Evening star., 1945-12-25
Christmas, 1945

This year the ancient story of the
birth of the Holy Child of Bethlehem
is being read in a new light. Men
have discovered how to explode the
basic element of the universe. The
narrative of the coming of the Saw
iour has been Illuminated by the
flashes of flame which destroyed two
Oriental cities which easily might
have been two cities in America.
Not long before Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were blasted from the face
of the earth and tens of thousands
of their people, civilian as well as
military, annihilated, the principal
ally of Japan was striving toward
the independent discovery of the
formula and the pattern of the
atomic bomb. and well might have
succeeded in the quest.
1t follows that the peace which
has been achieved for the world by
the release of the most terrific of all
known means of destruction is a
peace in name only. The nations
that have triumphed over the Axis
partners now are held together by
ties and bonds which thinking men
and women commonly agree are
not strong or durable enough for
the admitted needs of civilization.
Granted the San Francisco Charter
exists and the United Nations Or
ganization is living reality, it still
is plain that security, prosperity,
mutuality among divergent human
societies require an underlying fab
ric of altruistic idealism if they are
to survive the evident dangers of
disintegration.
In other language, this Christmas
tide of 1945 is season of anxiety
which it would be foiiy to pretend is
imaginary. The earth is rife with
trouble between states and classes
and groups. Contention storms the
heavens. Yet there is nothing new,
nothing final, nothing essentially
conclusive in the circumstance. The
same problems prevailed when the
Carpenters Son, who likewise was a
Prince of the House of David, was
born to Mary in the stable nigh unto
the crowded inn. His star still shines,
still leads the shepherds and the
Magi to, His feet.
Oh yes; war mocks the claim of
Christ. His churches are wrecked,
His disciples contemned, His teach
ings derided or, worse, accepted only
to be set aside with sly hypocrisy.
The humble, innocent folk whom He
gave Himself to serve are slaugh-
tered, imprisoned, starved, coerced,
tyrannized over. His doctrine of
fellowship and brotherhood is called
"unrealistic," rated an impractical
abstraction" and judged a "philo-
sophie contradiction Cancelled by
the elemental laws of nature"
Doubtless, similar reactions were
heard while yet Jesus lived. They
certainly were familiar in the expe-
rience of the Apostles, Peter and
Paul and the others. But their
antiquity does not render them de-
terminative. The answer to the
complaint that Christianity has been
failure from the start is that
Christianity never has been tried.
Now, however, the moment has ar
rived when there no longer is any
leisure for debate, any further op-
portunity for procrastination. The
choice must be made soon. Either
humanity is destined to destroy itself
by the exercise of its own dynamic
greeds and passions or it is destined
to save itself by acceptance of the
example and the instruction of the
Galilean. That is what Christmas
signifies this year. The story of the
Holy Child of Bethlehem is but the
beginning of an epic whose latest
chapter will be written shortly-in
letters of life worth living or in let
ters of death and dissolution as
mankind itself shall decide.