Continued from Jan. 3

For a moment, the world was startled into dread. People took up their Bibles to read the story of Christ. On every page blank spaces faced them. The story of the shepherds, the Sermon on the Mount, the lost sheep and the prodigal son, that of the dying thief, the cross of Calvary and the Easter morning - every word and act of Christ was gone.

That was centuries ago. The old man looking into the fire has been studying past history and somehow feels his heart stir yearningly over the old story of the dead dreamer, the carpenter’s son, who dreamed he was the Son of God and could lift humanity.

It was a noble dream. He wished it might have been true. In the churches standing still and crowded, the people who found it impossible to believe the miracle of the incarnation now listen greedily to the miracles of all sorts of esoteric religions and all the mad beliefs of human minds gone wild.

The preachings seemed to have no hope if men failed to practice such fancies. They could only expect to reap as they sowed. Humanity must turn from its soft deceptions and sentiment.

Nature shows God grand, majestic, beneficent to all who obey. But nature shows no pity for disobedience. The gospel of the so-called science knows nothing of forgiveness.

In the midst of the loneliness and desolation all around, the bleak outlook, there is no divine call to the weary and the heavy laden. The great God who guides the universe has more important things to think of. No one would presume to tell Him about their troubles.

I feel that I have not so far succeded to adequately paint the glib picture of a world without Christ or Christmas. For just as men do not value the blessings of health and friendship because they have never known what it is like to be without them — so men often do not value Christ because they have not know what it is to be without Him.

Jesus used a phrase in John 15:22, “If I had not come...” We would have to live in a world of discouraged strugglers without any knowledge of His sympathy in our struggles. We would need to find only a distant righteous God, silent and unapproachable, who has never shown His face and never shown His heart to men.

Let those of us who have been forgetting Him and scorning His love try to remember what the world would be without Him who came at the first Christmas. Think of what it would mean but for Christ and His atonement.

Let us thank God for Christ has come! The eternal Son of God came down with the flesh of very man wrapped round His Godhead.

Thank God for the angelic message of that Christmas long ago: Unto us is born this day...Christ the Lord.