her books of the heart around
me, but on Christmas Eve it is Alexander Smith's "Dreamthorp" which
always seems to lie at my hand, and when I take it up the well-worn
volume falls open at the essay on "Christmas." It is a good many years
since Rosalind and I began to read together on Christmas Eve this
beautiful meditation on the season, and now it has gathered about itself
such a host of memories that it has become part of our common past. It
is, indeed, a veritable palimpsest, overlaid with tender and gracious
recollections out of which the original thought gains a new and subtle
sweetness. As I read it aloud I know that she sees once more the
familiar landscape about Dreamthorp, with the low, dark hill in the
background, and over it "the tender radiance that precedes the moon";
the village windows are all lighted, and the "whole place shines like a
congregation of glowworms." There are the skaters still "leaning against
the frosty wind"; there is the "gray church tower amid the leafless
elms," around which the echoes of the morning peal of Christmas bells
still hover; the village folk have gathered, "in their best dresses and
their best faces"; the beautiful service of the church has been read and
answered with heartfelt responses, the familiar story has been told
again simply and urgently, with applications for every thankful soul,
and then the congregation has gone to its homes and its festivities.

All these things, I am sure, lie within Rosalind's vision, although she
seems to see nothing but the ruddy blaze of the fire; all these things I
see, as I have seen them these many Christmas Eves agone; but with this
familiar landscape there are mingled all the sweet and sorrowful
memories of our common life, recalled at this hour that the light of the
highest truth may interpret them anew in the divine language of hope. I
read on until I come to the quotation from the "Hymn to the Nativity,"
and then I close the book, and take up a copy of Milton close at hand.
We have had our commemoration service of love, and now there comes into
our thought, with the organ roll of this sublime hymn, the universal
truth which lies at the heart of the season. I am hardly conscious that
it is my voice which makes these words audible: I am conscious only of
this mighty-voiced anthem, fit for the choral song of the morning stars:

"Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
And bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our sense