HAIL, happy day of Bethlehem’s crib, that amidst the cold of nature, and of the cheerless frigidity that is abroad upon society at large, makes us aware again of a friendly, fostering ray of light of the love of our God.
Times are so different.
Not a half a century ago almost all Christian Europe, and by far the greater majority of our own people, were still strong in the unshaken conviction that there were no facts so real, no events so well certified, as the birth of the Babe at Bethlehem and the angel-glory, that has shone upon that crib.
With childlike simplicity in those days of our beautiful Christmas every one drank in the beneficent fragrance, that was wafted towards us from the holy circle of Mary and her Divine Child; and every soul revelled in the sweetness of the heavenly music, that once purled through Ephrata’s fields.
Our children jubilated and our greybeards rejoiced with them. It was as though one overwhelming human joy had kindled every soul. From every side people flocked to our temples of prayer. In those houses of worship the voices of song swelled with glad fulness. And when those Christmas days had once more been enjoyed, strengthened and encouraged and as anointed with fresh oil, the somber seriousness of Old year’s night was anticipated.
It was a sacred occasion to all that had been baptized; a glorious feast of Christendom in its broadest dimensions; and to all who kept that feast the Babe of Bethlehem was and continued to be the all-animating center, the object of love on the part of their once more softened heart.
And now?
How has the gold been tarnished, and the honor been removed from Israel!
Almost the whole tone-giving class of our society has become deaf to the poetry of Bethlehem, and in the soul apostatized from our Savior and Lord. Almost everything that stands exalted in the land, exerts influence, and is celebrated, has come to the unblessed conviction, that Jesus is still the Rabbi of Nazareth, and among Israel’s rabbis one of the most excellent, perhaps the most renowned; but for the rest a man as we, born from an earthly father, and no longer a holy Presence before Whom one kneels in worship, with a “My Lord and my God” on the lips.
Thus everything that is told of Bethlehem becomes pure imagination. Imagination that there were angels that descended; and invention that moving angel-song with its heavenly greetings of peace on this earth.
But Christmas is still kept.
So age-old an oak is not felled with one stroke.
But with this modern Christmas it is no longer the Lion from Judah’s tribe, but the Christmas-tree that has become the all attracting center. So they come together to enjoy the lights that decorate that tree, and the presents, that are fastened to its branches; but of the great gift of God’s impenetrable love there is almost nothing felt in the petrified heart.
Such a Christmas evening is then one of worldly enjoyment, as one honors the other with presents, and remembers especially the little ones; and then a revelling in banquets; and finally the dance.
And Jesus is forgotten, and the crib no more remembered.
Even in the house of prayer art must gradually take the place of our blessed Gospel, and on the home-ward way, minds are full, not of the eternal love that God has shown us in that crib of Bethlehem, but of the glorious organ-play and the artistically rendered song. Also of the flowers that enhanced the beauty of the service.
So it largely goes on abroad; and so on ever larger scales it assumes this aspect in our land; even though with gratitude to God it can be acknowledged, that our more serious interpretation of life has not tolerated thus far so gross an encroachment upon decorum.
But although this tarnishing of the gold, and this progressive apostacy of Christendom, is a matter of deep grief to God’s people, yet it should not surprise us.
An historic faith, if it goes no deeper, and does not become saving, can not maintain itself. There was in this general Christmas joy, for already more than a century, too a great lack of inner reality. Sentiment and feeling operated more than inner warmth of faith. And where that Babe was found so lovely, and that mother so interesting, and that angelic host so touching, one sensed almost nothing more of what it is, in Jesus to hail a Savior of sinners.
Christmas joy engaged indeed the heart, but not the conscience within that heart, and the prophecy of the angel: “He shall save His people from their sins,” left the soul’s perception cold.
That could not stand. There was bound to come a break in it. And God the Lord, weary with that play with what is holy, has withdrawn even the afterglow of the light, and now these wanderers walk in their own darkness.
What is still worse, even in those circles which are still Christian, where our Savior is still confessed as God revealed in the flesh, many a preacher has deemed it his duty, in all sorts of ways to make it plain to the multitudes, that these Christmas narratives must not be understood in so literal a sense, as historic truth. That here there is more myth than history, or if no myth then at least saga, and that what St. Luke and St. Matthew report, is more of a representation formed at a later date, than report of what has happened. It is still poetry, but now no longer poetry of the Compassionate One, but charming poetry of man.