IV--A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTMAS



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

Rejoice in the Lord always.--PHILIPPIANS iv. 4.

This is the beginning of the Epistle for to-day, the Sunday before
Christmas. We will try to find out why it was chosen for to-day, and
what lesson we may learn from it.

Now Christmas-time was always a time of rejoicing among many heathen
nations, and long before the Lord Jesus Christ came. That was
natural and reasonable enough, if you will consider it. For now the
shortest day is past. The sun is just beginning to climb higher and
higher in the sky each day, and bring back with him longer sunshine,
and shorter darkness, and spring flowers, and summer crops, and a
whole new year, with new hopes, new work, new lessons, new blessings.
The old year, with all its labours and all its pleasures, and all its
sorrows and all its sins, is dying, all but gone. It lies behind us,
never to return. The tears which we shed, we never can shed again.
The mistakes we made, we have a chance of mending in the year to
come. And so the heathens felt, and rejoiced that another year was
dying, another year going to be born.

And Christmas was a time of rejoicing too, because the farming work
was done. The last year's crop was housed; the next year's wheat was