Article January 29, 1910 Issue

Only in the spirit of a little child should one seek the...

Marie H. Crockett

Troy (N. Y.) Times

Only in the spirit of a little child should one seek the Christmas meaning—a meaning so simple that even the child may understand, and yet so profound that neither height nor depth nor length nor breadth can compass it. It is the morning dawn after the night whose shadows have threatened us, whose hateful unrealities have deceived us. It is the glorious sunrise which unfolds to our astonished vision the wondrous beauties in whose very midst we stand. We see light answering to light, color to color, and graceful forms and softened shadows finding their true adjustment and meaning; we put out our hands and touch the very treasures which in the darkness had seemed lost to us forever.

It is "the dayspring from on high," the dawning of "the light that never was, on sea or land," the sunrise of truth which annihilates time and unites past and future, prophecy and fulfilment, in the wondrous now. Starting with the sweet story of John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word," it sweeps from our horizon all the gloom and misery and pain of the ages, and reaches back to the first chapter of Genesis, when "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" and looked upon His work and saw that "it was very good." It reaches forward also, to Revelation and, verifying the later words of the Bethlehem babe, "I am the door," it brings into our present experience the vision of St. John, "Behold, a door was opened in heaven." This is the Christmas meaning, this the Christ.

Only one discordant note sounds amid this harmony, "Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light,"—loved the darkness and the dreaming rather than the dawn and the awakening. To all the Christmas message rings loud and clear, "Awake, awake: ... put on thy beautiful garments." "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."

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