A CHRISTMAS GREETING

"_Good Will Toward Men"--St. Luke 11-14._


There was a time when the spirit of Christmas was of the present. There
is a period when most of it is of the past. There shall come a day
perhaps when all of it will be of the future. The child time, the
present; the middle years, the past; old age, the future.

Come to my mind Christmas Days of long ago. As a boy again I enter into
the spirit of the Christmas stockings hanging before my fire. I know
what the children think to-day. I recall what they feel.

Passes childhood, and I look down the nearer years. There rise before
me remembrances of Christmas Days on storm-tossed seas, where waves beat
upon the ice-bound ship. I recall again the bitter touch of
water-warping winter, of drifts of snow, of wind-swept plains. In the
gamut of my remembrance I am once more in the poor, mean, lonely little
sanctuary out on the prairie, with a handful of Christians, mostly
women, gathered together in the freezing, draughty building. In later
years I worship in the great cathedral church, ablaze with lights,
verdant and fragrant with the evergreen pines, echoing with joyful
carols and celestial harmonies. My recollections are of contrasts like
those of life--joy and sadness, poverty and ease.

And the pictures are full of faces, many of which may be seen no more by