upon him, and the man perishes as I now do."

[Illustration]




A NEW CHRISTMAS TRACT;

OR, THE RIGHT WAY OF REJOICING AT CHRISTMAS, SHOWING THE REASONS WE
HAVE FOR JOY AT THE EVENT OF OUR SAVIOUR'S BIRTH.


There are two ways of keeping Christmas: some seem to keep it much in
the same way in which the unbelieving Jews kept their feast in honor
of the calf which they had made. "And they made a calf in Horeb in
those days, and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to
play." But what a sad sort of Christianity is this! I am no enemy to
mirth of a proper kind, and at proper seasons; but the mirth I now
speak of, is the mirth of inconsideration and folly, and is often
mixed with much looseness of conduct and drunkenness. Is this, then,
the sort of mirth proper for Christians? Let us suppose, now, that a
man should choose a church as the place in which he was to sit and
sing his jolly song, and to drink till he was intoxicated; surely this
would imply that he was a person of extraordinary wickedness. But
this, you will say, is what nobody is so bad as to be guilty of; well,
then, let us suppose, that instead of choosing a church as the place,
he should choose Christmas as the time for the like acts of riot and
drunkenness: methinks this must imply no small degree of the same
kind of wickedness; for, as he that should get intoxicated in a