THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
DECEMBER, 1925
WHEN WILL CHRISTMAS COME?
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
Peace! and to all the world! Sure One, And He the Prince of Peace, hath none! He travails to be born, and then Is born to travail more again!
— HENRY VaAugHAN (1656)
ONLY God could have thought of Christ- mas. Its beauty is beyond the wit of mortals, so simple in its sublimity, so homey yet so heavenly. On a tapestry woven of stable-straw and starlight it unveils a picture to soften and purify the heart, and to bring us back from a wisdom that is not wise, because it is hard, unholy, and unhopeful. Man would have made it a pageant, its stage directions as follows: —
Array of Great Ones
The Army marches by
Fanfare of trumpets
Enter the King *
Our pageants pass and fade, but God works in slower and more secret ways. He blows no trumpet; He rings no bell. He begins within, seeking His ends by quiet growth, and by a strange power that men call weakness, a wisdom mis- taken for folly. Man has one answer to every problem — force; but that is not the way of God. He did not send an army to conquer the world; He sent a Babe to make a woman cry. The divine method is different: —
YOL. 136 — NO. 8 A
Go gle
The crowded Inn
A Mother and a Babe
No cradle, but a Manger A man stunned by wonder A wandering Star
Such wisdom bends the knee; such beauty breaks the heart — and mends it. It is a scene to sanctify the world, as if to teach us that God enters the life of man by lowly doors, attended by starry ideals and simple shepherd sen- timents — ‘one of the children of the year.” They are wise men who bow at such a shrine, linking a far-off pilgrim star with the cradle of a little Child. By such faith men are truly wise, knowing that no hope is too high, no dream too holy to be fulfilled — even the hope and dream of ‘peace on earth among men of good will.’
No wonder it is a scene of mirth and music. As Botticelli sees it, angels are singing on the roof of the inn, and all the world is aglow with a new joy. Dance is mingled with devotion, and laughter with liturgy. Nay, more: he sees a path winding its way to the
