"Come down, Hermas, come down! The night is past. It is time
to be stirring. Christ is born today. Peace be with you in
His name. Make haste and come down!"

A little group of young men were standing in a street of
Antioch, in the dusk of early morning, fifteen hundred years
ago--a class of candidates who had nearly finished their years
of training for the Christian church. They had come to call
their fellow-student Hermas from his lodging.

Their voices rang out cheerily through the cool air. They
were full of that glad sense of life which the young feel when
they have risen early and come to rouse one who is still
sleeping. There was a note of friendly triumph in their call,
as if they were exulting unconsciously in having begun the
adventure of the new day before their comrade.

But Hermas was not asleep. He had been waking for hours,
and the walls of his narrow lodging had been a prison to his
heart. A nameless sorrow and discontent had fallen upon him, and
he could find no escape from the heaviness of his own thoughts.

There is a sadness of youth into which the old cannot
enter. It seems unreal and causeless. But it is even more
bitter and burdensome than the sadness of age. There is a
sting of resentment in it, a fever of angry surprise that the
world should so soon be a disappointment, and life so early
take on the look of a failure. It has little reason in it,
perhaps, but it has all the more weariness and gloom, because
the man who is oppressed by it feels dimly that it is an