Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1947-12-26
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell Syndicate.

(NE completely neXphca-
BILE thing has happened
~ in all the worlds history.
And this greatest and most in
fluential event in our human
story is also the one we can least
understand.
If we could get away from our
selves for a while, look upon our
lives effectively, as if from another
planet, how trivial all the other
events would seem-the wars, terri
torial changes, scientific discover
les, the heroes and the geniuses, the
criminals and the warriors.
One story would shine out above
all the rest. One story greater than
human hearts can encompass, and
so regarded by millions of human
hearts as unbelievable.
Yet it is true. It is true that there
was a baby born in faraway land,
nearly 1000 years ago, and that his
people were simple laborers, car
penters and fishermen, and that He
very simply expressed an extra
ordinary theory of the fatherhood Of
God and the sonship of man, and
laid down certain laws that were en-
tirely opposed to the common sense
of the day-as of this day, too-and
that He did strange things, cured
the lame and the blind, fed the hum
cry on a mysterious plenty of food,
pardoned sinners with royal gener-
osity.
This man never wrote line, new
er had an influential friend, was
deserted in His hour of need by
His frightened companions, and
died the death of common GRIM
inal. And yet His name and His
story go laundering down through
the ages, and no other name, of
leader or king, stands beside it.
Saints have followed him, men,
thousands of them, have died de-
Tending His law, but no other hu-
man ever spoke in voice like his,
and no other man ever could claim
one-half, or one-tenth or one-thou-
sandth of the fame that is His.
The Mighty Miracle.
Let those who say they would be-
lieve if they could see one of His
miracles consider this; that there is
no human miracle that compares
with the stupendcus miracle that is
this day this week - just this -
Just Christmas. Just the whole world
rejoicing that He was born, great
churches shaken with organ music
and glowing with thousands of can
dies, great hearts revealing in gen.
crosby and brotherhood, because of
Him. Because of young carpenter
who died nearly 1000 years ago,
died under a cloud, died alone, and
left only few frightened friends
to remember Him after His death.
What is the answer? Who can
laugh off this Supplying fact? The
only possible answer Is that what
He said was true, and that that
truth of His, so difficult, so unac-
ceptable to our human ways of
thinking, persists on and on, and
will not die. We cannot live it, it
is too hard and high and dazzling for
us, but we know that it is true.
We know that love fulflls the law.
We know that we should forgive our
enemies, do good to them that hate
us. We know that we should not
have two coats, that our less for
tunate neighbor should have one.
We know that we should feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, comfort
the sorrowing And we know that if
we had done all this there never
could have been slums, crime, pow
erty, ignorance, war. We know
it, but we cannot live it, and so the
Christmases come and go, and we
almost forget to connect His story
with them at all.
This Christmas, give Him His