speaker.

"The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the
year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we
all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our
need: My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must
grow a child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time. You are
growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old
and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and
distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty,
and weak, and foolish; you must become a child--my child, like the
baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in
his mother's arms in the stable.

"But one may say to me: 'You are talking in a dream. The Son of God is
a child no longer. He is the King of Heaven.' True, my friends. But He
who is the Unchangeable, could never become anything that He was not
always, for that would be to change. He is as much a child now as ever
he was. When he became a child, it was only to show us by itself, that
we might understand it better, what he was always in his deepest
nature. And when he was a child, he was not less the King of Heaven;
for it is in virtue of his childhood, of his sonship, that he is Lord
of Heaven and of Earth--'for of such'--namely, of children--'is the
kingdom of heaven.' And, therefore, when we think of the baby now, it
is still of the Son of man, of the King of men, that we think. And all
the feelings that the thought of that babe can wake in us, are as true
now as they were on that first Christmas day, when Mary covered from
the cold his little naked feet, ere long to be washed with the tears
of repentant women, and nailed by the hands of thoughtless men, who
knew not what they did, to the cross of fainting, and desolation, and