“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 54

“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.) CHR IST M AS G R LUTINGS This is the Christmas mail. Side by side with thousands of others, this letter will travel over thousands of miles of ocean, pass through winter storms and tropic sunsets of heliotrope and rose to bear the greetings of friend to friend anonymous or known. Those friends who are only a name, who make no claim of personality, hut are only minds and souls to us, the silent band of writers who by the written word send messages of cheer and goodwill into the backwoods and remotest outposts of Empire, where, perchance, few personal greetings go, are perhaps the least acknowledged of all the messengers who bring good tidings. The public “take the paper,” buy the magazine, subscribe for the loan of the. book, and ail the world over it would be a loss, a deprivation, not to receive the paper with the news of the world, to have “nothing to read" in the lonely hour, or on the sick bed, to have no opinions to share or combat, no confirmation of faith, or hope or ideal renewed. Out of a thousand different visions, out of a thousand different life-struggles and ambitions and despairs come the Faith that lifts the multitude, the clarion call to fight; tears have been the ink of many a fairy page, and from lonely lives comes many romances of adventure. The Training College of the writer is Life, and in every fictitious story soma truth or illusion, or mystery of life is symbolled; the victory won by fighting, the lover's wooing of his lass, the friend’s devotion, the mother's sacrifice, the angel vision, the miser’s death in greed, the traitor’s shame, the hone and joy and recreation of the world in the Child — each storv has its counterpart in fact. And we owe more than we pay for our i paper, our magazine, and our hook to the writers who renew our fafth in the old, old story of life, of the world —the Divine in flesh, uplifting, purifying, strengthening, the embryo god in man working to distinguish the human from the beast. Never was a storv of chivalry and courage, of mercy or purity or love triumphant told to the world but someone was the happier or the better for it. ’For thoughts are things and the word is a creative power, and in those literary Christmas hampers sent broadcast is food of charity, hope, love, peace. We can “listen in” to the echoes cf the universe, to the 'heart-beats of the world, to the throb of the engines of power—the faith and motive of the world. We are so complex and so simple in our “humanism" that no tale ever told of humanity but is in part about ourselves—what we might have been under given circumstances. No murderer was ever hanged or convict punished in prison cell but we see the possibilities of our own . human nature, depraved; no heroism or greatness ever made our pulse throb but we feel the stir of the divine within us leaping to achieve. The fairy tales told to the children at Christmas are all true, for they embody a truth of the spirit we are too shy, perhaps, to speak of in the prosaic workaday of the year. The visions of light and colour that appear to us in the dark come on noiseless wings from Fairyland, the land of our dreams, of possibilities, of love, and, entering the dark room of doubt, and restricted walls of habit and convention, light up the little space of individual occupation with bright promise of wishes and desires and efforts crowned. Unhappy the man or the woman who has never seen a fairy, and never believed in them! To the seers, the visionists, we I owe the revelation of everything. The vision of the star-gazers led sky-watchers to the Manger where the Redeemer of a practical world was embodied in a Child ; and through the changes of all the centuries since then, the rise and fall of nations, no other story has influenced the world like that storv of God-made-man. to link us by love with all that is and ever will be. We believe in the fairies—bright thoughts, bright hopes, promises of love ; and we believe in the “Angels of Mens," which appear to the fighters above their field of battle and death. The secret of the angels is only revealed to those who “watch by night’’ and above the sacrifice of the battlefield. Angels do not appear to the material snug and smug: the “seers” ever saw with the eyes cf the soul. The vision of the great "multitude in white robes, who have come out of the Great. Tribulation—the Tragedy of Life, —is not granted to the mocker. Do we believe in ghosts? No; not ghosts of the past. Wraiths of memory that haunt us of the days that were? Wraiths of failures, of hopes that were, of endeavours stultified, of jov that died of chances lost, and buried sins, and happiness still-born? Never seen a ghost, grey-headed reader? Not something in the twilight of vour life that comes in the silence and looks at von, or touches you in passing with memories of joy or pain, that takes the shape of the past, of Love remembered, of Friendship lost? Does tile cold chill of Hat? and Fear long entombed, of Wrong and Cruelty and Pain long forgotten, never pass over you as their ghosts walk? Or do you never see again in shadowy guise the forms which were the flesh-and blood partners of your youth? I know you do. The ghosts of the Might-have-been, of Yesterday, come to the evening of To-dav, and say, “Look at me. I was your love, I was your hope, I was vour ambition; I was your mistake, I was your enemv. I was your friend," and we sigh or stretch welcoming hands of remembrance. We are not afraid of those old ghosts: we turn and face them. To the ghosts of youth we smile, or say, “Yes, T know. T made many mistakes. I plucked forbidden fruit, T kicked against the nricks, T mistook the false for true; but. it was the truth I sought, and when T found

