Class 
 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIE 
 
HOLY MIGHT 
 
 Corregio 
 
Straws from me Manger 
 
 or 
 
 Thoughts On 
 Christmastide 
 
SJtljtt ©bata! 
 
 H. B. RIES, 
 
 Censor Librorum 
 June i8tk, 1917 
 
 imprimatur 
 
 * S. G. ME5SMER, D. D. 
 
 Archbishop of Milwaukee 
 Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel 1917 
 
 / 
 
 Copyright 1917 
 Rev. James H. Cotter, L.L.D., Litt. D. 
 
 ©CI.A470973 
 
Straws From 4ie Manger 
 
 or 
 
 Thoughts On Christmastide 
 
 Re%). James H. Cotter, L. L. D. Litt. D. 
 
 \ I 
 
 Au4\or of 
 "Skakespeare's Art" and "Lances Hurled at &e Sun'* 
 
 Diederich-Sckaefer Co. 
 
 Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 1917. 
 
INTRODUCTION. , .' 
 
 THESE thoughts 
 Have appeared in 
 < TKe Columbiad and 
 The Columbian. 'That 
 me$ may be productive of 
 mought in me reader is 
 me wisk of 
 
 Hlie Author. 
 
 Ironton, Ohio, 
 June 7&, 19 17. 
 
 SEP -8 1917 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 H"he Author is pleased to 
 dedicate this volume to 
 
 Rt. Rev'd nixomas J. Shahan, 
 
 as an expression of reverence 
 for his Exalted Station, as 
 -well as a token of Esteem 
 for his renowned Scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 Ironton, Ohio, 
 June, 7&1, 1917, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Promise of Christmas 1 
 
 II. The Advent of Our Lord - 3 
 
 III. Bethlehem's Night - ... 7 
 
 IV. Christ's Mother ----- 10 
 V. Christmas and Its Creed - - - -16 
 
 VI. A Christmas Box for Christ - - 19 
 
 VII. Christmas and Its Message - - 25 
 
 VIII. The Real Christmas - 30 
 
 IX. Christmas and the Little Ones - - 33 
 
 X. Christmas Benediction - 36 
 
 XI. Our Christmas Duty ... - 38 
 
 XII. Christmas Kindness .... 40 
 
 XIII. Christ, the Poor and the Children - - 45 
 
 XIV. Mars and the Christ Child 49 
 XV. Christmas Angels - - - - - 59 
 
 XVI. Christmas in Art 64 
 
 XVII. Christmas Loneliness - - - - 69 
 
 XVI'II. Christmas Sins - - - - - 71 
 
 XIV. Welcome the New Born Year - - 73 
 
 XX. New Year Greeting .... 76 
 
 XXI. New Year Gratitude - - - - 79 
 
 XXII. The Use of Time ----- 84 
 
 XXIII. The New Year's Value - 88 
 
 XXIV. Good Resolutions ----- 92 
 XXV. Little Christmas - .... 96 
 
I. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF CHRISTMAS. 
 
 jHRISTMAS, of all the feasts, 
 not only makes the most pro- 
 found as well as happy impres- 
 sion, but covers more of the religious 
 year. It begins with the Ave of the 
 Angel and ends with the Ave of the 
 Magi. The Heavenly herald who salut- 
 ed the Virgin at prayer with his "Hail, 
 full of grace!" doubtless led the heavenly 
 hosts that made musical skies in Bethle- 
 hem when the expectations of the An- 
 nunciation were gloriously realized in 
 the Nativity. 
 
 Our mind reverts to the angel of the 
 Annunciation in Boticelli's great paint- 
 ing, now in the Pitti palace in Florence. 
 We never saw anything so devotional; 
 we never heard a voice as eloquent as 
 the mute homage given by Gabriel's wor- 
 shipping eye. It spoke as well as looked. 
 Memory, after two decades is even now 
 
2 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 fascinated by the reverence of it all. That 
 the Ambassador from the courts of glory 
 should so venerate with all his soul lus- 
 trous in his eye the shy little virgin, sug- 
 gests the knowledge Heaven entertained 
 of the majesty of the new Eve. The facial 
 expression of the angel tells likewise of 
 the grand humility of our Queen, as it 
 betokens the fact that he is not at first 
 hearing, in any way understood. The 
 scene is suffused with the light of glory 
 flashing from the heavenly w 7 ing and 
 above all from Mary's royal benignity. 
 Here we learned for the first time from 
 paint on canvas, the full sense of The 
 Hail Mary, and often since have we felt 
 humbled in the thought that the paint- 
 er's color could say more than living lip 
 could dare express. 
 
THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "This is the month, and this the happy 
 
 morn, 
 
 Wherein the Son of heaven s eternal 
 
 King, 
 
 Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, 
 
 Our great redemption from above did 
 
 bring, 
 For so the holy sages once did sing 
 That He our deadly forfeit should release, 
 And with His Father work us a perpetual 
 peace." 
 
 ILTON wrote nothing more true 
 than these lines which chant of 
 Christ's birth, with our redemp- 
 tion and atonement its happy sequence. 
 The birth of Christ was the nativity 
 of charity. Before Christ came, love 
 was locked from the homes of men; in 
 fact, there was no such word as home, 
 for there was no such term as charity. 
 The cruelty of Herod, the ravenous 
 wolves of Rome, the "eye for an eye" of 
 
4 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 the people nearest to Christ's laws — all 
 these were symbolical of an age when 
 men's hearts were as hard as the soldier's 
 breastplate upon which was shattered the 
 javelin winged with fierce hate. The 
 arena with its orgies catered to the thirst 
 for blood, and even the gentle maiden 
 hesitated not at home to stab her female 
 slave (perhaps of better birth then her- 
 self) nor, abroad in the balconies of the 
 Coliseum, to invert her thumb, and thus 
 vote for the death of a victim in the spat- 
 tered sands. Man pitted against man 
 tigers of Nubia tearing the victor over 
 his fellow to pieces — these were the ex- 
 pressions of a blood-drinking time. 
 
 In such a day, out from heaven comes 
 the angels with their love song, and out 
 from Mary's womb comes the Prince of 
 charity to contradict the mad spirit whose 
 purpose, as the satirist of Roman morals 
 says, was "to corrupt and be corrupted," 
 and whose joy was to cut capers over the 
 victims of its murders. Christ smiles in 
 Bethlehem, and the heart of the old 
 world is warmed into a new life, and the 
 
THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 5 
 
 summer of Christ's love is spread through 
 man's long and dreary winter of discon- 
 tent. He comes as a rebuke to earth's 
 selfishness, by asking nothing and yet be- 
 stowing royal gifts. He comes as a 
 paragon of kindness, by loving even 
 hate. He comes poor as a beggar, and 
 yet is earth's King and eternity's Crown. 
 He comes as a victor, and nevertheless 
 presents only the shivering form of a 
 little babe. He comes into the field as 
 a peasant, and yet not Caesar in all his 
 glory ever had name like unto His, nor 
 home to whose hallowed precincts the 
 generations make ceaseless pilgrimage. "^4 
 
 Never was there such a university as 
 Bethlehem's stable. There were laid the 
 fundamental principles of the colleges 
 of all time; there was commenced a sys- 
 tem of heavenly education that contra- 
 dicted all the usages of antiquity and 
 made for the wonders of eternity. There, 
 before the Infant's lips could speak, was 
 taught a lesson of love and humility that 
 has inspired the kindling zeal of a se- 
 raphic St. Francis of Assisi, or the self- 
 
STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 ^abnegation of the wonderful scholar of 
 Aquin, who dies in the dust gazing at 
 the Child of Bethlehem as Calvary's 
 martyr. 
 
 Great reason, then, have we to sing our 
 song of gladness, for the angels are ap- 
 plauding the deed of God's Son and in- 
 toning His glories in their heavenly har- 
 monies. Great arguments have we to 
 stand, not afar off and gawkingly wonder 
 at the marvels of Christmas night but, 
 near the cave, to let its light into our 
 minds, its love into our hearts, its grace 
 into our souls, and be one with the Holy 
 Family sheltered there. 
 
BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 
 
 III. 
 
 BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 
 
 Shepherds at the grange, 
 
 Where the Babe was born, 
 
 Sang with many a change 
 
 Christmas carols until morn. 
 
 IONGFELLOW has written 
 beautiful things, but none so trip- 
 pingly happy as when the fires of 
 Christmas-tide lit genius at his page. 
 
 It has always seemed to us not merely 
 accidental that shepherds should, with 
 Night's "thousand eyes," first see the 
 wonders of Bethlehem. God, says Holy 
 Writ, is not studied in the whirlwind, 
 and if so, what greater calm for thought 
 than the frosty night with its stars and 
 sleeping hills? Meditation then breathes 
 its native atmosphere. God then is not 
 far away, no more than is the sky, the 
 Creator's footstool. The distractions of 
 the day have departed and quietude per- 
 
8 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 mits us to hear the whisperings of con- 
 science, lost in the varied voices of busy 
 life. The shepherds' simplicity per- 
 mitted them to see Him who is sublimity, 
 for the simple and the sublime are 
 kindred. 
 
 Then, too, the innocent fleeces man- 
 tling the hills, tell us of the "Lamb of 
 God." The pitiful bleating of the ewe 
 for its lost one beautifully suggests the 
 anxiety of Him who in a later day was 
 "like a lamb led to the slaughter," and 
 who shed for us both tears and blood. 
 The shepherds' crook are now croziers 
 that are the staffs of our religious rulers. 
 
 Thus our dear Lord, in choosing night 
 and in first teaching shepherds, gave a 
 sweet prophetic touch to that aftertide 
 that would make sheep of wolves and 
 have the world led to "one fold." 
 
 Thus Christmas night in Bethlehem is 
 a forecast of the gentle sway of the 
 Heavenly Shepherd then, now, and for- 
 ever-more. 
 
 In the fields, too, and not in the busy 
 market-places, are the real followers of 
 
BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 9 
 
 the Shepherd, for the great centres of 
 humanity have, today, no room for Christ 
 and prefer to his saving solicitude the 
 Herods of our time, the while the coun- 
 tryplaces of the world humbly follow 
 His compassionate and salutary guid- 
 ance. 
 
10 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHRIST'S MOTHER. 
 
 jN December 8th, 1854, the dogma 
 of the Immaculate Conception 
 was proclaimed, thus making an 
 article of faith of the hitherto pious belief 
 of all the Christian ages from St. Ephrem 
 in the fourth century to the time of Bos- 
 suet, when the mighty orator in rhapsody 
 addressed Christ: "Thou art innocent by 
 Nature, Mary only by grace; Thou by 
 excellence; she only by privilege; Thou 
 as Redeemer, she as the first of those 
 whom Thy precious blood has purified." 
 Up to the sacred date of Mary's new 
 feast, the many generations had their ar- 
 guments and explanations for and against 
 the great question, but when Rome spoke 
 there was an end to discussion and true 
 Christians the world over in joy and 
 pride joined their voices in applauding 
 the great teacher of Christendom and in 
 
CHRIST'S MOTHER. 11 
 
 hallowing the name of her who was her- 
 alded as Mother of God by an angel but 
 mother of man by our God. 
 
