Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1913-12-18
The
Forgotten Vision
BY REV. ]. HI. FREEDLINE
Pastor of the Audubon M. E. church

Tapping, Tapping, Tapping. Some
thing more real than Edgar Poe's
'The Raven, Is this moment rapping,
rapping, rapping, at every hearts
door, where even visions may be for
gotten. Out FOUNDER under the blue
dome of heaven, where the brilliant
stars look out upon the scene, a Wis
ion born in the simple heart of a
child, once radiant with faith and
prospect, but now vanished like the
Fl ost crystals upon the window on a
winters morn. Many years ago a
hope beaming message sped into your
young life, you looked out into the
star lit night. For days you watched
the feathery fakes come drifting down
until the earth was mantled in her
robe of white. 1t is Christmas eve
apd our imaginations go out with
every moonbeam that beats across
the way to Santa Clauseville. Again
you seem to hear yourself whispering
your desires into kind old Santa's
ears. Finally you said, | am tired
now, want to sleep land soon With
head buried in soft pillows and your
cares and anXieties all forgotten, you
were off to dreamland, where you had
a real vision. Sure enough Christ
mas morning, there was the tree
with all its attractions. Upon one of
the branches hung a pair Of new
stockings filled to the brim with all
those coveted things that every Santa
seems to know will be appreciated by
boys and girls. There under the tree
your first sled, the event is still fresh
in your mind. Did ever boy have
a jollier time than this which he will
always remember as his first real
Christmas? The years have worked
out the secret at last, you remember
now that you had taken father and
mother into your confidence and they
knew the whole list of gifts as well
as you, and they were just as happy
over it all as you were, on Christmas
day.
Well, the moral is this. Our dear
ones lived for their children and their
children's children, but some how
many of us in this busy age, we are
so jostled, that we forget our child
hoods visions. The thoughts of home
and those happy occasions, melts the
snow ont of your very hair and sends
the wrinkles and crows feet flying
from us. All these resurrected joys
come to us now as we muse on those
occasions which are really landmarks
in our own Careers. Well, we don't
4 have such Christmas nowadays, we
have gotten too badly tangled up with
things and we don't live out half our
time, we have lost the cnila~spirit and
the simple joys that comes with il
all, and we are old before We are
young. The world is all a tumble,
with its rich and poor, It's happy and
unhappy, it's plenty and poverty, It's
sick and its healthy. Yet with all
these we are agreed that this is the
best world we have ever lived in.
Look again and you will find dis
appointed, discouraged and sorrow
ing ones in your immediate vicinity;
the needy ones, in fact the whole
human family may well come under
this caption "The Needy Ones. We
all need something. What is it? We
all need the Christmas spirit. What
means Christmas any how? 1t means
the bringing back of that vision
which we enjoyed when children in
the old home. 1t does not only mean
the seeing and greeting of our
friends, unless the widows, the or