What they Say:

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21244, 14 January 1939, Page 8

What they Say:

Readers are invited to contribute to this column, sayings of notable people of any age. that have Impressed them.

The chief charm of Christmas is its simplicity. It is a festival that appeals to everyone, because every one can understand it. A genuine fellowship pervades our common life —a fellowship whose source is our common share in the gift of the world's greatest Life which was given to the whole world.— Arthur Reed Kimball.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres! Once bless our human ears. If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime Move in melodious time. And let the bass of Heaven’s deep argan blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

The earth has grown old with its burden of care, But at Christmas it always is young; The heart of the jeivel burns lustrous and fair, And its soul, full of music, breaks forth on the air When the song of the angels is sung. It is coming, Old Earth, it is coming to-night! On the snowflakes which cover thy sod The feet of the Christ-child fall gentle and white. And the voice of the Christ-child tells out with delight That mankind are the children of God. —Phillips Brooks.

“If we were to fancy a tvholly Christianized world, it would be a world inspired by the spirit of Christmas—a bright, friendly, beneficent, generous, sympathetic, mutually helpful world. A man who is habitually mean, selfish, narrow, is a man without Christmas in his soul. Let us cling to Christmas all the more as a day of the spirit which in every age some souls have believed to be the possible spirit of human society. The earnest faith and untiring endeavour which see in Christmas a forecast are more truly Christian, surely, than the pleasant cynicism of Athiests, etc., which smiles upon it as the festival of a futile hope. Meanwhile we may reflect that from good natured hopelessness to a Christmas world may not be farther than from star dust to a solar system."—George William Curtis.