Dana._
It is now more than eighteen hundred years since that annunciation of
the coming of peace on earth and good-will to men, at which the world
might well have trembled with a new and mighty hope. The Divine Infant,
whose birth the celestial choirs thus celebrated, grew up to man's
estate, still bearing within him that blessed promise; he went about on
earth, imparting new life to the broken-hearted and forlorn, and
uttering words of such heavenly significance, that to this day there is
nothing that thrills the hearts of men with so true a power. At last he
gave his life a testimony to those eternal truths, and died in great
bodily agony, still publishing the prophecy that welcomed his birth,
still announcing the kingdom of peace and love, the kingdom of God on
earth.
His followers have since grown to cover great continents; whole nations
acknowledge those few words of his as their most sacred possession;
great temples are built in which his life and death are solemnly
commemorated, and men gladly yield their hard-won treasure to carry his
history to distant regions that his name has never reached. And yet, my
friends, where is that kingdom of peace and love; where, where in the
whole wide world is the will of God done as it is in heaven? Is it even
thought of as anything but a dream, an impossibility? Does not a
sceptical smile steal over the faces of men, when an earnest and
enthusiastic person speaks of it as a thing yet actually to be?
And yet it is only what Christ taught us to hope for and pray for.
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