 Unlike other saints who were purified 
 in the womb, it was congruous to God's 
 infinite purity and eternal majesty that 
 His mother should never be for one mo- 
 ment under the dominion of His arch- 
 enemy, the devil, and so she was made 
 spotless in the first faint breathings of her 
 infant soul. She was not reclaimed 
 through Baptism from sin. She never 
 knew sin's grossness; she never felt its 
 taint; she was at no time a convert. God 
 preserved her ever as a glorious taber- 
 nacle to house His eternal Son. He, 
 whom the devil in all his fiendish malice 
 dared not tempt to impurity, was the 
 Child of a womb consecrated to a heaven- 
 ly work, for God's finger touched the 
 sanctuary where He was to abide, and 
 God's breath incensed the first moment 
 of the life of her who was to be so won- 
 derful in all His mysteries and miracles. 
 
 In exalting the Blessed Virgin, the 
 Church has uplifted womankind. To 
 
12 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 know what Christianity has done for the 
 gentler sex in venerating Christ's Mother, 
 we have only to look at the nations to- 
 day that are disfigured by the sensuality 
 of Mahomet or by the orgies of heathen 
 worship. Woman there is not "the lesser 
 man," but a "soulless animal," whose 
 humanity is tortured by a perpetual con- 
 sciousness of beastly treatment. Through 
 Christianity, Mary is venerated and in 
 the same ratio w r omankind in general is 
 revered. 
 
 Mary is ever compared to Eve before 
 the Fall; if, before the Fall, therefore, to 
 a time when original sin did not exist. 
 The dear mother of Christ was always 
 as Eve once was — majestic in innocence, 
 undefiled by the "trail of the serpent." 
 She was declared by the Archangel Ga- 
 briel as "full of grace." If full, her 
 capacity was perfect, besides being per- 
 fectly satisfied. There was then no actual 
 deficiency; immaculate she was, and we 
 exhaust all the force of words and all 
 the elegancies of speech in singing our 
 
CHRIST'S MOTHER. 13 
 
 litany of praises to earth's spotless Mother 
 and Heaven's Mighty Queen. 
 
 What glorious virtues our gentle 
 Mother had ! In Faith how she excelled ! 
 She heard the infant cry; she saw His 
 utter helplessness; she was perpetually 
 conscious that her little strength bore 
 Him from place to place; she hid Him 
 from the cold; she fled with Him from 
 the tyrant; and despite all these things 
 she never once wavered in her belief that 
 her Child was her God. 
 
 In Hope how grand she was! Trust- 
 ing Divinity, she looked beyond human- 
 ity. She waited on God's pleasure and 
 dictated no conditions. She hoped on 
 perseveringly, although she never missed 
 the awful tests to be withstood. She saw 
 the brutal scourging, the cruel corona- 
 tion, the frightful death, and yet through 
 it all she was illustrious in patience be- 
 cause glorious in hope. She never 
 fainted, but ever trusted that the weak- 
 ness of humanity prefaced the strength of 
 Divinity — that the horrors of Calvary 
 
14 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 were but the prelude to the glories of 
 Thabor. 
 
 In charity, what an exemplar is the 
 Blessed Mother! She hated sin and kept 
 far from it, but she loved the sinner even 
 though by his meanness and malice he 
 murdered her peace and Son. 
 
 All honor, then, to the Immaculate 
 Mother of the Saviour. Heresy has 
 hooted at the dignity of the Mother, say- 
 ing she is no more than any other woman. 
 God Himself thought otherwise, His 
 angels were of a different mind; His 
 saints contradict the thought of this 
 world. Heresy by expelling the Mother 
 has dishonored the Son, and so we have 
 the cursed lesson given humanity that 
 Christ was no more than any other man. 
 Christ and His Mother go together in 
 faith; to know one is to learn the other; 
 the doctrine of the one is supplementary 
 to dogma on the other, for you cannot ap- 
 preciate the Son without venerating the 
 Mother, as did He. 
 
 O, Mother Immaculate! take from our 
 soiled hands into yours all white and 
 
CHRIST'S MOTHER. 15 
 
 beautiful the praise and the prayer given 
 to thee, making the one worthy of thee 
 and the other efficacious for us who know 
 that in thee the Lord of Glory has the 
 best memory of this sad earth from which 
 we pray and praise. 
 
16 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND ITS CREED. 
 
 |HE doctrine of Christ's divinity 
 and humanity has been assailed 
 by the world and defended by the 
 Church, Christ's spouse, for whom He 
 specially prayed. 
 
 In the first ages of Christianity, the 
 Docetists and Gnostics denied the reality 
 of Christ's body, because, say they, sub- 
 stantially, it would be evil to suppose that 
 the great God of Heaven and Earth 
 would wed in his personality a subject so 
 base as human flesh. They forgot that 
 their defense of Christ's dignity was an 
 impeachment of his veracity, for, if 
 Christ had not a body, then His birth 
 would, blasphemy to say, be an idle trick 
 of the Divinity, his professed sufferings, 
 an imposition on our credulity, and He 
 himself, an imposter worse than Ma- 
 homet of a later day. 
 
CHRISTMAS AND ITS CREED. 17 
 
 At another time, Sergius asserted that 
 the operation and will of Christ's human 
 soul were absorbed by His Divinity, again 
 impugning Our Lord's character, for it 
 is written, that Our Lord acquired knowl- 
 edge, improved His human thoughts, and 
 gave a better expression to them as years 
 grew with him. 
 
 Christ had a mother, on whose knees 
 He sat as a Babe, whose lips He kissed 
 in love, whose name He spoke in rever- 
 ence, whose commands He obeyed 
 promptly and perfectly. He had a 
 mother; a mother supposes birth — birth, 
 humanity — and the "Word made flesh," 
 Divinity. Nothing could be wanting in 
 soul or body, else He would not be a 
 man; nothing was defective in Divinity, 
 or He would not be the Infinite, God. 
 
 Not only have the Natures, separately 
 regarded, been attacked by heresy but 
 also their union in one Person. Eutyches 
 was condemned by the Church for assert- 
 ing Christ had but one Nature. 
 
 Later on, Nestorius, and at another 
 time Gunther, was reprobated for dar- 
 
18 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 ing to propagate the absurd fallacy that 
 Christ was two persons. There is but 
 one person, the second person of the 
 Blessed Trinity, for the reason that in 
 the Crib there was one babe. There are 
 two natures, one Divine, hence infinite in 
 itself; the other, human, nevertheless in- 
 finite in value; not because of itself, but 
 on account of the Divine Person in whom 
 it subsists, and of whom its acts are predi- 
 cable. Mystery of love and condescen- 
 sion! which should make us love Christ 
 all the more and doubt Him never. 
 
A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 19 
 
 VI. 
 
 A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 
 
 GENTLE dash of heavenly light, 
 a chorus of tender and joyous 
 voices, the swirl of radiant drap- 
 ery softening the brilliant scene and rob- 
 bing of dread, with its kindly whiteness, 
 the purpose of the angelic strain — behold 
 the details of an event which made 
 Bethlehem's shepherds rub their eyes and 
 wonder they were awakened before 
 dawn. Behold the setting of a scene 
 which will never vanish from the sky- 
 wall of faith, for no Leonardo Da Vinci 
 painted in the colors, but angels' pig- 
 ments fashioned it, and the finger of the 
 Omnipotent framed the unique picture. 
 Hearken to the heavenly chorus, 
 "Glory to God in the highest, and on 
 earth peace to men of good will!" — 
 which awoke humanity from its sluggard 
 sleep of darkness, and still causes us, 
 
20 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 children of twenty centuries after, to look 
 aloft and wonder. The sleeping Jacob, 
 in the olden time, as he rested his head 
 on the hard pillow made of Haran's 
 blocks, saw angels going and coming 
 from the gateway of the sky, but the Gali- 
 lean night-watchers beheld a seraphic 
 army breaking through the blue, hiding 
 in eclipse the stars of night as they sang 
 of the God of Day, now, in assumed 
 humanity, cuddled in a corner of earth's 
 night. 
 
 As curious, if not as innocent, we rise, 
 and in spirit join the shepherds obeying 
 the suggestion, "Let us go over to Bethle- 
 hem, and let us see this Word that is to 
 come to pass, which the Lord hath 
 showed to us." Crossing the frosted 
 field, stepping on crunching grass and 
 crackling grape leaf, we enter the cave 
 made glorious with heaven's greatest 
 wonder, the birth of God incarnate. 
 
 The shepherds produce their frugal 
 gifts, hidden under their fleecy cloaks; 
 kings, bejeweled with the luxury of 
 Eastern authority, lay down their crowns, 
 
A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 21 
 
 the while they offer their proud gold, 
 and homage make, and smoking incense 
 bring. What have we? Our hands are 
 empty of offerings, our souls tenantless 
 of worth ! We stand abashed, and would 
 fain skulk away, but the fascinating eyes 
 of the Babe are on us and will not let 
 us go; the tender Mother interchanges 
 glances at us and Him and holds us to the 
 place; the solicitous and simple foster- 
 father of the new-born gives us courage 
 to remain, for by his peasant character 
 he helps to offset our pitiful plight. Kneel 
 we must, since royalty is bowed, and so 
 we consult our poverty to find something 
 to be made worthy as a gift to Him, whose 
 coronation as King of man happened 
 while He lay on straw, with no throne but 
 a manger, no temple but a stable. 
 
 Three gifts we have wherewith to do 
 adoration to the Trinity of which He is 
 the second person — three gifts withal as 
 royal as the three sovereigns whose jin- 
 gling and caparisoned camels bore them 
 from afar. We have Will, Memory, and 
 Understanding; the first wherewith to re- 
 
22 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 solve, the second to regret, and the third 
 to learn our abasement. 
 
 Our will, we offer. Yes, but conscience 
 tells us it is a cripple limping on a crutch. 
 We know it, but history informs us, too, 
 that God has more than once hung up 
 the crutch as a trophy of His mercy, sent 
 the beggar away enriched, and made the 
 infirm bound like the roe, in joy and 
 praise and promise. Let us, then, in 
 shame kneel here in the shadow, where 
 the poor light does not reach, and give 
 Him what He gave and we all but de- 
 stroyed, our will, that he may re-erect it 
 and give us strength, to climb the heights. 
 He has no word of condemnation; the 
 lustre of His smiling eye will be for us 
 ever a light serene to guide us on life's 
 dangerous way. "Wonderful," indeed, 
 the Child has, according to Isaias, proved 
 himself, for our poor gift seems to please 
 Him just as much as the offerings of the 
 generous, presented on adoring knee. 
 After all, the divine Child came to give 
 more than to receive. He has everything, 
 and, in the last analysis, we, nothing. 
 
A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 23 
 
 Encouraged, we offer memory. A ray 
 from His face shows us the basket of 
 abominations we dared present Him, but 
 his infinite pity touched the gift and 
 straightway our wretched ingratitudes, 
 strewn over our barren past, are hidden 
 from our eye with the gilding of the glory 
 of His compassion. 
 
 Our understanding, we present, but 
 fain would fly away as His wisdom shin- 
 ing the while, shows us the lamentable 
 want of consideration that prompted our 
 gift and the immeasurable follies that 
 made it repulsive even to our own poor 
 sight. Christ pities us, and by a gentle 
 touch of His infant finger reassures us, 
 giving instead of the smoking torches of 
 profane learning, the clear light of His 
 grace to kindle our intellectual progress, 
 bestowing his laws gentle as was he lov- 
 ing — and establishing His Church, the 
 treasury of truth. 
 
