a star in the East and
followed it; and another Gospel tells the same story of quite an
opposite kind of people. Matthew says that the wise men of the time
were the first to appreciate the coming of Christ. Luke says that it
was the plainest sort of people, the shepherds, who first greeted that
coming. There is the same variety of impression still. Many people
now write as if religion were for the magi only. They make of it a
mystery, a philosophy, an opinion, a doctrine, which only the scholars
of the time can appreciate, and which plain people can obey, but cannot
understand. Many people, on the other hand, think that religion is for
plain people only; good for shepherds, but outgrown by magi; a star
that invites the superstitious and ignorant to worship, but which
suggests to scholars only a new phenomenon for science to explore.

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But the Christmas legend calls both, the wise and the humble, to
discipleship. Religion has both these aspects, and offers both these
invitations. Religion is not theology. There are many things which
are hidden from the magi, and are revealed to simple shepherds. But
religion, on the other hand, is not all for the simple. The man who
wrote that there were many things hidden from the wise and prudent, was
himself a scholar. It was like that dramatic day, when Wendell
Phillips arraigned the graduates of this college for indifference to
moral issues, while he who made the indictment was a graduate himself.
The central subject of the highest wisdom to-day is, as it always has
been, the relation of the mind of man to the universe of God.

Thus both these types of followers are called. Never before was the
fundamental simplicity of religion so clear as it is now; and never
before was scholarship in religion so needed. Some of the secrets of
faith are open to any receptive heart, and some must be explored by the
trained and disciplined mind. The scholar and the peasant are both
called to this comprehensive service. The magi and the shepherd meet
at the cradle of the Christ.

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XXX

THE SONG OF THE ANGELS

_Luke_ ii. 8-14.

We are beginning to feel already the sweep of life that hurries us all
along to the keeping of the Christmas season; our music already takes
on a Christmas tone, and we begin to hear the song of the angels, which
seemed to the Evangelists to give the human birth of Jesus a fit
accompaniment in the harmonies of heaven.

This song of