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Show H LITTLE (Hill) Sll I.I LEAD THEM." H ""' EiRISTMAS is the apothesii of enfeeblement. H it is the exaltation of childhood, It is the H glory of the little child. H We celebrate this festival in bleak December. H the uncrowned month of our northern zone, light- fl ing its dull skies by the eternal tires of love in BH human hearts. Hh There is not in all this land a home where the H rain beats through the roof, where the mother and HH father gather the children more clotely to shelter H them, but the Christmas truth is shining, "Bles- HH sed are the poor." HH There is not a homeless boy who in the Decetn- H ber night creeps out of the snow into an empty H dry goods box in the alley, not a little fellow up B under the rafters of the poorhouie on the country farm, not a foundling left in a basket at ihe rich H man's door, not a shivering, tiny girl unfitted for a H fight with the storm, but the new truth of the HH Christmas spreads its wm.s over them. B "When 1 am weak, then am 1 strong." Who is LH weak? Who is infirm upon his feet and walks H with a crutch? Who is afraid of the northern B wind? Who says: "I am better; yet, 1 think 1 am B getting better. But somehow 1 do not get my vig- HHE or back?" Who leans up against the bale of goodl jjoBj on the half-hidden counter and knows that she LH came back to work too soon? Who was bom Hff blind? Who hears the unfeeling call for an iron will and has it not, for a tireless energy and con-featee con-featee that he lacks it, though he prays to heaven for this force that others have? To all of you the Christmas has its meaning. There never was a comparer like the child in the cradle. Cod hath chosen the weak things to confound con-found the mighty. For 2.000 years the history of the world's civilization has been the storv of the gentler virtues, the poem, the song and the triumph of suffering well. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Every letter let-ter of that sentence is eternally true. The grandest, things that were ever done on earth were done by men and women who had the spirit of the child. The sublimest work of the i Creator is the sweet faced little child. It is every-' thing for the child, heaven please all harvests. all gold, all schools, all trade, all government, all the coming better times. Christmas means. "And a little child shall lead them." Emory J. Hayne. f . |