 From Bethlehem we return, to find in 
 Christ's Church everything realized in 
 fact. On our altars He is re-born; in our 
 tabernacles He is cribbed; in our sarictu- 
 
24 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 aries He awaits rich and poor, learned 
 and ignorant, purpled and beggarly, vir- 
 tuous and vicious. He has a word of 
 commendation for the wise, a term of 
 pity for the foolish, a voice of solicitous 
 counsel for the sinner. 
 
 With the thought of the time when our 
 soul shone in innocence begotten of the 
 loving Babe, let us offer the Sacramental 
 Christ our filial homage conjoined with 
 contrition for our lost past. With the 
 consciousness of our vacillating natures, 
 let us give Him our will that He may 
 bestow fortitude, our memory that He 
 may hear its moan and take from it its 
 saddled burdens, and our understanding 
 that we may ever know His voice, be it 
 in the infant cry of Bethlehem, the su- 
 perb logic of the Man, or the dying groan 
 of Calvary's Martyr. 
 
 Let this, then, if naught else, be our 
 Christmas box to the dear Christ, whose 
 birth was the author of all the cheer, good 
 will, and mirth of the very same world 
 that forgets Him now, as it denied Him 
 shelter nigh twice ten hundred years ago. 
 
CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 25 
 
 VII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 
 
 [HEN prophets have veiled their 
 faces, beholding in dazzling 
 vision the Expected of Nations, 
 even through the mists of distant ages; 
 when celestial choristers have grown 
 wildly ecstatic in their rapt song announc- 
 ing the Wonderful ; when the lines of the 
 evangelist tremble with devotion as they 
 narrate the unique details of Bethlehem's 
 marvelous story, what approach will be 
 made the discussion of the sublime theme, 
 Christmas? With heart dull, with mind 
 unmusical, with soul uninspired, breath- 
 ing words, not warm like the tender flute- 
 notes of the gentle shepherd, but cold as 
 the hoarfrost that fleeced Christ's cave, 
 we would fain fly in fancy to the hillside, 
 thrilled with wonderment, and there, 
 prostrate among the night-watchers, beg 
 heaven for one touch of starlight to say 
 
26 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 that which will prove fitting servitor to 
 the majesty of the Newly Born. 
 
 What good has Christmas done for 
 mankind? Wonders, from every view- 
 point. Christmas reversed the current of 
 human thought and deed, made men re- 
 gard moral beauty superior to physical or 
 intellectual beauty, right more than 
 might, even though encased in the mail- 
 coat of Augustus, patient poverty better 
 than wealth, honor more than station, and 
 Christmas faith a gift more dear than 
 kingly title. Alone in its greatness is this 
 work, but more glorious does it appear 
 when we consider the means whereby it 
 was wrought. 
 
 Were the world our Lord's coun- 
 sellor, it would say: Come, O Christ, in 
 the splendor of Thy kingship I Bring Thy 
 retinue of angelic warriors who, in the 
 olden time, struck dead the proud hosts 
 of Sennacherib! Send thy angels through 
 earth's kingdoms, to trumpet Thine ad- 
 vent! Then wilt thou bring about great 
 things, for the philosopher over there at 
 
CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 27 
 
 Athens says rightly, "The means must 
 be proportionate to the end." 
 
 How false does human prudence show; 
 how weak does human strength appear, 
 when we consider the ways of Christ! 
 He came, not in strength and yet con- 
 founded the strong, for Bethlehem, 
 though humble, has had more pilgrims to 
 its shrine than all the proud palaces of 
 the world. He came, not panoplied with 
 legions, for the meek Galilean never drew 
 the sword, and in a later time, rebuked 
 St. Peter for unsheathing it in holy anger. 
 He came, not with glory, for that would 
 countenance pride and flatter mankind, 
 whose arrogance brought "death unto 
 the world and all our woe." He was born 
 in a place like the vault of the dead, and 
 pride was mocked at his bringing forth. 
 The world never saw a royal birth so 
 humble, never saw a king use such means 
 of subjugation, never saw a subjugation 
 so complete, so catholic. 
 
 Humility was one of these rare means. 
 Christ in his crib is God on his eternal 
 throne. He there tells human reason that 
 
28 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 it is most like Him when it learns its de- 
 pendence and bows before mystery. He 
 tells us that the wisest are those who 
 have learned their own ignorance. He 
 tells humanity that humility is the best 
 wisdom, as it empties the soul of self and 
 makes room for God's grace. And here 
 let us consider that the Divinity was born 
 in a place where humanity did not dwell 
 — in a cave untenanted, and not fashioned 
 for human residence; so will He come to 
 our hearts with His grace and promise 
 of glory, if we rid them of self and of the 
 human, even though in the process, as in 
 the cave, well nigh nothing will be left. 
 Charity, whose law was ignored by the 
 world, was another instrument in the 
 hand of Christ for the world's conversion. 
 Before the Babe's lips could speak the 
 after-doctrine, His infant form taught the 
 the wondrous lesson. As, at His birth, 
 the herdsman was as welcome to Bethle- 
 hem as the Eastern King; so in the after- 
 time poor Mary Magdalene was received 
 on the same footing with the ruler of 
 Capharnaum. Our dear Christ never 
 
CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 29 
 
 counted out of His love even the Jew who 
 denied His mother shelter, Herod whose 
 cruelty would lap His blood, the Pharisee 
 whose envy hounded Him to slaughter. 
 He loved with His immense heart the 
 world that hated Him, and finally love 
 triumphed in changing hate into love. 
 This was Christ's way; it should be ours, 
 and our lives would every one, have suc- 
 cessful issues. 
 
 We stand, alas! enraptured by the 
 meanings of Christmas and awed by its 
 mysteries, but, mistaking admiration, 
 which is only natural, for emulation, 
 which is virtue's fruitful parent, we let 
 the great day go as it comes, — a mystery 
 that remains outside us, never touching 
 us with its glory. Were we to rightly 
 accept Christmas and its message, we 
 should become true christians inflamed 
 with zeal for the Christ whom men and 
 nations are every day ruthlessly betray- 
 ing. 
 
30 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE REAL CHRISTMAS. 
 
 [HEN a sightless woman said : "the 
 only real blind person at Christ- 
 mas is he who has not Christmas 
 in his heart," she uttered, from out her 
 darkness, a truth as beautiful as a ray of 
 light. There is something pathetic and 
 profound in a blind girl's pen — pathetic 
 because of her curtained light, profound 
 because begotten free from the distrac- 
 tions that blindness exclude. So in this, 
 her saying, there is a tender feeling as 
 well as a solid sensible idea. Is it not 
 very true that unless Christmas in its 
 meaning, enters the soul, there is no real 
 Christmas? A man may have eyes that 
 will see well anything physical and yet 
 will not perceive the meaning of Christ- 
 mas, will not feel its sentiment, will not 
 compass its religious sense. He is, in 
 very truth, blind. On the other hand, the 
 
THE REAL CHRISTMAS. 31 
 
 poor girl who gropes her way through 
 life may feel more deeply and touch more 
 tenderly the great truths that give Christ- 
 mas its being and its name, and she, in- 
 deed, though darkened physically, radi- 
 ates with light and sees well. 
 
 From the day when the poor man cried 
 out to the Author of Light and Life, 
 "Lord, that I may see!" to Goethe who, 
 when dying, prayed for "light! more 
 light!" men dread darkness; and yet how 
 little they value Truth that is the light of 
 the "mind's eye," that is the grace of life, 
 and the promise of everlasting light. 
 
 It is remarkable how much the sense of 
 feeling makes up for sight, so much so 
 that in the super-sensitive finger tips of 
 a blind Italian sculptor there was found 
 actual grey matter, proper to the brain. 
 Another blind genius declared that all 
 the eyes are good for is to keep one from 
 running into a wheel-barrow. Be this 
 as it may, it would seem that the only time 
 the blind are blind is when they are re- 
 minded of their infirmity. This is hard 
 to understand, for it is difficult to see how 
 
32 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 the loneliness of perpetual night would 
 not beget melancholy, and how impati- 
 ence to see all the prismatic beauties of 
 the earth and sky would not create 
 wretchedness. We ought to thank the 
 good God who has given us eyes to see, 
 and so read His name and glory on every- 
 thing. We should perceive His heavenly 
 lessons and with eyes lustrous with hope, 
 longingly look for a happy hereafter, 
 where the vision of bodies and minds and 
 souls will be luminous forever. We 
 should see Christmas rightly, love truly 
 Him whose natal day it is, and correctly 
 learn from Him the sublime lessons of 
 Faith, Hope and Charity. 
 
CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE ONES. 33 
 
 IX. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE 
 ONES. 
 
 [HE feast of Christmas is the great 
 feast for the children. Around 
 the Babe group the babies. With 
 wonderment they encircle the manger, be- 
 hold the infant Christ, and look again and 
 marvel again when the story of His 
 Divinity is told. To think that such help- 
 lessness is associated with omnipotence, 
 such smallness of form coupled with 
 eternal majesty, such babyishness with 
 knowledge that sees through the souls of 
 the onlookers, such annihilation with that 
 creative power which made and holds in 
 his hands the lamps of night that swing 
 from the skies above the generations that 
 are his creatures! All this makes the chil- 
 dren of today ask questions that betoken 
 how deeply the birth of Christ strikes 
 the hearts and souls of innocence. 
 
34 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 How we should abhor the paganism 
 that is ruthlessly making inroads on all 
 our hallowed truths ! Pity the poor child 
 that does not feel Christmas in its heart 
 by being in Baptism a brother of the 
 Holy One lying on Bethlehem's straw. 
 Pity the parent whose impious life shuts 
 out from his home the sacred truths of 
 faith that had their birth in Christ's Na- 
 tivity. And yet, what the evangelist said 
 is still true; "He came unto His own and 
 His own received Him not." 
 
 There are many who would delight in 
 obliterating the Christian era; who 
 mourn for the days of barbarism; who 
 hate the name of Christ and His Church 
 and scowl at all His institutions ; who, 
 professing piety, compromise Christ's 
 truth; who sing not "Glory to God in the 
 highest," but glory to the king of the pit 
 by befouling earth with hellish deeds and 
 diabolical principles. 
 
 May the infant Christ keep our babies 
 true children, sweetened in their manners 
 by the reverence that the Christ Child 
 instills and sanctified in their lives with 
 
CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE ONES. 35 
 
 the tender, beautiful, and consistent 
 truths that were born in Bethlehem, bred 
 in Nazareth, gird the world, and live in 
 eternity. 
 
36 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 CHRISTMAS BENEDICTION. 
 
 |OW many of us, in spirit, have 
 looked into the skies of Bethle- 
 hem with their moon shepherd- 
 ing the white stars, have heard the music 
 and been thrilled by the magic of the 
 sights and sounds mysterious. Many 
 would wish to have knelt with the 
 herdsmen and the Magi, and would 
 have taken the little hand of The Baby 
 and pressed it down on their heads for 
 blessing. And yet are we not inconsis- 
 tent? We have not to travel all the way 
 to Judea for heavenly privileges! They 
 are, like Wisdom in Holy Writ, seated 
 at our thresholds. On the altar, Christ 
 has His Bethlehem. In the Benediction 
 of the Blessed Sacrament, the same dear 
 hand that gave benizens to devotees is 
 raised over the hearts, minds and souls 
 of adorers. He blesses all in most gen- 
 
CHRISTMAS BENEDICTION. 37 
 
 erous fashion — the poor fellow who 
 skulks into a corner near the door and 
 gives maybe only a periodical visit, and 
 the ardent heart that throbs in unison 
 with His Sacred Heart in Holy Com- 
 munion. All receive the favor of our dear 
 Lord, some, that vice may be everlastingly 
 reprobated, others that goodness may be 
 perpetually sustained. 
 
