew its
characteristic appeal. In it helpless
ness and power; in it, dependency and
Independence; in it h quick sorrow
of life, sweeting the enjoyments of
life. To that has responded the heart
of the world and, in the celebration of
a spirit that the world has never du-
plicated, in the contemplation of a
purity of expression and of
that the world has never been able
to initiate, is the festival of the Mas
ter of love made to Irvine about and
glorify the symbols of love that, with
unerring humanity, He has erected
upon an everlasting PEDESTAL
Do you appreciate the gift and its
value-you who are inclined in the
moment of modern Christmas to I'M
derestimate and deny your power to
respond to its demands? Do you see
you who have money-wherein money
is impotent and poverty unconquera-
BILE Are you not, one and all, at this
season, brothers in deed as we'll as in
name? One talisman there is to
Christmas-the winning of the heart
of the child. Nowhere is such dem
ocracy, such capacity. Nowhere is
such faith, WI such satisfaction.
nowhere such joy. And ii is yours as
the result Of a legend of the star and
the wise men, as the gift OF an ancient
time that looked into the breasts of
men and saw the gold beneath the
raiment, as the responsible agents of
the Interpreter that the time that had
struck the hour of the centuries af-
forded TO work the miracle and to be
rich without price.
Christmas day. It lends itself to
jokes-the thing that Mary gave to
John and John to Mary lest the one be
caught And yet it is a
blessing that speaks in human values
instead of in the values of civilization:
that makes the whole world kim
IloSt VI i 10 w II IcNtl Oh
bank.
In the following of its precepts the
rich may enjoy their money without
an aftertaste of incompleteness or a
doubt of value.
And in the glow and return of its
exercise may the o o realize the flu
tility Of money and the power of
love.
Said a man who was hanging to
the fringe of the day and its meaning:
Christmas? l hate it. It is the time
when, in spite of me, / feel an inher-
tied sentimentality coming to the top,
and 1 am unable to crafty it. Christ
mas? 1t is irritating
Is it needful to say he knew not
childhood?