and the perversion of all our good! What is this but that God wishes that we his children should accept the bonds of suffering and disappointment in life? Here is likeness to Him who was ordained to this from the beginning. All this our Lord accepted as part of the necessary condition of human life, and therefore as essential to his redemptive work. It opened his own heart to the divine love, and it opened human hearts to his love. Because he went about his Father's business, and lived his Father's life in the presence of his countrymen, their hearts went out to him. For no life was too low for him; the woman at the well, Zacchæus the publican, the poor Syrophœnician woman, the outcast, the heathen-in their affliction he was afflicted, in his love and in his pity he redeemed them. Through his accepting a service of humiliation, all that could be revealed of love entered into our life. This, then, seems to me the supreme message of Christmas, the revelation of God in everyday life; the exalting of humanity through Jesus Christ out of the despairing darkness of the old world of heathenism; and the ennobling of our life with all its weakness and its suffering, making it the very instrument by which as of old the Son of God comes into the world to save the world. So to-day the divine Son himself does the Father's will in us, and through us, his children, as in the strength that he gives, and the love that he inspires, and the desire and the loyalty of the heart that longs to be like him, we accept the divine appointments for us, and whether in weakness or in strength, in folly or in wisdom, in failure or in success, in burden or in trial, we give ourselves day by day to walking in his steps and doing his will. And as we so walk, and as we so live, the joy of the Lord is revealed, and the measures of our life are full and overflowing. We try to make other lives glad, if but for an hour, on Christmas day. We wish we could carry the gladness beneath the surface of these other lives, and extend the blessing of Christmas through the year. Our transient joy seems pitiful in the face of the awful evils of the times. But the true remedy for those evils exists, and this day declares it. It is nothing more nor less than to do again what Jesus did—give one's whole self to such as are fallen below the power of helping themselves. To open one's heart, to love them, no matter how unworthy, to forgive even when forgiveness is not asked, to comfort and console before you speak of duties, to pity and not to upbraid, not to be afraid of the touch of evil, but to grasp it firmly with strong hands and, with a love that never despairs and cannot be destroyed, to carry Christ to men by being Christ to them-this is the whole secret. The |