 In the olden time, men went to Christ; 
 in our blessed season, Christ comes to 
 men. His love is diffusive. He is housed 
 in many tabernacles and has in Benedic- 
 tion the same light that lit the sky and 
 cave in the Holy night, and now fills 
 Heaven with majesty and glory. 
 
 Bowing down heart and head before 
 Him, let us ask the Christ to make strong 
 the one and bright the other, so that we 
 may not be of the crowd that merely ad- 
 mires but does not emulate. 
 
38 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XL 
 
 OUR CHRISTMAS DUTY. 
 
 GLANCE around the world 
 shows us how we should draw 
 nearer the Child Jesus in Bethle- 
 hem. In France, atheism scorns Him; 
 in England heresy deforms the doctrine 
 of His personality and makes Him far 
 different from the Divine reality; in 
 America, Santa Claus is rapidly usurp- 
 ing the Babe's throne in the children's 
 affections, making the holy name of sacri- 
 fice a term for greed. Distant and black 
 lands never saw the white face of our 
 glorious Divinity, the while our own 
 white civilization has blackened the 
 majesty of the Infant. 
 
 At whose door then, will the blessed 
 Mary knock, if not at ours? We are the 
 beneficiaries of the Divine Child. No 
 gift we craved had ever to be asked for 
 twice, and every gift we get from Heaven 
 
OUR CHRISTMAS DUTY. 39 
 
 is inestimable. Let us then not permit 
 the indignity to the Blessed Mother of 
 waiting beyond our gates, but let her en- 
 ter and make a spiritual triumph in our 
 hearts. Let Christ change them, wretched 
 stables to tabernacles, making of our 
 minds sanctuary lamps where true and 
 holy light will shine, of our souls, all 
 turbulent with worldly cares, a retreat 
 wherein He may lay His head, as did 
 He pillow it upon the breast of St. John 
 at the Last Supper, to whisper us rest that 
 will forecast peace and joy and glory 
 everlasting. 
 
40 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. 
 
 [NLY the devils have hatred in 
 their hearts on Christmas morn- 
 ing, for the glorious chant, 
 "Peace on earth," never makes music for 
 the damned. It behooves us, then, to 
 keep far from hell and cling close to the 
 Church that comforts and guides us. We 
 anticipate the joys and graces of Christ- 
 mas, as through Advent we are led thereto 
 by the blessed angel of charity that will 
 "prepare the way" before us. 
 
 We should be kind to our neighbor so 
 that the gentle Christ will know us when 
 He comes. Kindness will not only help 
 our souls, but help our health and even 
 our looks; the man who smiles is the man 
 who escapes biliousness or dyspepsia and 
 wins where gloom fails. His face is as 
 summer, whereas scorn makes winter. 
 Frozen faces are the most rigid scenes for 
 the very reason that we expect in the 
 
CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. il 
 
 human countenance subtle and happy mo- 
 bility. 
 
 And how can we be kind when we 
 have, nothing to bestow? There is none 
 so poor who has not rich gifts for his fel- 
 low. Take a simple word! Is there any- 
 thing so cheap in the mouth of the 
 speaker, so dear in the ear of the hearer? 
 It costs nothing, for a word is breath, u a 
 trifle thin as air," and yet a word can 
 "knit the ravelled sleeve of care," can give 
 comfort where medicine vainly seeks to 
 bestow strength, courage where disaster 
 would daunt, and, wonderful to say, can 
 even save a soul. A word coming warm 
 from the heart will be remembered when 
 the dust of years is upon our faculties. 
 Are not kind words for all of us the best 
 gifts we ever received? Have not elegant 
 letters withered? have not books been 
 frayed? have not beauties, in the domain 
 of art, crumbled? but over them all and 
 through the wrecks of the years, does not 
 the kind word come as lustrous as if 
 spoken this hour, as hallowed as if it orig- 
 inally winged its flight from heavenly 
 
42 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 courts and choristers? Deny not the kind 
 word, blessed in itself and blessing in its 
 influence, and which, costing nothing, 
 brings for our fellow a world of rare de- 
 lights! Deny not the kind word which 
 is cognate in character to the song of the 
 angels that awoke with its burst of 
 heavenly harpipny sleeping night in 
 Bethlehem! jTDeny not the charitable 
 word which will bring more than the 
 smile of Christ at Christmastide, as it will 
 bring Christ Himself to make of our soul 
 His home!-^J 
 
 We should, in this gracious season, cul- 
 tivate the habit of thinking well of others. 
 It is a happy thing to see good, and not to 
 be anxious to ferret evil. And there is 
 much good in everyone. If we want to 
 see wrong, let us look within and measure 
 swords with it at close range; if we want 
 to note good we will, little though it be, 
 see more outside than within. Strange 
 yet happy result, the saints were only 
 miserable when they were face to face 
 with self in contemplation. It is well 
 for us all that we are mysteries to our- 
 
CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. 43 
 
 selves or we would, as sings the psalmist, 
 "perish in humility." Think well of your 
 neighbor! and you will see him as you 
 would desire him to be, for objects are 
 ever clothed in the color of our spectacles, 
 and we alas too often, mistake the subjec- 
 tive for the objective. 
 
 We should be kind in words, as a prep- 
 aration for the Christ-Child's coming. 
 We should give, especially to the poor. 
 To give betokens true Christianity. Our 
 idea of the great Creator is compassed in 
 the thought of the Great Giver ; our love 
 of Christ is kindled by the coals that 
 burned the frankincense, itself a gift from 
 royal hands to heavenly Royalty bestow- 
 ing Itself. 
 
 Kindness to the poor whom we see is 
 the surest and best way of showing our 
 love for Christ whom we do not see. To 
 make Christmas an occasion to grasp 
 everything and give nothing is pagan in 
 its selfishness, and in no way Christian in 
 its sacrifice. To dry a tear of suffering, 
 to stifle a sigh of sorrow, to keep the little 
 life in God's creature that starvation 
 
44 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 threatens, — these are the works that bring 
 recognition from the Christ who came to 
 give, until His gifts ended with Calvary 
 where He clothed beggarly and poverty- 
 stricken humanity in the royal purple of 
 His blood. 
 
 So, then, we would fain enlist our 
 energies under the banner of the great 
 precursor, St. John, and give a little 
 homily on charity as a guide to the rich 
 love of the Yuletide. It makes no differ- 
 ence what gifts we receive if we do not 
 make sure to get for ourselves the best 
 Christmas blessing, the grace of that 
 Christ whose love is so constant. Friends 
 may prove false, and of them it may be 
 true what poor Ophelia voiced when in 
 anguish she said, 
 
 ) (C Rich gifts wax poor 
 When givers prove unkind," — 
 
 but Christ has never faltered in His love, 
 though we have done our foolish best to 
 provoke Him to the course. He has ever 
 been tenderly devoted, from the time 
 when His little wondering eyes opened on 
 the queer scenes that greeted Him in 
 Bethlehem. 
 
CHRIST, THE POOR AND THE CHILDREN. 45 
 
 XIII. 
 
 CHRIST, THE POOR, AND THE 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 jOT among the wealthy, with their 
 well-stocked pantries, not with 
 the comfortable, unused to 
 omitted or delayed meals, but to the poor, 
 the abandoned, or the orphaned, has 
 Christmas its fullest significance. The 
 dear Christ was for the poor, of the poor, 
 and by the poor, and He delights to visit 
 the poor. Where there is no flame on the 
 hearthstone, He kindles one ; where there 
 is no plenty, He makes with His gracious 
 benignity, the starveling forget distress- 
 ing want, where the sweets of life are ab- 
 sent, He sits down and produces all the 
 joys of hope. His gentle hand lovingly 
 presses the rough palm of toil; His com- 
 passionate eyes make the heart of pain 
 forget its throb. His glory illumines the 
 
46 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 dark home of misery. All His life, Christ 
 spent among the poor and afflicted; He 
 was never a frequenter of the palace; the 
 hut was always the goal of His pilgrim- 
 age, and so, at Christmas time partic- 
 ularly, is His presence felt in the orphan- 
 age, in the home of distress, at the bedside 
 of Suffering. 
 
 Our dear Lord always enjoyed little 
 children. Painters have them tumbling 
 all over Him. His tender thought: "Suf- 
 fer the little children to come unto Me," 
 will ever endear Him to innocents. As the 
 great strong man, as well as the Eternal 
 God, Christ sympathized with juvenile 
 cares, condescended to play with little 
 ones, blessed the loving mothers and was 
 in every truth, a child in His gentleness. 
 So He comes, with His old affection, to 
 the youth of today. The Christmas let- 
 ter brings Him; the little postal card, 
 with its picture of the Nativity, is His 
 smile upon children; the gift is enriched 
 with the dear name of Bethlehem's Babe. 
 
 In pagan times, Jupiter thundering 
 terrified creatures who were made to feel 
 
CHRIST, THE POOR AND THE CHILDREN. 47 
 
 like purposeless toys of fate. In Jewish 
 history, Jehovah was conceived as the 
 powerful leader of armies. Now, a Child 
 is the center of childish interest, and 
 around the little one of Bethlehem the 
 children are grouped, pointing out to 
 each other the wonderful items of the 
 tender story. His weakness is all so kin- 
 dred to their own that they love Him as 
 their little brother; where His majesty is 
 stabled is so like their own poverty, that 
 they compassionate Him; being neglected 
 by the world He came to save, endears 
 Him to their loving hearts that thrill 
 with fervor as He shakes in cold. 
 
 After the children go the parents, un- 
 til around the manger throng thousands 
 of devotees. How wonderful is it all! 
 How strange the ways of God confound- 
 ing all the pomp of a silly and conceited 
 world. 
 
 Most of all, now, owing to the solici- 
 tude for children of our last great Pope, 
 the little ones come nearer to our Lord 
 than ever before. As reason is dawning 
 on the hill-top of life, the children will, 
 
48 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 in the early morning of their years, offer 
 their hearts to the Christ-Child. In Holy 
 Communion, they will not only associate 
 with their Divine Friend but house Him 
 in their hearts and recompense Him for 
 the denials of Bethlehem. Mfay Mary's 
 dear and blessed infant be ever a joy to 
 us all and a reminder of the Glory of that 
 Kingdom where He is enthroned forever 
 and forever. 
 
MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. id 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 
 
 jETHLEHEM has so changed 
 prophecy into fact that the 
 prophet himself seems like a his- 
 torian. Thousands of years before the 
 Nativity, Isaias says: "For a child is born 
 to us; and a son is given to us; and the 
 Government is upon his shoulders; and 
 his name shall be called, Wonderful." 
 
