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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Easter Is a Continuing Miracle You don't see all this where Christianity is not. Built upon the old Jewish faith, carrying over much of its ritual magnificence, still the law is that of the humble carpenter who let them crucify Him, and forgave them with His dying breath. Had we followed His law closely and heroically, we would not be where we are today. There would never have been slums and poverty, heartless wealth and bitter need.- When spring brings the glory and beauty, the lilacs and buttercups of Easter, we must admit that there is something we don't understand in the power of Christ's name that name that eclipses all other names. By KATHLEEN NORRIS "TF I COULD actually have seen a miracle, in the days of Christ's life on earth, of course I'd believe!" So many people bewildered, anxious, anx-ious, troubled in these dark days say that, that it seems worth while to point out to them in this time of Easter, a real living, inexplicable, inex-plicable, undeniable miracle. Well, then, there lived a young carpenter 2,000 years ago, who talked strange talk of God's being his father. God, the avenging, cruel, mysterious ruler of the old religions, reli-gions, just as a father, understanding understand-ing and wise and loving! This was so extraordinary an idea that it is no wonder that this young man, Jesus, was regarded with dark suspicion. He never wrote a line, never had any position or money, never gained an influential friend, and He presently died the death of a common com-mon criminal. All this happened in a little oriental town more obscure ob-scure than is the nearest crossroads cross-roads village to you. No railway to his town, no telephone, radio, movie news. Nothing. Nothing, one would think, to prevent this political po-litical criminal from sinking into the obscurity that has swallowed up such young radicals from the beginning of time. Radical in His Ideas For radical He was. He said children were way ahead of the rest of us in the secret of eternal life; He said the humblest among us would one day stand first; He said anyone who needed your kindness was your neighbor. He said things about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked that were quite new to oriental philosophy. And He went further; He went against all human precedent and cnstnm Hp said. "FnrrHvft vnlir enemies." Why should you? He said, "If your enemy take your cloak, give him your coat also." Who ever heard such nonsense? He said, "Overcome not evil with evil, but overcome evil with good." Why, said the wiseacres then as they are saying today if you did that, your enemies would simply walk over you, and you'd be destroyed! So they began to regard re-gard Him as dangerous, and in the end satisfied themselves that they had destroyed him. Spread Across the World However, they hadn't. With the inexorable power of its divine origin, or-igin, that strange doctrine of His spread spread to the new world of Europe, the new world of the western hemisphere. And the blazing, blaz-ing, irrefutable miracle of this Easter Day is that the name of thi3 obscure carpenter is today the one best known among all men. We call our world Christendom. We call our philosophy Christianity. Christianity ruled Europe for hundreds of years.' What else did Europe have that the oriental nations na-tions didn't have? I can think of nothing fundamental. Was it Christ's law, then, feebly and imperfectly as it was followed, that raised the cathedrals and the hospices, that painted - the great Madonnas and cut the marble saints, that added streets, hospitals, museums, colleges, libraries, bridges and laws becoming steadily stead-ily more and more humane? |