THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, December 24, 1945. THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26034, 24 December 1945, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, December 24, 1945. THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

According to Dickens, a glimpse of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas To Come was sufficient to change “ a squeezing, grasping, covetous old hunks, sharp and- hard as a flint,” into a cheerful, charitable and beloved benefactor. Ebenezer Scrooge in his earlier condition, loving no one and beloved by none, frowned on Yule-tide happiness because he was incapable of sympathy with his fellows. To his mercenary mind cheerfulness and charity were weakness and waste. It was the memory and anticipation of Christmas experiences that enabled him to realise the sufferings which the selfish inflict upon themselves and the contentment found in sharing with others even by those who have least to share. The story of Scrooge is the novelist’s lay-sermon on the ennobling effects of the Christmas spirit. Apart from its religious associations, the goodwill engendered by the Christmas festival would help to explain and justify its continuance through nineteen centuries. This year “ peace on earth,” the giving of thanks and the joys of homecoming will have new meaning for millions. And, no doubt, in view of the calamity from which the world has been delivered, most will be willing to turn a serious thought toward the deeper significance of Christmas. This birth-time of Christianity again recalls to mind the religion which was meant to give men a faith by which to live while they are engaged in the enterprise of establishing peace and brotherhood in a distracted and divided world. That false faiths in any part of the world can be a menace to all mankind has had tragic demonstration in the last few years. In fighting these the youth of the democracies found a life-purpose, a high resolve and selfdedication even to extremes of sacrifice. “But,” to quote an English undergraduate who probably speaks for multitudes, “what are we to believe in and live for now that the war is won? ” A spiritual vacuum just now would be a fatal preparation for the uprising of other false faiths, this time with atomic destruction in their power. If men of goodwill the world over see the urgent need of uniting their efforts to upcler gird life with spiritual interpretations and incentives, our glance at our “ Christmas Past ” will be even more fruitful than that of Scrooge. The condition in which' war has left the world should be sufficient to shatter every vestige of Scroogelike inertia and indifference toward the needs of others. Those of us who have not suffered enjoy securities that have been paid for by the sacrifice of others. They are not our own-; they have been bought with a great price. The latest booklet issued by the Ministry of Information states that one out of every three homes in Britain has suffered damage, 202,000 have been utterly destroyed. In all war areas the estimated total of homes destroyed is twenty-three'millions. If we provide food for the starving, clothing and shelter for the homeless, and medicines for healing,'we cannot claim to be making a sacrifice, though we offer Christmas gifts that are desperately needed. Selfish bargaining for our own industrial or economic advantages, whether by strike or by market manipulation, which lessens our power to help needier nations, not only makes mockery of the Good Samaritan spirit of the Christmas religion, but sows the seeds of our own future distress.

Whatever “ Christmas To Come ” is destined to be there will be one new factor in its shaping—what the late Archbishop of Canterbury called “the great new fact of our time, the ground of hope for the coming days’’—the emergence of a world-wide Christian community. It comes at a most opportune time, and many see in it the necessary foundation for the world’s reconstructed life. As if in comment on the Archbishop’s words, Professor K. S. Latourette, considered to be, the greatest living religious historian, has just added the final volume to his monumental “ History of the Expansion of Christianity.” With prodigious patience he has amassed the facts bearing on both the advances and recessions of Christianity as regards its geographical expansion and its influence on the life'of mankind. He proves that in the nineteenth century the faith spread farther and faster than ever before. The volume dealing with the present,* century' is named “Advance Through Storm.” With scholarly restraint the writer surveys the period down to 1944 and gives reasons for, believing that Christianity is only beginning to realise its full effect and extension among men. To return to the phraseology of Dickens, the ghost of' our “Christmas Past” shows us the menace of the clouds of war, which must not be allowed to gather again if the race is to survive; the' ghost of our “ Christmas Present ” is the spectre of slow death by starvation and cold which stalks through many nations and which can be Laid only by active goodwill;the ghost of our “Christmas To Come ” stands astride the portal of the future offering a choice between world-wide Christianity and worldwide chaos.