Show Gfn (Dclilorid ©RUCJB CATTON HREE wise men from the Orient plodded across a plain with their eyes on a The dark veil of a Syrian night was rent apart so that wide-eye- d blazing star shepherds in a quiet sheepfold might have a vision of unearthly glory A child was born m the stable of an inn in an province of the and into a world that lived by the sword came the promise that Roman empire men some day would learn to live in peace out-of-the-w- ay That miraculous Christmas Eve Bethlehem was not only the announcement of man’s eternal kinship with something deathless something greater and nobler and finer than he had dared dream himself to be It was also a promise that since man is made image of God this old earth can be remade in the image of God’s city It revealed to men the simple fact that war with all that it connotes — might’s triumph over wrong the enthronement of brute strength reason surrendering to the law of the jungle— is no more a part of the natural order of things th?n poverty greed or oppression and can be abolished when men wish That was an unbelievable promise in those days just as it ‘seems to be now On the one hand were a child in a stable and a few aging philosophers and unlettered shepherds on the other all the glitter and pomp and hard-fiste- d might ol the Roman The tramp of the Legions raised the dust on roads all across the known world empire The triremes of Rome’s fleet ruled every known sea Beat those swords into plowshares? Great Caesar if he had heard about it would have laughed in in-th- e -- IVOR does the outlook seem any brighter today Peace? The dreadnaughts and the tanks make a mockery of the idea just as Caesar’s legions did But there is a power in the world that cannot be measured in terms of army divisions You cannot weigh it or analyze it in a laboratory but in the long or naval squadrons it is run only real power’ It is that strange and unfathomable force in the human soul which keeps weary and discouraged men plodding along on the road to the stars Now the world has lasted a long time and its history is one long record of blood and suffering of inhumanity and injustice of wrong triumphant and of right in the condemned cell and most of the time we forget about this incalculable spiritual power ' But at Christmas each year we rediscover it We remember where it comes from in we see it symbolized those little Christmas customs that we all observe and in the cadences of that deathless story from Bethlehem we realize its eternal truth magnificent ' this we then discover something else: that the great battles the battles which decide the world’s destiny are fought out in men’s hearts and minds It is there that TRACING -- - the great decisions are made everything that happens afterward simply ratifies them Where are the legions that held the world in thrall while the heavens opened over that sheepfold? Blown dust on the winds of time these 19 centuries bloodless shadow’s marching through oblivion with the shades of all the other armies man has raised And the vision that those legions mocked? It still lives imperishable and ageless in millions upon millions of hearts lightening the fear and discouragement of unnum bered generations of men All of the world’s armies have not killed it all the world’s fleets have not touched it It is above change and beyond time Human nature does change it is a denial of Slowly year by year it increases all that we live by to say that it does not Generation by generation and century by century men come a little bit closer to a realization of the fact that they can make this world precisely what they want it to be if they have the faith and courage to try A we realize that we find that the star that blazed in the eastern sky is still shining The smoke from the navies and the dust-cloufrom the parade grounds may obscure it ’ but they cannot cut off its light entirely And so we can celebrate our Christmas and the old promise of peace and human brotherhood in spite of the war clouds For that star will continue to give us its light in the future as in the past Year by year the light will grow a little bit brighter and as it does so we shall become a little bit better able to see the tragic stupidity of trying to conduct human society ‘by the rules of the tiger-cag- e Then we shall be able to see this story of manger and wise men and sheepfold not as a beautiful old story or as a‘ IoyJy but impractical ideal but as a guide for human affairs a miraculous disclosure of eternal truth And in that day looking about us we shall discover that we have begun to build the city of God (Copyright 1934 by Every Week Magazine) ds re-re- ad ‘ sfl L- r KS' 111 w wvV c y AHA m h '‘'Illlllllllllllllllllllioillllllllllllllllllllii-- 1 |