"As cold water to a CHRISTMAS thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." The birth of Christ was good tidings to the thirsty world-soul. He came from His own high realm of spirit to bless and help struggling and sinning mankind. The angels sang of it. They of the simple hillside faith, and the reverently, spiritually wise, heard and were glad. But the ears of the traders in the marts of Tiberias were too dull to hear the angels sing. The Rabbis of Jerusalem were too busy studying musty texts by the aid of rush lights to see God's new star. Yet the stir of faith and happy report in the birth of a spiritual earth. king struck terror in the soul of selfish power. Herod's evil, jealous face cast a shadow over the manger of the young Christ, to destroy Him. Then by the golden thread of a dream the Hope of the world was saved.

What a hazard for the spiritual future of the race hung by that thread! How infinitely important to man it was that this infant should grow to manhood's fullness and live His beautiful life, speak forth His liberating message and die His sacrificial death. Mr. John Burroughs in his "Time and Change" speaks of "The Hazards of the Past." He refers to the period in the evolution of life when the heavy breastplates and shells and thick skin armors the organisms.

NO. 4

took upon them for protection nearly resulted in wholesale torpor and immobility, but which the vertebrates and anthropods happily escaped. "Was it by luck or chance?" he asks. Was the golden secret of upward moving life ever intrusted to the keeping of any single form, and had that form been cut off"would the earth still be without its man?" Jesus Christ seems to us the single form of the upward moving spiritual life of the race. What would our world be without Him? Are not His charity. His splendid spiritual courage, His principles of love, beyond all bitterness, of loyalty to God and good beyond all suffering, of spiritual values to be sought first-are not these the very assets of faith and hope to all men and women who this Christmas-tide would fain build a new and better world order?

Here is matter enough for Christmas thanksgiving. Herod did not succeed. The little Jesus did live to grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man throughout the centuries.

And to what fortune do we owe His escape from evil power when He was a babe? We owe it to a dream-to the fact that His little cradle world was atmosphered through prayer to spiritual communications and helpings. Being warned in a dream Joseph and the mother took the young child to Egypt.

Have the angels then ceased to sing?

Are there no clouds of spiritual helpers round about our life? Is there no spiritual prescience-no hints and helps beyond our seeing and hearing, our weighing and measuring, our scalpels and retorts? What are the angels indeed but God's messengers to the loving and the kind, to all who in the Christmas spirit strive to bring His kingdom of peace and good-will on earth? There is more in life than our cold, dull materialism

can sense.

A cry has gone forth throughout the earth. It is a cry for God. The present world crisis has gone beyond all political, social and economic expedients. It is a cry for spiritual reconciliation. Who shall answer the cry? Who shall interpret it? Who shall save the world -the spiritual dreamers-the men and women of prayer-all who look beyond science and expediency to the God of Jesus Christ-to Christ Himself as a communicating earth spirit of life and love? Thrice happy all they this Christmas-tide to whom He can say, "Blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear the coming army of children, saved from the world's wrack of selfish power, to build beneath God's friendly stars the new spiritual temple of man."

THE CROSS AND CHRISTMAS

mas.

cross.

The Cross at ChristIt is not a cross of flowers, a decorative It is the red cross, the cross of suffering. We do not associate the cross, generally, with the Holy Nativity. The birth of the Infant Saviour means joy to the world. The decorations at home or in the church are greens and flowers, wreaths and the Christmas tree, that stands for a reborn world with all the stars glimmering through the branches, covered with gold. and sweetness and plenty for everyone. The cross does not symbolize Christmastide.

This year the cross has come into the Christmas festival. It is the real, holy

cross of Calvary's sad hour. Calvary is with us at Christmas time this year. The shadow of the cross has fallen athwart American homes. American mothers have taken their station with Mary, the Mother, juxta crucem lacrymosa. The sorrows of death, the agony of sacrifice, the thoughts of Gethsemane and Calvary are with us now.

We are making this a Red Cross Christmas. The dollars go to the Red Cross memberships. We take the paper cross and hang it in our windows where the cedar and the holly and the hemlock hung last year. The birth of the Son of God is saddened this year by the mortal danger of the sons of men.

If we had wished to see it the shadow of the cross of Calvary always fell across the manger in Bethlehem. He came to go the way of sorrows. He was an outcast from the inn, an exile in the land of the Nile. His home at Nazareth was a poor mechanic's home. His ministry was a field-preaching. There were no splendid altars and churches, no comfortable rectories and perquisites in His ministry to the poor.

We get away from the heroic aspects of Christianity too easily. We think of the eastern kings and their camels and gold. We rejoice in our affluent homes and light our candles in silver candlesticks and arrange our hothouse flowers in cut glass vases. It is natural that we should do so. Yet it is all so different from the earthly aspects of the Lord's human life. All the time, in lonely tenant houses far off through the country, in crowded tenements in cities where mothers and babies are dirty and hungry, there has been, every year, a Christmas kept, closer to the suffering hardness of the holy family than our Christmas has been.

The cross has always reared its guant, bare arms near to the lighted Christmas tree. We have been pleased to forget the cross. Perhaps, God, in His mercy, is sending the Red Cross to the