 Who was this child of mystery and 
 prophecy? God Almighty. Yes, God, 
 whose smile is Heaven's bliss, whose 
 frown is Hell's horror; God, whose ex- 
 tended hand calmed chaos as, later on, it 
 did Genezareth's troubled wave, and 
 whose creative wish order and beauty 
 instantly and joyfully obeyed; God, 
 whose thoughts now come to the sky as a 
 star, now to the earth as a flower and then 
 drop to the depths of ocean as a pearl; 
 God, whom the tyrannic Pharao feared 
 and the sublime Moses worshipped, from 
 whom Solomon took wisdom and Josue 
 
50 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 power, without whom humanity's mil- 
 lions would not be, who rules the des- 
 tinies of nations, and who finally will 
 judge the generations without witness, 
 without counsellor, without jury. 
 
 Yes, well has prophecy and truly has 
 fact called the Christ, Wonderful. This 
 little infant, incapable of independent 
 motion, is the God who moves the 
 heavens. To this little mind is traceable 
 all the divine designs made manifest in 
 the workings of ages. This little head 
 domes all the knowledge that spans every- 
 thing from the Trinity to the number of 
 insects that people the fullness of sum- 
 mer. This little hand has traced the 
 course of the stars far off in their unseen 
 windings. This little half opened eye has 
 seen that which Man's best imaginings 
 can but negatively suggest. This tiny ear 
 has heard the glorious chants of cherubim 
 and seraphim, before commenced the 
 music of the spheres, the first morning of 
 creation. 
 
 Yes, the Child born is indeed Wonder- 
 ful. He is the God of Majesty, though, 
 
MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 51 
 
 instead of the purple of Augustus, he is 
 clothed in the coarse garments of the 
 poor. He is the God of Eternity, though 
 in time his infant breathings dampen one 
 of the poorest places in this fair earth. He 
 is the God of power, though now only 
 humble shepherds acknowledge him 
 King. He is the God of greatness, nar- 
 rowed mysteriously to a little crib. He 
 is the God of science, for Bethlehem has 
 proved to be a school where was taught 
 a better philosophy than Athens could 
 boast — than Romans embodied in their 
 lives — a school more lasting in its founda- 
 tions and with more students at its shrine 
 than Roman and Grecian together could 
 count. 
 
 Such and so is Christ's Divinity, which 
 with His humanity, make one Divine per- 
 son, for Christ is as mysteriously man as 
 He is wonderfully God. He had a human 
 heart, sensitive to the sorrows of man, for 
 as one of us He felt kindred miseries — 
 sensitive to love, for He loved His mother 
 and mankind. He had a human body to 
 feel the cold of the cave and the agony of 
 
52 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 the mountain. He had a human will to 
 wish for better things. He had a human 
 intellect capable of improvement at His 
 humble craft of carpentry. He was a 
 man, perfect in all the faculties of a man, 
 but distinct in His humanity from His 
 Divinity. 
 
 So was Christ, God and man — not was 
 He God alone, for His humanity was 
 pronounced in affliction — not was He 
 man alone, for His character was shown 
 divine in miracle. 
 
 Christmas then, should not be a season 
 for unmortified and irreligious thought 
 and deed, but a time when our hearts 
 should grow bright in their charity as the 
 coals that burned the eastern incense, — in 
 their faith strong as the King's who 
 swung their censor before the crib, — in 
 their hope unfaltering as those who fol- 
 lowed the constant star until its ray, as 
 with a golden finger, pointed out the 
 place where lay the King of angels and 
 of men. 
 
 Now what was the effect of Christmas 
 in the world? Think on the grand work 
 
MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 53 
 
 commenced in Bethlehem. Little did 
 barbarism in its rock-built citadel dream 
 on that cold December night, long years 
 ago, that in a bleak field of Judea there 
 was born a lamb, whose death would be 
 its death. But so the sequel proved, for 
 Christ came to destroy the empire of sin 
 and barbarism had to be cast out, even as 
 Ishmael from the tent of Abraham, to 
 make way for the new heir. In so doing, 
 Christ renewed the face of society, as 
 paganism was brutal, bloody and beastly. 
 Christ came, and glory to His name for- 
 ever, all things were changed. Instead 
 of Paganism with its proud cruel Caesar, 
 wearing on his brow the diadem that a 
 thousand regal crowns combined to 
 fashion, and bearing in his hand the 
 scepter of the world, we have the humil- 
 ity and meekness of an apostle who ruled 
 earth not by the power of arms but by the 
 virtue of Christ — instead of man's lust, 
 history proudly pens the brave mortifica- 
 tions of the martyrs who flung their 
 bodies to the arena rather than throw 
 their chaste souls to the Devil — instead of 
 
54 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 hatred of enemies we have charity, in- 
 stead of vengeance, generosity, briefly, to 
 generalize, instead of men set on the earth 
 and the earthly, we have them looking 
 far beyond to a bright hereafter and 
 beautifying their souls by saintly deeds 
 to fit them for the eternal presence of all 
 beauty and all sanctity. 
 
 This is what Christ's birth has effected 
 in the world, and for this we owe Him 
 our brightest love, our best gratitude, our 
 most sincere adoration. This is what 
 Christ has done, and no one but Christ 
 can do the gigantic work of the near fu- 
 ture as of all time. Christ, the Prince of 
 Peace, can alone bring rest to a weary, 
 blood-bedaubed world. No one knows 
 when the most awful war of all time will 
 end, but this is known, as Christ is known, 
 that only the babe of Bethlehem can now, 
 as on the Galilean Sea, whisper peace. 
 Even statesmen of the world pronounce 
 this. Channing, in one of his masterpieces 
 of Oratory, declared that "war will never 
 yield but to the principles of universal 
 justice and love, and these have no sure 
 
MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 55 
 
 root but in the Religion of Jesus Christ." 
 Here, in passing, we might add how the 
 American orator of the past and the Pope 
 of the present are in accord, and how both 
 agree with the dictum of Benjamin 
 Franklin that "there never was a good 
 war or a bad peace." The devastating 
 campaigns of Europe do not rhyme with 
 the sentiment of Homer : "The chance of 
 war is equal and the slayer oft is slain," 
 for it is no longer as Roderick Dhu in 
 Scott's martial story has it: 
 
 "Man to man and steel to steel 
 
 A foemans vengeance thou shalt feel!" 
 
 War now is the farthest possible thing 
 from the feats of bravery that made the 
 ages of chivalry almost picturesque. War 
 now is the turning of the crank of a mur- 
 der machine so, while the trenches may 
 crush combatants, they can never make 
 heroes. 
 
 No wonder that the Father of Christen- 
 dom begs for peace from the Babe of 
 Bethlehem, for more than the loss of 
 lives, terrible in its millions as this is, 
 more than the destruction of grand cathe- 
 
56 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 drals whose sweeping lines copy the skies 
 bending over them, more than the waste 
 of cities razed to the ground, more than 
 the broken hearts that groan their Kyrie 
 Eleisons in this gracious season, more 
 than the starvation and the want making 
 desolate communities once happily fed 
 from the bounty of generous nature, more 
 then all this is the loss to Bethlehem's 
 Babe of the souls He came to save. No 
 one certainly will hold that, even though 
 the massacre is legalized, the place to pre- 
 pare for Eternity is while men are strenu- 
 ously engaged in killing each other. If 
 war is Hell, said of a less cruel time than 
 now, how can dying men pray therein and 
 fit their souls for God's judgment. To 
 pray is to think, and men cannot think of 
 eternal interests in the horrible distrac- 
 tions of battle. Prayer without thought is 
 a bubble that never reaches Heaven for 
 it bursts in the air that envelops earth. 
 
 War is largely the result of giving to 
 the nation what belongs to Bethlehem, a 
 sort of idolatry of country, hypernation- 
 alism. Patriotism is an obligation of Re- 
 
MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 57 
 
 ligion but patriotism should not ascend to 
 f etichism on the one side no more than de- 
 scend to betrayal on the other. The Babe 
 has first place, and this compliment to 
 Christ is not an insult to country but its 
 first best blessing. 
 
 Oh, may the trumpeting angels that 
 awoke the shepherds in the olden time 
 make music in the smoking skies of Eu- 
 rope and silence the bugle calling men to 
 slaughter! Oh may the little Babe lead 
 the nations from carnage to kindly 
 thought! Oh may the cannon of cruelty 
 be silenced and, in the calm created, may 
 the gentle accents of peace be heard — 
 that peace which in the time of Christ's 
 coming, locked even the pagan temple of 
 Janus in Rome and sang its song over the 
 hills of Judea and in the field where 
 Eternal Gentleness was born. May we 
 soon be able to say with Longfellow : 
 
 ''Peace! and no longer from its brazen 
 portals 
 The blast of wars great organ shakes 
 the skies , 
 And beautiful as songs of the immortals 
 The holy melodies of love arise" 
 
58 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 May the peace that Christ breathed in 
 Bethlehem as well as in the horrors of 
 Calvary make Americans brothers every- 
 one, loving their country and the sacred 
 privileges of liberty with the sweetness 
 of the Christ, by cherishing faith in Him 
 who alone gives Christmas its reasons 
 and is parent to its joy. May the Christ 
 Child be again pronounced "Wonder- 
 ful," by bringing men from brutal Mars 
 to peace, smiling in the charity and con- 
 cord of Christmas. 
 
CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 59 
 
 XV. 
 
 CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 
 
 jHEN the angels from Heaven's 
 high court awoke the shepherds 
 with their radiance, that antici- 
 pated the morning, and with their song, 
 so wonderful in voice and sentiment, 
 mankind's mind was drawn not only to a 
 consideration of the subject of the glad 
 messengers, but to the thought of the 
 happy visitors themselves. 
 
 Angels were not strangers to this sad 
 earth. They were here before on grand 
 errands. Our desolate first parents en- 
 countered one; Abraham entertained 
 them in his tent; by one the Virgin 
 Mother of the Christ was saluted rever- 
 entially. Attendants on the throne of the 
 Most High, they brought divine dis- 
 patches from our God, and when angels 
 delivered their words, unlike the great- 
 
60 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 est authors' works, they became imperish- 
 able messages to the generations. 
 
 "Glory to God in the highest," sang 
 they on Judea's hills, and so from the 
 sacred mounts, our altars, still come the 
 same voices in the Gloria of the Mass. 
 The poor, too, are there to hear the glad 
 tones and take heart, as did the night- 
 watchers of old ; while the rich are taught 
 as were the Eastern Kings, that virtue is 
 the true jewel and faith alone lights to the 
 skies. 
 
 "Glory to God in the highest" glory 
 for giving us His Son, who came to teach 
 an ignorant world, to direct its destiny, to 
 inspire its hope, to enrich it with grace, 
 to endow it with worth, to lead it from 
 its erring course to the Heaven for which 
 its creatures were intended. Poor, Christ 
 came, for He wanted nothing from the 
 world, but the world needed and got 
 everything from Him; charitable He 
 came, to give and not to take; for He had 
 not the obligation of saying "thank you," 
 to any earthly host; humble, He came, for 
 pride had already parented sin and He 
 
CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 61 
 
 would have none of its nonsense or its 
 pomp. Glory to His name! All we can 
 give is the uplifting word, for He has in 
 Himself all power, all majesty, all per- 
 fection, all illimitable happiness. 
 
 "On earth peace to men of good will," 
 Men of bad will belong not to Christ but 
 to His enemy; they are outlaws, who de- 
 serve not the blessings of peace, who 
 merit not the benisens of hope. With the 
 angels, we repeat the blessed words, love 
 for the men of good will and pity for him 
 who has formally subtracted himself from 
 the ranks of the blessed. We rejoice with 
 the choirs of earth, in the household of 
 the faith and with the poor fellow who 
 mistakes falsehood for truth, and, never 
 doubting his position, does his best, for 
 he too, as theologians tell us, if baptized, 
 belongs to Christ's Kingdom. 
 