it I let the false go.’’ To Ambition we say, "You always eluded and went before; I never caught you up. You played strange tricks with me; but it was good to follow where you ied.” It is good for each young life to begin the old world anew, and not take the verdict of the pessimist and the weary that there is no new thing in it. There are many old things under the sun undiscovered as yet ; these things are for youth to seek, to test, to apply to new uses. Old powers, old as the earth and the heavens above the earth, wait for discovery and application; new worlds lie in the old one for the conjurer, Science, to draw one from another, each one a new miracle and surprise. There are a thousand uses yet for the air and the water unapplied ; unlimited wealth in undiscovered minerals, in vast spaces wln,se ages have never vet heard tile voice of man ; vast powers in the silence, that man is only just beginning to suspect : the science of Mind and Will, the science of Love that works bv law and must accomplish as the falling rain waters the earth. When mankind understands that Love is a science of soul and not a sentiment what wonders its steady application will perform. That prayer and faith can and will and must “move mountains” we are beginning to perceive. We know that thought reaches us as surely as the telegraphic message, although we are not yet always conscious of its impression. That is one of the wonderful things for the new world to do: to discover the science by which the transference of thought may be applied consciously, as we now send the wireless message. It is a marvellous universe—God's House of Many Mansions, —and when we consider that it is our destiny to know, and how little as yet we have learned of the wonderful things of this one small planet on which we dwell, we are appalled by our colossal ignorance. Yet each generation leaves behind something discovered and something done to give the hint to the next generation where the track lies to the buried treasure of the yet unknown. To the haunting ghosts of the Might-Have-Been the disciplined heart can quote the gain of lost illusion. For gain it is to know ourselves and one another and the fact of to-day. A base and brutal world as greed and passion make it, but a wonderful world to the explorer and excavator teeming with riches and treasure for'the worker and the brave and the true if heart. Knowledge and labour is the alchemy that puts life and the world to the test, and Love and Faith the magic stone that turns to 'gold even pain and disillusionment. How much we owe for the has been. Since that dim dawn aeons ago when the Suirit of Life moved the waters of creation and said “Let there be light ’ —how much we owe ! For every day- and dark and dew and rain, for every storm and sunsiune, for the slow age-long forming of the heavens and the earth, that us to-dav our daily bread. The humb.est crust" upon the board means “That God is in His heaven, and all is well with the world.” That the sun and the moon and the stars are held in their courses, and that the mystery of resurrection is enacted bv Nature every spring, and the grain sown in the earth performs the ceaseless miracle of life springing anew from death till the wheat in the ear produces abundantly. We owe to the labourer who tills the field and grows the grain and garners it. and to the inventors and the makers of the machinery that ploughed the Held and reaped it and thrashed the corn and ground it to flour, and to the maker of the bread. How can we complain to serve, when each fine of us are served by a million others ? At our Christmas festival what mvriad of servitors at the most lowlv table! Shades of men and women of all nations and tongues—the who’e universe served in the making of the Christmas pudding! Sun, moon, and stars, rain, frost, and dew. Time since the world was went to the growing of the grain and fruit and spices, and the ingenuity and work of thousands to their preservation a,d supply. Sacrifice takes its place at the festive rite. Animal life, as of old, is laid ujion the altar of spiritual offering—figurative of that eternal truth that pain and death of the flesh must go to the atonement. But most of all we owe for the “unspeakable gift” of the Child —the siairit of love and youth, born into a world gross with debauchery. Wise men kneel in humility before purity incarnate in humanity, and offer their gifts to Love and Sacrifice and Greatness. All the world is glad and of new courage that with the Child comes the promise of redemption, of salvation and redemption from ignorance and mistake. Happy world, happy home, where the eyes of innocence see Good, and tile heart of age is unafraid of the future, remembering the past.