The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1933. CHRISTMAS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 8

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1933. CHRISTMAS

JX PALACES where kings dwell, in crowded streets where men tread to transact their commerce, in market places where staid merchants meet, in bazaars where petty vendors and buyers haggle, in homes where humble people dwell, in factories, in workshops, on lonely farms and on distant and windswept mountain sides, men will be recollecting that, to-day is the Eve of Christmas.

How many days are there in the centuries which can vie with Christmas Day in its compelling force? Is there any other Day which can compare with it in significance and in the respect paid to it by men of many races? Easter Day stands out as the competing event. Thus we have it, the Festival of the Birth and the Festival of the Rebirth. It is fitting that Christmas Day should take precedence over every other festival, for if Christ had not been born, there would have been no Good Friday and no Easter Day. The Central Fact of Christianity is that Christ was born into the world in order that He might die for the Redemption of Mankind. Christmas Day is the Festival for Perpetuating the Memory of that Great Event. The Day is rightly one of great good cheer, for without it there would be small room for happiness in the world, there would be little opportunity for fellowship, there would be no flowering of personal liberty, and no cultivation of the finer qualities of life and human thought and emotion.

This may sound a tremendous claim, but, if the matter be looked at, it will be found that this is rather an under-statement of the ease.

Look back over the world and see what there is to be seen! Consider the Pyramids of Egypt. Why were they built? Was it not because the Pharaohs considered themselves to be gods? This accepted belief led to conditions which have long been forgotten, but they were the natural result of the beliefs of the times. Believing themselves gods, the Pharoahs of Egypt could not marry common clay, and so perforce, married their own brothers and sisters. The Pyramids were built to hold those assumedly saered bodies, and men and women were enslaved to construct those mighty sarcophagi. Sometimes, after some mighty work had been accomplished, the whole of the workers were slaughtered so that thc secret of their building should be held only by the Dynasty and by the grave. How came this to be tolerated? It was because the State, in the person of the Pharoah, was deemed to be the be-all and the end-all of human existence. The individual counted for nothing. To assure the dominance of the State, or of constituted authority, acts of wanton cruelty were often indulged in, and sometimes these barbarities were executed simply to exhibit Ihe strength of the mighty. Poor people then had no redress. They could point to little law and there were few means of enforcing what law there was. Law was administered capriciously, as it was under the old Turkish regime until recent years. The meek did not inherit the earth.

Christ proclaimed that all men shall be called to account by God: that God, in His Heaven, ruled the earth, and not kings nor princes. Terrible doctrine that! It challenged the established order, it stood up against the powers of the times; it called not men, but High Heaven, to witness the doings of those in whose hands power rested. Gradually, step by step, since that wonderful night when desert shepherds saw a bright star in the heavens and followed it to Bethlehem, an ever-growing ray has been working through the darkness. The world has seen great forward movements, until early in the last century Victor Hugo could proclaim “The Great Man had to make room for The Great Age.” A Great Age has certainly arrived, dazzling in its brilliance and in its possibilities. And wherein lies the key to this brilliant, future which beckons? Men and women are seeking the key more than ever to-day, because there have arisen strange men who fascinate the mot> and who discipline it and coerce it. Thc Stalins, the Mussolinis, the Hitlers—they arc all of the same class—they are destroyers of human liberty, of the, development of human will. And these men talk of war and breathe rumours of wars. These, too, shall pass away as did the Pharoahs of Egypt, the Emperors of Greece and Rome. None shall deify them, for in the face of Christmas Day they eannot be thought of in the same way as was Alexander when he sighed for fresh worlds to conquer. They are but men, their days are as grass, but an abiding word shall remain with the world forever: the voice of challenge, the voice of hope, the voice of victory. That voice still speaks its message: “Peace on Earth. Goodwill Inwards men. ’