a poker is within the capacity of
the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to
forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle.
Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men,
but to encourage combustion on winter nights.

The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into
the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what
is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of
which the hymn-writers sing, but which ordinary people have never seen.
The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce
celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will
come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted
for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker
that is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not even
remotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that,
it serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.

The difficulty with the Christmas message is not in getting itself
proclaimed, but in getting itself believed; that is, in any practicable
fashion. Every one recognizes the eminent desirability of establishing
more amicable relations between the members of the human family. But is
this amiable desire likely to be fulfilled in this inherently bellicose
world?

The argument against Christmas has taken a menacingly scientific form. A
deluge of cold water in the form of unwelcome facts has been thrown upon
our enthusiasm for humanity.

"Peace on earth," it is said, "is against Nature. It flies in the face
of the processes of evolution. You have only to look about you to see
that everything has been made for a quite different purpose. For ages
Mother Nature has been keeping house in her own free-and-easy fashion,
gradually improving her family by killing off the weaker members, and
giving them as food to the strong. It is a plan that has worked
well--for the strong. When we interrogate Nature as to the 'reason why'
of her most marvelous contrivances, her answer has a grim simplicity. We
are like Red Riding-Hood when she drew back the bed-curtains and saw the
wolfish countenance.--'What is your great mouth made for,
grandmother?'--'To eat you with, my dear.'

"To eat, while avoiding the unpleasant alternative of being eaten, is a
motive that goes far and explains much. The haps a