Year: 1871

We notice q growing disposition among the
mass of our population to pay certain atten-
ton and Difference not only to national ami
versaries, but to the days set apart as feasts
or fasts by the churches. Not that we are all
becoming proselytes to Catholicism or High
Churchism, but as the nation broadens III COM
mon sense and culture, it feels the necessity OF
lifting life incessantly out of its trading levels
by any attainable lever-relgious forms, music,
art, or this very effective of anniversaries.
The days go by from January to December,
procession of dull drudges, bringing to each of us
breakfast and dinner, the morning paper,
few sales, a little gossip. Why should they
be given up TO earning bread and butter
Why should they not be forced in themselves
to educate us in healthful thoughts and the
higher aims Why should they not be i'm
bued with some great thought, and go ont
with it like the prophets of old to lift the
hearts of whole nation for one brief throb
nearer to life and to GOd9 We would be glad,
for our part, if every day in the year could
bear the name of noble life or a great deed,
and, instead of an unmeaning month and num-
Der, could tell to our children the story of one
of the few men in the world who have made
all humanity more akin to God.


Whether the 25th of December was or was not
really the birthday of the Son of Mary does not
matter so greatly; but it imports much to the
world that on one day in the year 1t should
stand still, while slave and statesman, prince
and prisoner, the starving, tired workman, OF
the young man rejoicing in his strength, hear
the simple story of the stable and the Child:
how Love, divine and helpful, Brotherly Love,
had its birth from the lOins of pauper; how
kings paid it homage, and God claimed it as
part of himself. The death of Christ is per-
hans 70 some of us merely matter of history;
TO others the sole hope for our own life beyond
death. But for the most indifferent it cannot
but be strengthening and ennobling to look
once a year upon the spectacle of man
diving for his brother man. The human brain
has no sublimer, more helpful thought than
this-that a man gave his life not for his
friend, but his enemy. If we are Puritans we
have very likely been in the habit OF laughing
at the solemn pomp with which the festival
of tomorrow is celebrated in some of the
churches and call it Popish mummery. But
what if we too looked at the idea that under
lies the wreathed violets and hawthorn buds
and the glad triumphant anthems What
harm can it do the busiest of us to halt for
one hour in the year in our hurried task of
amassing money or knowledge to remember the
sudden and awful silence which will fall upon
| us some day, and ask ourselves ii that silence


will ever be brokcn7 From out that dark un-
known into which we 60 with blind eyes and
dumb white lips shall we come againf And


what of those, whose names we never speak,
| who, in the year that is just gone, turned
| away and went out from the household, from
| the everyday life, the work and jokes and


kindnesses which they had shared from the
cradle with US, without, perhaps, word Of
gcod-by7 They lay down in narrow cut in the
damp ground, and made home of that. They
| would not answer U.S. call we ever 80 loudly
| They sent us no tdings whether it was well


with them, whether they forgave us the hasty


word, the unkindness which now it was more
| bitter than death to remember.


| Is that the end Arc the lips we kissed and


the hand whose every line we knew, and
the dear face that held all the tender
passionate love that life had to give us,
gone 7-become mere clay and lime 2 No
more Or do the blossoms and music of
the Easter resurrection hint of lives to come
| illimitable, unending; where the old faces
shall meet us and the old voices speak again
that have 80 long been silent 7 Is there some
where a country "where an enemy never
"enters and whence a friend never goes away f


where they stand and wait and keep hope
full tryst for us Even to those of US who
have the near familiar faces yet about us-to
the very youngest and happiest of us-this life
has proved already incomplete. There have
been riddles unanswered, talents thwarted,
good aims and noble human lives gone hope
lessly by default. Is there stronger, broader day
than this f-wider fields, infinite range of ac-
ton, higher deeds for the poor bafiled wretch
who planned so nobly here and accomplished
but poor and paltry wcrkf Will the dark
riddle Of each baked life then be set right
Who was it said there was no second chance
TO us forever7 The Easter bells tell US that
in Gods Just universe the chance is never lost
to us. No wonder that, hearing the story, the
Russian peasant believes that, as they ring in


the dawn, the sun and stars rejoice with him.
No wonder. either. that on this morning