op, and at the bottom its millions
were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had
stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was
irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind.
Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism
itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was
terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich
where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions,
pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in
despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life.
Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the
human heart cried out that life

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck
in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with
heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle--symbol and
prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until
he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that
little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing
light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his
light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.

This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a
wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and
its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining
of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of
Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot
live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from
his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it
not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and
dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match
and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the
muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts
life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.

As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in