Editorial December 25, 1926 Issue

The Star

Ella W. Hoag

In the days of long ago the wise men followed the star. They were willing to leave their ordinary pursuits because they believed the star prophesied for them some great and kingly good. And where did it lead them? To a lowly manger! They could not see, in one born under such lowly conditions, much promise of worldly adulation and preferment. They may easily have imagined that their own educated powers offered them much more than could be gained by following one so humbly circumstanced. "They presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh;" but we never hear again of them, except that "they departed into their own country another way."

Had these savants decided otherwise, they would have had, at least in those days, no worldly honor. They would have companioned only with lowly fisher folk, and would probably have received only contumely and scorn from their former associates. They could not understand that the pathway of the Christ could never be the path of worldly advancement. The glory of the world—that glory which most often fades even before its own temporary and fallacious zenith is reached—is never the glory which belongs to the Son of God, and which is won through complete abnegation of all that constitutes worldly prowess and emolument.

For only one brief hour in all of Jesus' earth-life did men acknowledge him as King and Lord. Only once did he ride in triumph through the streets of the city where he had so faithfully lifted up the Christ that all might thereby learn the beauty of a life at-one with God. Only an occasional one of all the multitudes who came to him for healing saw beyond the loaves and fishes and recognized in some small degree that there was something tremendously valuable in Jesus' teaching and example.

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