THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 12, 22 December 1933, Page 7

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

FOR nearly two thousand years the message of Christmas, “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men,” has been proclaimed, but how far off we are frorafc-ealising it ! What do we fincMn looking round the world today? The world crushed with debt and sunk in misery ; the nations all renouncing war but spending hundreds of millions in preparing for it ; every country seething with discontent the spirit of war and the prac-

tice of war penetrating every group. Man having mastered the problem of production sufficiently to banish material want from the earth, yet poverty as rampant and more bitter than ever—men literally starving not only in the midst of plenty, but because there is plenty. The world tied to a social system that has proved itself successful in producing wealth, but seems incapable of devising ways and means of distributing that wealth equitably. “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to

Men!” It is conceivable that after exhausting every other possible social philosophy the socalled Christian nations may in sheer desperation turn to the Christian way they profess to believe and really set themselves to put into practice the teaching of Him who stands at the door and knocks : that life is really more than the meat, and the body more than the raiment ; that all mankind are brothers, children of the same Father, who has given the earth for the use of the children of men. It would demand vision in carrying it out ; but without vision a nation perisheth. To carry the Spirit of Christmas into every day of the year and every social and business transaction ah, if that were only possible !