forgotten by |38| mediaeval Christianity; the common life of
monasticism was an attempt to fulfil it; yet for the monk love to man was
often rather a duty than a passion. But to St. Francis love was very
life; he loved not by duty but by an inner compulsion, and his burning
love of God and man found its centre in the God-man, Christ Jesus. For no
saint, perhaps, has the earthly life of Christ been the object of such
passionate devotion as for St. Francis; the Stigmata were the awful, yet,
to his contemporaries, glorious fruit of his meditations on the Passion;
and of the ecstasy with which he kept his Christmas at Greccio we shall
read when we come to consider the _Presepio_. He had a peculiar affection
for the festival of the Holy Child; "the Child Jesus," says Thomas of
Celano, "had been given over to forgetfulness in the hearts of many in
whom, by the working of His grace, He was raised up again through His
servant Francis."{10}

To the Early Middle Ages Christ was the awful Judge, the _Rex tremendae
majestatis_, though also the divine bringer of salvation from sin and
eternal punishment, and, to the mystic, the Bridegroom of the Soul. To
Francis He was the little brother of all mankind as well. It was a new
human joy that came into religion with him. His essentially artistic
nature was the first to realize the full poetry of Christmas--the coming
of infinity into extremest limitation, the Highest made the lowliest, the
King of all kings a poor infant. He had, in a supreme degree, the mingled
reverence and tenderness that inspire the best carols.

Though no Christmas verses by St. Francis have come down to us, there is
a beautiful "psalm" for Christmas Day at Vespers, composed by him partly
from passages of Scripture. A portion of Father Paschal Robinson's
translation may be quoted:--

"Rejoice to God our helper.
Shout unto God, living and true,
With the voice of triumph.
For the Lord is high, terrible:
A great King over all the earth.
For the most holy Father of heaven, |39|
Our King, before ages sent His Beloved
Son from on high, and He
was born of the Blessed Virgin,
holy Mary.

* * * * *

This is the day which the Lord
hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
For the beloved and most holy
Child has been given to us and
born for us by the wayside.
And laid in a manger because He
had no room