 Christmas gives every true or good 
 man a "Sursum Corda," by uplifting his 
 hope and with it his heart, to the gener- 
 ous and solicitous Christ. 
 
 Joining the heavenly outburst in the 
 Mass, we sing with minds assured of 
 
62 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 Christ's care, and hearts encouraged by 
 His love, "We praise Thee; we bless 
 Thee; we adore Thee; we glorify Thee; 
 we give Thee thanks for Thy great 
 glory." "We praise Thee/' for Christ 
 alone is perfect excellence. "We bless 
 Thee/' for all our gifts at Christmastide 
 and in every hour of every season, are 
 from His bounty. "We adore Thee," 
 for the helpless Babe of Bethlehem is 
 identical with the God of Eternity, and 
 all our powers, His gifts, should be pros- 
 trated before our Redeemer, our God and 
 our All. "We glorify Thee," for who 
 has given us life but God, who has pre- 
 served us but God, who has enriched us 
 but God ; who has Heaven to bestow but 
 God? "We give Thee thanks for thy 
 great glory," for we could not subtract 
 from Thy glory, if our malice would try; 
 no more than we could add, if our virtue 
 would attempt, for Thou art immeasur- 
 able in Thy magnificence, and we are 
 only little atoms on the molehill of one 
 of Thy innumerable worlds. 
 
 To all well meaning Christians, then a 
 
CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 63 
 
 happy Christmas in the words of the 
 Christmas angels — to the poor who have 
 little that Christ may grant them His 
 love, which will make them poor no 
 longer; to the rich that they may extend 
 charity to the poor, and not shut their 
 hearts against Christian sympathy and 
 solicitude — to both, a flooding of the soul 
 with all the melody, the joy, the hope, 
 and the glory that is in the Christmas 
 Angel's Song. 
 
64 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XVI. 
 CHRISTMAS IN ART. 
 
 R. KEPPEL has made a beautiful 
 collection of pictures of the na- 
 tivity, entitled "Christmas in 
 Art/' in which figure some exquisite 
 things from Durer and Rembrandt. For 
 this we should be grateful, as the collec- 
 tion will do much to offset the heretical 
 and foolish nothings that are carted to 
 the stores as presents for Christmas. In 
 commenting on the Nuremberg build- 
 ings that figure in Durer's works, instead 
 of the Palestine backgrounds that might 
 be supposed to be subjects for the Mas- 
 ter's brush, Mr. Keppel seems to apol- 
 ogize for the artist. Now there is no rea- 
 son in Durer's choice for even a smile. 
 Who knew better than the master him- 
 self what he was painting? Surely if he 
 could build up the homes and streets of 
 Nuremberg in his great creations he 
 
CHRISTMAS IN ART. 65 
 
 would find no difficulty in raising the 
 stately antiquities of the Land of Promise. 
 We will, then, interest ourselves not with 
 the fact, but with its reason. 
 
 The masters of the olden time were 
 everyone Evangelists, using the brush or 
 chisel instead of the stylus or pen. They 
 appealed to the devotion of the people 
 through truth, and from their works they 
 removed all distractions that would di- 
 vert their attention from the main pur- 
 pose of their pious pictures. They sought 
 to make onlookers behold only the scene 
 that uplifted faith. They cared not for 
 the trappings and accidentals; substance 
 was the quest of their brush. 
 
 If the eyes of the Babe were all lumin- 
 ous with love, his form all wondrous with 
 Divinity, their work to them was well 
 done. Stone walls of this or that char- 
 acter did not enter into their calculations, 
 save to bring forward the theme upon 
 which their genius worked and prayed. 
 Durer painted familiar views in his 
 backgrounds so that there would be no 
 distractions to the mind that dwelt on the 
 
66 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 great central scene. There was nothing 
 new in the still life, only the familiar ob- 
 jects of every day; and so the thought and 
 feeling of the reverent remained in un- 
 disturbed wonder on the actors of the 
 mighty drama. 
 
 Masters, like Durer and Rembrandt, 
 painted their prayers and for the prayer- 
 ful. The man of prayer has no eyes for 
 the background ; only the foreground has 
 charms which the environment of the pic- 
 ture did not dispute, and hence every- 
 thing that tends to rivet attention on the 
 main purpose of the artist is a help to the 
 sublime and heavenly scheme of the can- 
 vas. Strange scenes and exceptional 
 streets would be sins against the attention 
 that prayer requires and would no better 
 express the triumphant genius of the 
 artist's towering mind, for the man who 
 can make one landscape can just as easily 
 fashion another. This, we believe to be 
 the great reason of homelike grounds in 
 Bethlehem's wonderful story, as the effort 
 to have it otherwise would be no help to 
 the artist's fame and might have a de- 
 
CHRISTMAS IN ART. 67 
 
 pressing effect on the painting's high pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Mr. Keppel truly declares, "as in the 
 case of ecclesiastical architecture and 
 sculpture, the finest pictures are those 
 produced in centuries past and not 
 those of our own too sophisticated 
 day." And why? Because the past 
 held the ages of faith, when truth 
 was worshipped in Religion and sought 
 in every department of mind, un- 
 like our conceited time, when art is 
 ruined by the mercenary spirit that works 
 for money and makes no grand sacrifices 
 to truth to show devotion thereto. Heresy 
 began as an iconoclast and has since 
 wrecked genius in preferring the profane 
 or pagan subject to the inspirations that 
 were in color or form ecstatic pronounc- 
 ments of the principles of Christianity's 
 Creed. Shifting scenes are not subjects 
 for the steady mind of genius, and so 
 heresy has discouraged religion's art and 
 encouraged in the same degree the 
 world's frivolities. Art is poetry, and 
 heresy's stock in the world market is 
 
68 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 mathematical prose that makes the hard 
 lines of reason the yard-stick wherewith 
 everything in heaven and on earth is 
 measured. 
 
 Only religion can inspire a Christian 
 classic for the reason that religion is 
 truth, and truth on and off the canvas, 
 appeals eloquently to eye and mind. One 
 cannot have truth in art and falsehood in 
 faith, for what is true in religion must be 
 true in every department of intellect. 
 This is why only Christian masterpieces 
 are the priceless inheritance of history, 
 and this is why Mr. Keppel's declaration 
 is orthodox. 
 
CHRISTMAS LONELINESS. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS LONELINESS. 
 
 HE greatest foe to the happiness 
 universally wished in this graci- 
 ous season is loneliness. Friends 
 may fill the cornucopia with rich gifts of 
 heart and hand ; they may bestow nature's 
 blessing in color schemes of fruit and 
 flower, and yet the absence of one dear 
 soul mutilates the picture with a sharp 
 shadow. There is one voice away from 
 the chorus that spoils the melody of 
 kindly words. An absence there is that 
 outweighs the joys of generosity. Music 
 fails to distract, for its minor key has a 
 tearful pathos, while eloquence, with its 
 soulful longings, brings the mind to 
 heaven's glory, but on the way fancy 
 visits its friend. Even in prayer, a van- 
 ished face will peep in on our pieties. 
 
 Strange that in this great world, with 
 its swarming myriads, so similar in na- 
 
70 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 tural characteristics, there is for every 
 man or woman, old or young, one heart 
 that is dearest, some one mind that en- 
 kindles fervor, some one soul that is kin- 
 dred with whom we make glad holiday. 
 Yet, so it is, and there is little comfort in 
 the thought that only kind hearts deeply 
 feel, for they are often well nigh smoth- 
 ered in the desolation they themselves 
 create in brooding on the past and the ab- 
 sent. 
 
 Well, in the eternal holiday above, our 
 smiles will never be a disguise for tears 
 and our memories will not be veiled in 
 mist. 
 
CHRISTMAS SINS. 71 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS SINS. 
 
 |T all times, sin is to be hated as the 
 product of Hell and a dismal 
 guide thither, but never does it 
 appear more atrocious than in the graci- 
 ous time when the Innocent and Beauti- 
 ful thrilled earth and sky with His Na- 
 tivity. 
 
 Is there anything so jarring to the ear 
 as a shot from a revolver Christmas morn- 
 ing? What a contradiction to the peace 
 that the birth of our Lord betokened! 
 And yet how many smoking guns tell of 
 bloody murder in lands blessed by faith 
 in Him Who came as the Messenger of 
 Peace and was heralded by gentle angels. 
 The watchfulness of the Galilean 
 shepherds is a far cry from the drunken- 
 ness that mars the mind and kills the 
 souls of men, for whose salvation all the 
 wonders of Bethlehem were wrought. 
 
72 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 Still drunkenness degrades our time and 
 men give their stomachs a higher consid- 
 eration than their heads. The whole 
 meaning of Christmas is lost to the glut- 
 tonous appetite of him who mumbles 
 idiotic jargon instead of gracious prayers 
 — who joins his voice to the clanging 
 terrors of Hell instead of blending his 
 hymns of hope with the songs of Christ- 
 mas. 
 
 The paganism of our time pushes 
 against the piety of devotees and pro- 
 claims Christmas whiskey as one of its 
 awful wares. So the very name of Christ- 
 mas is prostituted from its heavenly 
 dignity by devils in human guise, and is 
 made an adjective to qualify the very 
 sources of sin. 
 
 Selfishness of all kinds, and sin is al- 
 ways selfish, is entirely outside the pur- 
 pose and aims of Christmas, which is a 
 grand expression of sacrifice, for 
 "Christ," says St. Paul, "annihilated 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant," 
 when He came to Bethlehem of Judea. 
 
WELCOME THE NEW BORN YEAR. 73 
 
 XIX. 
 
 WELCOME THE NEWBORN 
 YEAR. 
 
 ITH its resolves and its hopes, 
 New Year comes. Happy is he 
 who tempers the poetry of en- 
 thusiasm with the philosophy of his his- 
 tory, not dwelling morosely on past de- 
 linquencies nor too sanguinely on future 
 anticipations. Nor should the sorrows of 
 the past, while steadying our hearts, be 
 permitted to throw their long shadows 
 into the future's sunny vale. Let us make 
 the year new and not have it the fac- 
 simile of the old — new in life, new in 
 character, new in work, remembering 
 that the more we depart from the old and 
 realize the new the better it will be for 
 us all. 
 
 The old has had its day and brought 
 us little measure of virtue. We have 
 cheated ou r selves in cheating it. *T^55pi4e~ 
 {he joys oT faith, the light of heavenly 
 
74 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 laws, the unerring guidance of the 
 Church the monarch of the ages, we have 
 been as the commonalty around us — 
 measuring ourselves by their standards 
 and not by the exalted criterions of 
 Christ's gospel. Let us leave all this with 
 little regret, and with grand hope salute 
 the rising morning. The God who gave 
 us the year will not throw us as straws 
 on the crest of life's wave, but will give 
 us the means of progress, and there is no 
 progress if not toward the God who creat- 
 ed us, who bestowed the consciousness of 
 immortality, and the hope of heaven. 
 The past year is a cemetery filled with the 
 /bones of onetime strong purposes; filled 
 with pet schemes that sickened in irreso- 
 lution and died before the will compassed 
 them; filled with dead days that had no 
 pith nor purpose for the worthy here and 
 the salutary hereafter. Over it all could 
 be written an epitaph, for through it all 
 never went a hosanna. 
 
