fficient and needs
fostering by study and meditation. Why, if you decide to found a
sailing-club up your creek, your very first thought is to signalise your
faith in the sailing of those particular waters by a dinner and a
jollity, and you take care that the event shall be an annual one! * * *
You have faith in your wife, and in your affection for her. Surely you
don't need a festival to remind you of that faith, you so superior to
human weaknesses? But you do! You insist on having it. And, if the
festival did not happen, you would feel gloomy and discouraged. A
birthday is a device for recalling to you in a formal and impressive
manner that a certain person still lives and is in need of goodwill. It
is a device which experience has proved to be both valuable and
necessary.

* * * * *

Real faith effervesces; it shoots forth in every direction; it
communicates itself. And the inevitable result is a festival. The
festival is anticipated with pleasure, and it is remembered with
pleasure. And thus it reacts stimulatingly on that which gave it birth,
as the vitality of children reacts stimulatingly on the vitality of
parents. It provides a concrete symbol of that which is invisible and
intangible, and mankind is not yet so advanced in the path of spiritual
perfection that we can afford to dispense with concrete symbols. Now, if
we maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and
honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a
festival--and a mighty one--in behalf of a faith which makes the
corporate human existence bearable amid the menaces and mysteries that
for ever threaten it,--the faith of universal goodwill and mutual
confidence?

* * * * *

If then, there is to be a festival, why should it not be the festival of
Christmas? It can, indeed, be no other. Christmas is most plainly
indicated. It is dignified and made precious by traditions which go back
much further than the Christian era; and it has this tremendous
advantage--it exists! In spite of our declining faith, it has been
preserved to us, and here it is, ready to hand. Not merely does it fall
at the point which uncounted generations have agreed to consider as the
turn of the solar year and as the rebirth of hope! It falls also
immediately before the end of the calendar year, and thus prepares us
for a fresh beginning that shall put the old to shame. It co