But as if expressly to decide the question, we find in the prophet Hosea the word mirth directly applied to religious festivals. When rebuking the idolatry of the Jews, and proclaiming the punishments which should in consequence fall upon them, the prophet, speaking in the name of the Almighty, declares that the land shall be deprived of her festivals:
“I will also cause all her mirth to cease; her feast-days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.”
Here we have the very word in dispute applied to the great religious festivals of the Jewish Church. The learned theologians who translated the Hebrew Scriptures, held it a fitting term in connection with festivals of divine appointment, and coming from the lips of an inspired prophet; those holy days are spoken of as a blessing, as the mirth of the land, which the idolatrous tribes no longer deserved, and of which they were to be temporarily deprived, as a punishment for their sins. After this passage, it were worse than idle to cherish scruples against using the word in the same sense ourselves. Let us, then, with every return of the festival, gladly and heartily wish our neighbor, all fellow-Christians, the whole broad world, a right “Merry Christmas.”
It is, in good sooth, Merry Christmas! The day is bright with blessings; all its hours are beaming with good and kindly feelings, with true and holy joys. Probably a fuller, purer incense of prayer and praise ascends from earth to Heaven, upon this great festival, than at other periods of the year. Thousands and ten thousands of knees are bowed in adoration, from the remotest coasts of heathen Asia, to the farthest isles of the sea; thousands and ten thousands of voices are raised among the rejoicing nations, repeating the sublime hymn first heard upon the hallowed
