holars, and from friend to friend. Now, until Christ was born,
there were no Christmas presents. There was no Christmas day celebrated.
But the reason we give presents on Christmas day is to remind each other
of God's Great Gift to man, the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our
Redeemer and Saviour. With Jesus Christ, God also gave us grace and
truth, reconciliation, and pardon and peace and salvation. Man had
sinned against God; was living in open rebellion against God. Whatever
was good, man hated. He loved to do wickedly. He preferred to serve
Satan, rather than to serve God. And Jesus came in order to reconcile
men to God--to get them to turn away from sin, wickedness and Satan,
and to accept of God's love and pardon and everlasting salvation, and to
do that which was right and good and holy.

If you could travel through the countries where they do not know of
Christ and do not worship Him, and then travel through Christian
countries, where Jesus is loved and honored, you would soon see what a
great difference there is between the two. We have railroads,
steamboats, and telegraphs, and telephones, and phonographs, and every
kind of cloth, and silk, and furs with which to clothe ourselves for
greatest comfort, and when we sit down at our tables there is no good
thing that is produced in any nation under the sun, that is not
available even to those of limited means.

In the heathen countries it is not so. They are still riding in carts
drawn by oxen. Without clothing and without comforts, the people in
Africa are still groping through the bushes and jungles. And if you go
to India and China and Japan you will find that only in so far as they
have been brought under the influence of the religion of Jesus Christ,
do they have even now the material blessings which come with the Gospel.

But there are other blessings which come to us with the preaching of the
Gospel. In heathen countries they have no asylums to care for the
orphans, no hospitals for the sick and the distressed and the dying; no
institutions of charity and of mercy; but few schools, and these only
for the rich and the upper classes. So you see that these things are
among the gifts which God has given us with His Son Jesus Christ, whose
birth we celebrate on Christmas day.

Then there are also the spiritual blessings and gifts. God's grace,
communion with God, and the joy and satisfaction we have in our hearts
in knowing that we are the children of Go