 Memory, then, brings regrets, but let 
 us not mope. We are on earth yet, and 
 that very thing should buoy us up with 
 
WELCOME THE NEW BORN YEAR. 75 
 
 new courage, for every hour is a new 
 creation with God's cherished purpose 
 persevering in it, reminding us every 
 hour of our destiny, animating us every 
 hour to its realization, and dominating 
 us every hour, despite our stiff perverse- 
 ness. Notwithstanding, then, the somber 
 colorings of memory and the sorry 
 twinges of regret, let us step to the fu- 
 ture with confidence and joy. Let us give 
 our hand to the all-wise Father who 
 leads us by His hand, gentle yet strong. 
 As the bell tolls for the past, let us not 
 fear the sorrow that the coming year may 
 bring. 
 
 We will never have true joy until life's 
 puzzle is explained to us by religion's 
 cheery mind. The more religious light 
 shines for us on life, the more satisfaction 
 life itself will give. Forget, then, all 
 ugly things that deform, or, if remember- 
 ing, blot them out by penance. Enjoy 
 life by enjoying the new year! Enjoy the 
 new year in adoring Him who gave life, 
 grace to enrich it, and glory as its prom- 
 ised crown! 
 
76 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XX. 
 
 NEW YEAR GREETING. 
 
 T seems like irony or a cruel jest, 
 in these terrible days of war, to 
 wish our neighbors a happy New 
 Year. How can men be merry or hearts 
 be happy when Hatred and Sin and 
 Death are so busy in the world? Yet is 
 there hope of better things, of brighter 
 days to come, of a more heavenly reign 
 of justice and mercy and righteousness 
 on earth, of divine comfort and sweet as- 
 surance to the doubting and the fearful 
 in the words once spoken by our Blessed 
 Lord to one of His favored servants: "I 
 am come to cast fire on the earth, and 
 what will I but that it be kindled ?" That 
 heavenly fire is the fire of love, of peace 
 and law and brotherly concord, not the 
 devasting conflagration of war and hat- 
 red. 
 
 But alas! man is prone to evil, and to- 
 
NEW YEAR GREETING. 77 
 
 day the world has forgotten the Prince of 
 Peace wrapped in swaddling clothes and 
 laid in a manger. The nations of Europe 
 have drawn the sword of death, and the 
 song of the angels — "Glory to God in the 
 highest and peace on earth to men of good 
 will!" — is drowned by the voice of battle, 
 lost in the harsh roar of guns, where 
 brother faces brother in murderous mood. 
 Yet shall the fire of love be enkindled 
 on earth and the flames of war be ex- 
 tinguished and utterly cease, for God is 
 not mocked. His ways are inscrutable 
 ways and His providence beyond the ken 
 of man. But of this let us rest assured; 
 out of all this misery of broken hearts 
 and desolated homes shall come at length 
 the "truce of God," that shall be not an 
 idle figure of speech but a sweet reality 
 in the hearts of men and nations. Through 
 all this blood and slaughter, God is work- 
 ing out benign ends for the world. He is 
 opening the eyes of men to the folly of 
 war and hatred, and to the wisdom of 
 peace and love. Out of the chaos of these 
 
78 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 terrible days His mercy will yet evolve a 
 new reign of celestial order on earth. 
 
 Because this is so, because this is the 
 faith of all who know that "God's in His 
 heaven," and that, despite present ruin 
 and devastation, "all's well with the 
 world," confidently looking for the better 
 days to come, with a sure hope in the ful- 
 fillment of His love, we may wish one an- 
 other a Happy New Year. 
 
NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 79 
 
 XXI. 
 
 NEW YEAR'S GRATITUDE. 
 
 NOTHER year from out Time's 
 vast ocean has broken its waves 
 on the shore of eternity, bearing 
 on to its God black hulks as well as white 
 sails — souls lost forever as well as souls 
 gained forever. And now that we have 
 heard the bell toll for the old year that 
 has gone and that happy and hopeful we 
 enter on the new, we are forcibly remind- 
 ed of the fact that life and death are side 
 by side, even as the last moment of one 
 year touches the first second of the other. 
 We are impressed with the thought that 
 the bell will one day solemnly tell our fel- 
 lows that we, too, have gone. It behooves 
 us, then, while life is ours to use time in 
 the service of the God of time, to begin 
 the new year with new resolves that will 
 preface a new life, so that one day the 
 blessings of grace may be happily blended 
 in the delights of glory. 
 
80 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 And here we would fain guess what the 
 future will reveal. The future will be 
 the fac-simile of the past in everything, 
 save the changes we ourselves make. 
 Trusting, as ever, on God's generosity, 
 we hope to get the time to make the need- 
 ed change. 
 
 Time, how precious! Time, the price 
 of eternity! Time, in thirty-three years 
 of which our dear Lord taught and saved 
 the generations of mankind! Time, in 
 which saints wrought the golden deeds 
 for which God girt their temples with 
 ever-green chaplets! Time, the day of 
 God's mercy, mercy so great, indeed, that 
 it seemingly contradicts divine justice! 
 Time, which, if once spent well, will gain 
 us heaven! Time, which, were it possi- 
 ble to spend twice, would undo hell. 
 
 Have you ever thought how a soul, 
 now lost in the dungeons of the damned, 
 would act were it allowed to come to 
 earth to live again and hope for a period? 
 It would never return to its anguish so 
 intense would be the virtue of its short 
 life — a life which would in its intensity 
 
NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 81 
 
 equal here the lustre of the glorified be- 
 yond. 
 
 How, then, will we spend our time 
 well? By thanking God for the past, by 
 noting its faults and by begging His 
 blessing on the future. The past is one 
 continued pearl string of God's charities, 
 and it befits us to sing in the transports of 
 Isaias: "I will remember the tender 
 mercies of the Lord, the praise of the 
 Lord for all the things that the Lord 
 hath bestowed upon me." 
 
 What has He bestowed? Life and all 
 the blessings of nature and grace; Life, 
 for every year is a new creation, since 
 preservation in life is a continued act of 
 creation. Life is the principle of all 
 happiness. Without life, we could not 
 actually enjoy anything, nor could we 
 hope for possible joys. It gives light to 
 the eye, causing it to recognize beauty 
 pillowed on the snows of winter or re- 
 clining on the young arm of Spring. It 
 gives the ear the power to charm the soul 
 with that harmony which swells the 
 throat of the little bird or pulsates in the 
 
82 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 pipes of the organ thundering reverence 
 to God. It gives the power of speech, 
 which makes earth echo with kind words 
 and sweet songs. Of all this is life the 
 parent, and the father of life is God. 
 
 God had given us Nature. For us he 
 surrounds the seed with mystery, causing 
 it to burst the sod and sprout forth in 
 green loveliness. He rears its head and 
 with his unseen power props the grain- 
 laden stem. He makes of Autumn a 
 mighty storehouse, wherein are packed 
 rich products for his myriads of crea- 
 tures. He gives us flocks, as he gave 
 Abraham, and when our faith fails us in 
 Him, as Nature's God, He gently chides 
 us, saying, "Oh ye of little faith," your 
 life to Me is dearer than the lily, your 
 soul more fair. 
 
 Grace gives the highest reason for 
 thanks. Here we are urged by Christ to 
 sanctity and Heaven. God is kinder to 
 us than we are to ourselves. He has made 
 us Christians, when so many men, abom- 
 inable as is the stone they worship, pray 
 to idols. He has made us true Christians 
 
NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 83 
 
 possessing not man's changing ideas, but 
 thoughts fixed and unchangeable from 
 God Himself. He has given us the sacra- 
 ments which the wealth of the universe 
 could not buy, since they cost the wealth 
 of the heart of the world's God. So We 
 should be generous, as divine prodigality 
 certainly should beget human generosity. 
 
 To give our thankfulness the character 
 of true logic, we should note our ingrati- 
 tude. You may say you confessed it. 
 In what have we been derelict? Con- 
 science will answer, as truly it is written, 
 "Conscience is the test of every mind." 
 
 Perseverence is a great desideratum. 
 A want of perseverance makes the dying 
 man a torture to himself and a dread to 
 those who look into his eyes as hopeless 
 of heaven as of bodily strength. Persever- 
 ence gives the face a smile in which pain 
 is drowned, gives the eye a quiet content 
 which betokens a close view of heaven. 
 Then let us endeavor to make this Chris- 
 tian year truly a year of grace and so 
 make it the dawn of the new and eternal 
 year of God Himself. 
 
84 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XXII. 
 THE USE OF TIME. 
 
 |EW YEAR'S, with all its joys, 
 sorrows, hopes and fears with all 
 the revelations of the old year 
 and all the lessons that experience therein 
 pronounced, comes again. Maybe stunned 
 with grief, amazed at disaster, or mayhap 
 bright with delight and hopeful in suc- 
 cess, you meet the new year's morning. 
 Whatever earthly loss or failure may be 
 yours, there is one thing you will remem- 
 ber, and that is that there is no true 
 anguish but sin — that, no matter what 
 pleasure lures you, there is no real joy 
 save that which virtue parents. Grief, 
 and all earthly mishaps will not freeze on 
 a heart suffused with the light and 
 warmth of heavenly hope, will not trou- 
 ble the great depths of a mind steadied 
 with Christian principles, will not drop 
 as leaden weights to weary, into soul rich 
 
NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. $5 
 
 in grace that happily heralds glory. Nor 
 will success intoxicate the Christian who 
 estimates everything, not by life's transi- 
 ent year, but by God's eternal day. 
 
 We all pray for time. Let us use it! It 
 is an inestimable gift. How much we 
 can learn in its golden round! What 
 books can be read and studied! What 
 songs can be sung! What good work 
 done! What great deed accomplished! 
 What prayers can be said uplifting us 
 heavenward to think on something more 
 than the stars and the sun — the good God 
 who decks night with the signet rings of 
 His creative hand and enriches our work- 
 ing hours with the beauty and power of 
 His solar light! What knowledge of 
 Christ we can gain in the hours His 
 mercy bestows ! What a banquet we may 
 enjoy at God's altar, where we can, in a 
 measure, make our Lord's strength our 
 strength, our Lord's blood our blood, our 
 Lord's body our body, so that the health 
 faith gives may make our souls strong, 
 the brightness it yields may light our 
 minds, the beauty it bestows may be the 
 
86 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 decoration as well as the force of exalted 
 character. 
 
 Time gives us all these opportunities. 
 
 Let us find hours for useful and de- 
 lightful pursuits, by wasting none. Let 
 us ask ourselves every day what did we 
 so that our days will not be corpses strewn 
 along life's highway! Let us examine our 
 conscience and see what idea, refining or 
 heavenly, we added to the honeycomb of 
 thought! What development gave we 
 the heart? What nourishment the soul? 
 What sacraments have we cherished as 
 more than angelic visitors? What work 
 have we done to bless the day withal, so 
 that its light may not have shone in dark- 
 ness? 
 
 These salutary questions will not 
 fatigue but strengthen, will not beget 
 melancholy but joy, will not be foolish 
 but wise, and will remind us of the fact 
 that we are made not for our own pur- 
 poses but for God's grand intents, that we 
 are not fashioned as victims of an idle 
 fatality, but are unerringly destined for 
 immortal bliss, that we are not purpose- 
 
THE USE OF TIME. 87 
 
 less accidents, but creatures of heavenly 
 design, that we are not part of the mud we 
 step on, but are kindred to Christ, bene- 
 ficiaries of His bounty and heirs of His 
 glory. 
 
