Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Let's Not Have Merry Christmas NOT HAVE a merry Christmas LET'S this Let's have instead a thoughtful and prayerful Let's put Christmas this and put the rush and the buying and wrapping and the cooking and entertaining In second In our scientific royally luxurious marks the birthday of a a man who never had an or a man who preached some simple things that yet were far too Bor complicated for other men's understanding and who died death of a common Ml This man never wrote a and it was only years after his death that his who were mostly poor fisher dared speak and remember what he had done and And yet that obscure and apparently unimportant testimony has come thundering down through the two thousand years that have passed ince Kingdoms have continents have been books by the million have been whole new nations have been And the word goes and the life of that man remains the most Important life that ever was Up and down the west coast of Europe this word and miracles went with The the the cathedrals and libraries and hospitals were all unknown carpenter there they were nowhere That part of the world called and those people who called their civilization built tha new and they named it for their Never before had anyone said your do good to them that hate Never before had anyone said not evil with but overcome evil with Never before had anyone dared to call the Deity The new world was on love fulfilled the said the unknown carpenter of men know that ye are my that ye love one And did all the Christians love their do good to their that hated We know did not not They very soon came to the old human that to all but destroy your enemies first and love them afterward was the proper Interpretation of that But Just as often as they did in scattered cases and in humble the It was the atta eking enemy who was mysteriously halted It was the stronger foe who was vanquished by fearless by patient suf-france and by faith In the leader who never had under that law a few meaningless words on paper might have been a few boundaries might have been a few lives might have been But wherever men have had the outstanding courage to cling to forgiveness and love they have And they would so conquer If they held to the Many of in their private Many pulpits preach even against the horror of hate and retaliation heaped upon hate and But most of the great branches of civilization that were built and that flourished and that knew no in the name of are cowering in fear today not of for the word shifts about and today's enemies are not those of nor those of Fear of because they live as breakers of the What can we do about at this Only go back to the way the mighty seeds of Christendom were sowed so long Only by all day and the weapon of |