Show HINTS FOR A HAPPY HOME that great mystery by KI HLEEN NORRIS CHRISTMAS hristeas started as a v mystery and it continues through the ages as a mystery perhaps the worlds greatest or even only mystery when people tell me that they really would believe in god in that superhuman fount of goodness and fatherhood and power that guides so many lives if they could see a miracle I 1 am forced to regard them as not particularly bright the great miracle lives it thunders all about us it is in your house and in mine this christmastide it is in the streets and the store windows and the faces it is the miracle of the life and influence of a carpenters son who lived and died in a faraway oriental country some 2000 years ago a man who never wrote a word who had no influential friends who gave us a few rules completely opposed to common sense and human usage and who died the shameful death of a common criminal yet stop the first ragged little girl you meet running along a snowy street this morning and ask her his name and shell know it pause by the old grizzled bookseller down in the subway and put to him the same question and heu hell give you a puzzled stare coming to my conclusion mentioned above that youre not bright not long ago I 1 asked a particularly lucid and garrulous unbeliever how he accounted for the story of christ what happened that a handful of bewildered fishermen could carry that story on into the centuries what made it different from the histories of a hundred young religious fanatics oh I 1 suppose he be said carelessly it was the miracles the blind seeing the dead brought to life the loaves and the fishes but you are the one who believe in miracles well he said it takes facts to convince me whereas the shattering truth is s and here is another miracle that it if the knowledge of god ever came into any heart through mere convincing facts it be divine but even the facts are Z it Is takes facts ous draw a ring on your map that takes in western russia and northern italy scotland and the scandinavian COLn countries tries insignificant against the big other spaces of sea and continent yet in that little circle was formed what we call christianity for centuries until our new world was opened here was the very nucleus of all that makes our civilization today we called it christian and we put all our dealings marriage law real estate birth and death deat h under our our q dedicatory promises to an eterna father oh ob but much more than we planted charities countless and inexhaustible hospitals almshouses hospices homes free clinics and schools and libraries we established laws that struggled to keep life fair for the unfortunate the underprivileged the friendless blind poor sick insane helpless orphaned enslaved look for any of these activities in the oriental countries you look in vain beggars starve in india and china superfluous babies are allowed to die wounded men by the wayside evoke only smiles from passersby passers by anything free in the way of food shelter medicine hospitalization or generosity evokes only a puzzled contempt this exactly a christmas letter though I 1 am wishing every one who reads these lines the joy of knowing in his own heart the secret of christs power and his love but the times are too serious for talk of merriment and gladness |