their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their
song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still
unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt
it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the
earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in
verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.

The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the
voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns
are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up
in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing
away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all
men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Caesar
and Napoleon and the Kaiser--mark the anticlimax!--are gone, their
swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the
same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice
was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was
he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the
Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the
storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even
when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into
form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm
in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is
still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a
majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and
wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted
before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the
greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of
the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be
the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets
of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall
slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song
break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its
notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in
whom he is well pleased."

XXI. The Light of the World

Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism
constricted and strangled it at the t