 Time will end; eternity, never; let us 
 appreciate the one as the preparation for 
 the other. 
 
 And yet when we think how we sweat 
 for Caesar and how seldom we have a 
 moist brow for Christ we feel how un- 
 worthy we are of time and all its benizens 
 and hopes. We will then begin the New 
 Year with an act of contrition, continue it 
 with an act of love, end it, if it is yet ours, 
 with an act of hope, and over all, and 
 through all, let faith shed its lustre and 
 thrill with its power. 
 
STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 
 
 lOW valuable is time! A second 
 in a Derby may bring fortune or 
 lose fame. Yet in the great con- 
 test for immortality we trifle with dear 
 hours, with dearer days, with dearest 
 years. 
 
 Through the proper use of time, the 
 wonders of the world, the marvels of art 
 and science, the splendors of literature, 
 have been wrought. Nevertheless, we 
 foolishly sit waiting for tomorrow to 
 bring us a boon, and do not see that we 
 are overlooking one, in gazing beyond the 
 present hour, rich in abundant possibili- 
 ties. 
 
 The worth of life is inestimable. We 
 should then act "in the living present,'' 
 for life is action. We should not rot in 
 the face of the sun, but let it gild our la- 
 bors that should themselves be glories that 
 
THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 69 
 
 would outlive the sun in their immortal 
 characters and destinies. Let us live well 
 and so multiply our years, for one who 
 "well lives, long lives." 
 
 When we think that the dying Chris- i 
 tian can be saved, while his life goes out 
 under the wheels of a train, if he only says 
 from the heart, "the Lord have mercy on 
 me," we can esteem the worth of a mo- 
 ment. When we consider that a few \ 
 years fashioned a Stanislaus Kostka, we I 
 can appreciate the mighty value of our \ 
 days. When we contemplate the fact that 
 our own time is the price of everlasting 
 happiness, we feel like hurrying, as did 
 St. Paul, to "redeem the time," and to 
 make up to the future what our sorry past 
 lacked. 
 
 Approaching the new year, we guess at 
 what changes it will work in our lives. 
 Looking at the past and the present, we 
 have all reason to fear that the future will 
 be kindred thereto — that, as Coleridge 
 says in the Death of Wallenstein "I n to 
 da y already walks tomorrow." ,_ 
 
 o God alone we must look for that im 
 
90 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 provement in spiritual health that will 
 save our lives from being one long dis- 
 ease. From God alone, and not from our 
 own efforts, we must seek that gracious 
 favor that will make our days a promise 
 of the eternal years. Before God alone 
 we must kneel for perseverence so that 
 our eyes, fading in death, may see Para- 
 dise closer than did Moses, Palestine, 
 viewed from the brow of Horeb. 
 
 The older a man lives, the less faith 
 should he have in man and correspond- 
 ingly the more in his God. The world 
 has betrayed its every declaration; God 
 has kept his multitudinous promises. We 
 should serve with fruitful time the One, 
 and eschew the other as a cheat and a liar. 
 The present moment is ours; the next is 
 God's; let us make this rich in merit so 
 that w r e can bargain truly for the other, 
 for the best way to get a second gift is to 
 appreciate and use well the first. 
 
 Let us not permit sin to eclipse our sun 
 and blot out our day, but let every hour 
 be a gracious one that makes for Heaven 
 in its fine sense and purpose. Time is the 
 
THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 91 
 
 porch of ete rnity./ It is more, for of it is 
 the verse ot Y oung in "Night Thoughts" 
 too true : 
 
 "Time is eternity; 
 
 Pregnant with all eternity can give; 
 
 Pregnant with all that makes arch-angels 
 
 smile 
 Who murders time, he crushes in the birth 
 A power ethereal, only not adorn d" 
 
 May we daily learn that there is noth- 
 ing true but Heaven and none like unto 
 God, its King. May we ever learn that 
 time was given us solely to acquire truth 
 and light its deeds through earth's dark- 
 ness to eternity. So doing, our lives will 
 be prayers that will ensure a truly happy 
 New Year. 
 
92 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XXIV. 
 GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 ANY men, remembering the 
 broken resolves of last year, will 
 smile at others and themselves, 
 when it is a question of registering resolu- 
 tions for the New Year. 
 
 Now, this is all wrong. Good intentions 
 have lapsed, it is true, and may again fall 
 short of realization, but this is no reason 
 why they should not be made. Life it- 
 self consists of up and downs — of acts of 
 contrition as well as of hope. We should 
 not discount ourselves any more than we 
 should depreciate our fellows. A good 
 resolve, in itself, is a good deed. It is a 
 shame to break faith with our promises, 
 but it is a greater shame not to even at- 
 tempt to be better, by being guilty of lazi- 
 ness, to the extent of not even dreaming 
 of higher things. 
 
 Our resolutions are broken, not be- 
 
GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 93 
 
 cause of themselves but because of the 
 weakness of human nature. The man who 
 would undo advancement by not com- 
 mencing with a resolution would lay the 
 axe to the root of the efficiency of pen- 
 ance. Is not every confession largely a 
 declaration of broken promises, of lapses 
 into sin, or omissions of virtuous works? 
 The sacrament's efficacy is not to be im- 
 peached for the wretchedness it undoes 
 and the encouragement it bestows ; so the 
 penitent's confession is not to be consid- 
 ered false because he fails again. He re- 
 solved because of strength; he failed be- 
 cause of weakness. We may fail even 
 though we resolve ; we will never succeed 
 if we omit resolution. The man who re- 
 solves has courage ; the man who does not 
 is an unqualified coward. The man who 
 resolves has faith, for he believes in God 
 and trusts Him. Cicero anticipated 
 Christian truth when he declared in his 
 Tusculan Disputations, "A man of cour- 
 age is also full of faith." Courage, then, 
 should brighten the new year with its in- 
 teresting glow. The exquisite lines of 
 
94 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 Farquhar should stimulate our new en- 
 deavors : 
 
 Courage, the highest gift that scorns to 
 bend 
 
 To mean devices for a sordid end. 
 
 Courage, an independent spark from 
 heaven s bright throne, 
 
 By which the soul stands raised, triumph- 
 ant, high, alone. 
 
 Great in itself, not praises of the crowd, 
 
 Above all vice, it stoops not to be proud. 
 
 Courage, the mighty attribute of powers 
 above, 
 
 By which those great in war are great in 
 love. 
 
 The spring of all brave acts is seated here, 
 
 As falsehoods draw their sordid births 
 from fear. 
 
 Let us resolve, then, and resolve so 
 grandly that the practical conclusions of 
 our resolutions will come as the necessary 
 sequence of our ardent purpose. 
 
 Our wills, 'tis true, are weak, but God 
 is strong, and if we couple our endeavors 
 with His desires we need not fear the 
 aftermath. God has given us the New 
 Year; let us dedicate it to Him who gives 
 "the increase;" the devil has already 
 robbed God's Kingdom of too many souls 
 for us to add to the awful disaster. To 
 
GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 95 
 
 the Christ, who is as harshly treated now 
 as was He in the olden time by the inn- 
 keepers of Bethlehem, we offer not 
 swords for they were never acceptable to 
 the meek Lord, but our resolutions that 
 He may consecrate them and perfect 
 them. The greatest honor is the proud 
 title of defender of the faith, in an age 
 which, like the Greeks of old, impiously 
 deems Christ a stumbling block and 
 Christianity itself a scandal. 
 
STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 XXV. 
 LITTLE CHRISTMAS. 
 
 jOW "stale, flat and unprofitable" 
 are the ways of this world can be 
 gleaned, even through hurried re- 
 flection, from a consideration of Epipha- 
 ny. Read all the follies of the dailies and 
 then think how they pale into insignifi- 
 cance before the details of an event that 
 happened two thousand years ago. The 
 commemoration of the Kings' visit to 
 Bethlehem's crib engages our hearts at- 
 tention, while the record of the living day 
 inspires only the mind's passing notice. 
 
 Such a thought as this made Lew Wal- 
 lace not fear that his chapter in "Ben- 
 Hur" on the journey of the Wise Men, 
 would hold the modern reader when 
 crude themes of our times make him look 
 away. 
 
 No wonder the sublime prophet 
 heralded Epiphany with the glorious 
 
GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 97 
 
 words: "Arise! be enlightened, O Jerusa- 
 lem; for thy light is come and the glory 
 of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, be- 
 hold, darkness shall cover the earth and 
 a mist the people ; but the Lord shall arise 
 upon thee and His glory shall be seen 
 upon thee. And the Gentiles shall walk 
 in thy light, and kings in the brightness 
 of thy rising." 
 
 The star that led the royal pilgrimage 
 to the Judean stable is symbolical of all 
 this light that Isaias in rhapsody foresaw. 
 It gleamed through the mist of expect- 
 ancy; it shone through the darkness of ig- 
 norance, and in the brightness of its shin- 
 ing Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar rode 
 to the blessed borders of the Holy City. 
 Entering the portals of the immortal 
 chamber, they lay down their crowns, 
 typical of making reason minister to 
 revelation, and with their crowns, their 
 hearts in loving service to the King of 
 Kings. They vie with each other in gen- 
 erous expression to have their authority 
 consecrated by the living hand of Him, 
 from whom all rights flow. They are vir- 
 
98 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 
 
 tually exalted to thrones eternal, and, 
 from men of doubt and dreaming, they 
 are canonized by the shining face of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 What a lesson the Epiphany has for a 
 world, whose chief crimes come today 
 from disorder created by disrespect for 
 authority. False theories about the origin 
 of rule are agitating the minds of men, 
 who take off their hats to nothing, un- 
 like the venerable majesties at the sancti- 
 fied crib. The words of St. Paul : "All 
 power is from God" are ignored. Men in 
 misnamed religion, the very worst form 
 of the mad world's crimes, constitute 
 themselves their own guides in faith, 
 making reason usurp revelation instead 
 of being led thereby. So they end their 
 lawless course in destroying Holy Writ 
 today that but yesterday they deemed 
 their sacred guide in faith and its duties. 
 They land with Herod, the destroyer, in- 
 stead of keeping to the course of the 
 Magi. They follow the lights of reason 
 and not the heavenly lead of Christ, and, 
 like the infamous king, they slaughter, 
 
LITTLE CHRISTMAS. 99 
 
 not babes indeed, but souls, and end in 
 disaster. In the state there is no rever- 
 ence for authority. Subjects usurp the 
 privileges of rulers and despise the be- 
 hests of law, forgetting that they only are 
 true men who conquer self and put law in 
 the place of whims. 
 
 The falseness of the principle that au- 
 thority comes from the people has made 
 the people themselves lack reverence for 
 constitutional power. It is true the peo- 
 ple can, by their votes or by inheritance, 
 name the ones they desire invested with 
 authority, but God alone bestows the 
 power. 
 
 If men would regard well the conduct 
 and the devotion of the visitors to Bethle- 
 hem, then socialism, anarchy and the rest 
 of the Herods in the systems of our day 
 would be frustrated, and Christ's infinite 
 splendor would shine on rulers and peo- 
 ples. 
 
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