Article December 22, 1962 Issue

Signs of the Times

Clarence W. Hall

Christian Herald

Clarence W. Hall a Senior Editor of the Reader's Digest in the Christian Herald New York, New York

We have so sentimentalized Christmas in our day that we've forgotten how bloody and callous was the time into which Christ was born. The spectacular thing of His day was Rome's military might, its swaggering armies. Peace, as a possible goal for mankind, had no standing. War was the way of life; and in it was all the power and glory of living. ...

It was to this sort of world that the Bethlehem blueprint of peace was brought. The world's mighty laughed. The notion that world advance could be registered by "good will" and "brotherhood" and "love" was not only wispy and weak; it was downright ridiculous.

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