The Washington herald., 1915-12-25
A Christmas Theusht.

daily newspapers Surely it cannot be said that
any of our organs of public enlightenment ever
suffered from excess of dealism. but we propose
to run the risk of having it said of M. For we
purpose preaching sermon. and not one of your
practical, worldly, reasonable sermons. full of
home truths so obvious that everybody wonders
why they thought of that before, but alto
gether idealistic, irrational unprecedented sermon
that, like Christmas, would be quite impossible if
it happened oftener than once year. That leaves
,64 days upon which we can flay the government.
denounce the opposition point with pride to the
meritorious and view with alarm the damned and
strafe the Kaiser to our hearts content.
When Christ lived upon the earth it must not
be supposed that He shared either the omnipotence
or the omniscience of the Creator. Clothed in the
habiliments of the flesh He was trammeled equally
with the limitations of the spirit Only in His
abounding faith in His immortal destiny and in
His vigorous reputation of the bonds or the thing
that call did He differ essentially from
others of His race. If He had been more God and
less truly Man He might have destroyed the Jews
but none would have believed in Him. If He had
been more man and less God He would have re-
mained in the wilderness and written highly
He died victim to commercialism and the accept
ed order of things But some were left to believe.
leaven that leavened the whole world with the
beauty of an ideal
1t was just because He embodied in Himself
the spirit of idealism that Christ loved the little
children above all other things. He Himself came
the earth as little Child and it is significant
thing that of His childhood, of the period when
the spiritual heritage wrestling for develop
ment with the tendency TO unconscously accept
an existing state OF things nothing has been told.
1t is all likely that the evangclists appreci-
atcd the paramount Importance OF this period in
the life of Christ But told that Mary, His
mother, troubled. She knew, all mothers
instinctvely know that the idealists of the world
have always been martyrs.
We who wise, but not wise VIC should
be- seeing how old the world is, know that He
loved the little children because in them alone
burned the sacred fire OF imagination that sooner
or later would smother in its prison house of
clay. Passing up and down the stony highways OF
Palestine He had cast His net OF words again and
again upon the tide of human perception, but the
catch had been disheartenngly small and the labor
had become rcconciled to physical poverty and
welcomed anything in the nature of a change To
him and his fsherfok relatives it was in the first
place the tangible results rather than the moving
power OF faith that appealed. Nor did they in all
quite realize that Christs kingdom was
in the domain OF the spirit until He had passed
St. Matthew had plumbed the emptiness OF the
from the earth. Or, again, there was one who like
struggle for possessions and, disusioned OF the
belief that man could live by bread alone, grasped
at the promise OF dominion OF the mind. But
against the two isolated successes had to
be set the thousands of failures, the dead wall OF
self-satisfaction and dislike. Only when He gath
cred about Him the little children and saw in their
He feel heartened to take up His heavy load. And
He said to the people "Unless you are like these
little children you cannot enter My Kingdom"
But if He had lived in the twentieth century
where the mintage of words brings but tenuous
return of truth He would have spoken as follows:
There things that you call reason and the
verties but is the outcome of cerebral con-
volutons, and the verities but the sum total
Of limited human experience But there is in each
of you a divine spark called imagination a
knowledge that is superior to reason. small voice
that whispers that the things that not and can
not reasonably be the only things that really
matter the only things that have led men up the
long stairway of evolution to higher and still high
er planes of being. This divine spark is all there
is of God about you and that is probably the
reason why you seize the first opportunity to stfle
it beneath load OF materialism. But with the lit
lie children it is different. They have supreme, if
faith They accept beauty and ro-
nance and care nothing for the demonstrate veri
Their plastic minds have not been worn smooth, !
even as stone is worn by the waves, by the in
cessant beating together of and effect. And
say to you that unless you also struggle against
The domination of reason and feed the flame of the
spirit by seeking in the fair fields of Imagination
Tor the flower of beauty you will not enter the |
Kingdom of Heaven because there will be nothing |
IF you that will not perish-being physical-when
you die"
So Christ loved the little children, even as we
owe them, though we seldom stop to think why il |
S so or do anything to perpetuate in them the
power of joyous imagination that is their most !