n
nature, and bringing them into this world within reach of the hearts
and minds of all men, to give light and warmth to their lives, and to
enable them to serve each other;--if we could take this view of the
man's life and work, with what quiet reverence and joy should we
celebrate the twenty-fifth of December as a day set apart to celebrate
His birth into the world!

If we ourselves loved a truthful, quiet way of living better than any
other way, how would we feel to see our friends preparing to celebrate
our birthday with strain, anxiety, and confusion? If we valued a loving
consideration for others more than anything else in the world, how
would it affect us to see our friends preparing for the festival with a
forced sense of the conventional necessity for giving?

Who gives himself with his gift feeds three,--
Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me."

That spirit should be in every Christmas gift throughout Christendom.
The most thoughtless man or woman would recognize the truth if they
could look at it quietly with due regard for the real meaning of the
day. But after having heard and assented to the truth, the thoughtless
people would, from force of habit, go on with the same rush and strain.

It is comparatively easy to recognize the truth, but it is quite
another thing to habitually recognize your own disobedience to it, and
compel yourself to shun that disobedience, and so habitually to
obey,--and to obey it is our only means of treating the truth with real
respect. When you ask a man, about holiday time, how his wife is, not
uncommonly he will say:--

"Oh, she is all tired out getting ready for Christmas."

And how often we hear the boast:--

"I had one hundred Christmas presents to buy, and I am completely worn
out with the work of it."

And these very women who are tired and strained with the Christmas
work, "put on an expression" and talk with emotion of the beauty of
Christmas, and the joy there is in the "Christmas feeling."

Just so every one at the birthday party of the absent guest exclaimed
with delight at all the pleasures provided, although the essential
spirit of the occasion contradicted directly the qualities of the man
whose birthday it was supposed to honor.

How often we may hear women in the railway cars talking over their
Christmas shopping:--

"I got so and so for James,--that will do for him, don't you think so?"

And, when her companion answers in the affirmative, she gi