The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-12-11
THE ONE PRECIOUS HOLIDAY
BY CARLTON M. BROsIUS

4 1t is well to make Christmas the one precious
holiday of the nation; to fill it full of mirth and
good cheer; to rest from labor and have reckon
ing with time to open the heart and the purse to
every cry Of sorrow and every wall of distress
to remember that midnight sky across which a
star flashed that had never yet been seen on land
or sea; to ask why in that lowly manger a Babe
was found, above its head halo and in its eyes
the light of mighty revelation; to recall how
from all the long, cold, cruel, terrible night of
paganism there came forth a far voice in the
wilderness echoing the tidings of a New Jersual-
em think over all that Christianity has done for
the world, and may yet do, if men and women
everywhere will accept it in its sublime simplicity
and perfect purity.
That the birth Of Christ. the deliverer of the
human race, and the mysterious link connecting
the .transcendent and incomprehensive attributes
of the Deity with human Sympathies and affec
tions, should be considered the most glorious
event that ever occurred and the most worthy
Of being reverently and joyousy commemorated
is proposition which must commend itself to
the heart and reason of each one of His followers
who aspres to walk in His footsteps and share
in the ineffabe benefits His death has secured to
mankind
And was not the birth of our Savior the most
glorious event that ever happened in all history?
The world was rotten at every pore and vein and
organ and artery Of its body. Born in the reign
of Tiberius Caesar, Rome-then almost the mis-
tress of everything known of either land or water
was given up wholly to war, murder, pillage,
rape gadiatoria butcheries and excuses of other
kinds so monstrous and so unnatural that his
torians have not yet agreed as to their origin
whether, in fact they were borrowed from the
Greeks, the Babylonans, the Assyrians, or from
race in further Egypt, long antedatng the loves,
the crimes, the sins and the follies of Cleopatra
Look where one would chastity was the eXcep-
ton and not the rule Woman was literally
beast of burden in most of the nations and was
bought and sold as a eve or a heifer upon the
hoof. Polygamy abounded. Slavery in the most
intolerable form ever known to man universally
existed, the master having the absolute power of
life and death over his slave War was little less
than determination. Conquest meant either de-
population, extinction or absorption Some of the
massacres surpassed in extent and atrocity ev
Ierything ever yet recounted of Timour Lenk on
Zingis Khan.
Out of this sort of civilization there came
forth Nero Phalars, Cagula, Domitian,
a HeliogabaluS AIarus and Sylla-human
butchers all, possessed of thirst for blood that
never knew an hour of appeasement until the as
sassns hand smote some, and death in the full
ness of their years smote the remainder.
Paganism was the only religion-if such indeed
it can be called-and it taught nothing but
gross and licentious materialiSm. To live was
simply to enjoy. Possession was the only thing
for which it was needfu to struggle-the pos
session of palaces, slaves, kingdoms, jewels, con-
cubnes fine linen, spices, wines, wildbeasts shows,
monster circuses, trumphal professions, luxury,
trophies, monuments temples, and legionS that
roamed at will, butchering they roamed.
through Europe. Asia and Africa. Might was
right. and the sword the only arbiter. Mankind
appeared to have but one mission, that of max
ing war. in which the strong laid hold of the
weak and either slew them, eXiled them, or made
them helpless and pitiful slaves.
II was then that the Judean SheperdS, watch
ing their flocks by night, saw great strange
light in the slsv and it was then in a owly stable
in Bethlehem the Founder of a New Faith. a New
Belief and a New Religion, first showed himself in
human form to a world which to put Him
to death because in full accord with His heavenly
mission. He wished to redeem and save it.
And how feeble and helpless the struggle first