morning and fixed the date from which all other
events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to
blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in
truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew
history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through
the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly
every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our
schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our
literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we
would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of
purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into
the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop
all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We
would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no
hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and
be wrapped in night.

Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world
and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the
light, and with no language but a cry"?

XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?

But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a
night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes
of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned
and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of
monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was
not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and
spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the
earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry
voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These
ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may
well give us pause.

But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest.
The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems
blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds
roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had
never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of
thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm
passes