THERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS
'He would denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made me
blush to look at a hollyberry.'--EDMUND GOSSE'S _Father and Son_.
The world is moving so fast that, before each nightfall, yesterday is
forgotten. Sitting here before the fire I have been stirring up my
memory, and, out of the subconscious, queer recollections have emerged.
I can see now the grim-faced Highland minister demonstrating in the
month of December to his perfect satisfaction that the Founder of
Christianity was born in midsummer, and that Christmas was but a pagan
festival sprinkled over with holy water so-called. I think it was the
first time I heard of Christmas. That good man denounced the horrors
of Christmas with such zest that I, too, would have blushed to look at
a hollyberry--only no holly grew in that part of the Isle. And that
was so not because the Isle was remote and the folk spoke there an
ancient and little-known language that segregated them from the great
life of the world. It was the same in great centres very conscious of
their own culture. It was really only yesterday that Walter Smith was
dealt with by his presbytery for holding the first Christmas service in
his church in Edinburgh. But we have travelled far since that
particular yesterday, and I am glad that the children of to-day will
never need to blush before a hollyberry. For from the Solway to the
Pentland Firth the church bells everywhere to-day summon the people to
keep holy day and go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem.
I
There was never a time when the people of this land needed more to go
on such a pilgrimage. There are ample signs that Mammon has captured
the hearts of this generation. The day is gone on which Ruskin
declared that there is no wealth but life. We have outlived that. A
full bank account and an empty house--that is our modern wealth. The
rich flaunt their riches in a world seething with discontent. And the
aforetime quiescent masses now demand that Mammon should smile on them.
Society may perish, but they must have their full share in the largesse
of Mammon. On the altar of that god duty and patriotism are laid as
the meet offering. 'Great is Mammon,' is the burden of the praise of
our day. And what a god before whom to bow the knee!
It is only when I go on pilgrimage to-day to the grotto in the rock in
which the asses were stabled in Bethlehem and to the stall where the
Child is laid that I can realise the vulgarity and the meanness of
Mammon. Out of that manger there issued a power compared to which all
other influences that moulded men are as the rushlight to the sun; in
that stable lies the fountain out of which sprang the river that has
borne on its bosom for nineteen centuries all of beauty and of truth
and of love wherewith humanity has been blessed; and yet all that came
out of the direst poverty. Mammon had no smile for the greatest and
most radiant thing in all the world's history. Money secures at least
food and shelter, and it was because they had none that the innkeeper
shut them out. If they could have showed him a purse full of gold
pieces, he would soon have made room. And all the life of this Jesus
was woven after that pattern. The cheapest food sold then were
sparrows. It was because He was often sent to buy them that He knew
that two of them were sold in the market place for a farthing. The
patched garment is the symbol of poverty--or used to be! And He knew
all about garments being patched and patched until they were past
mending. At the eventide when the boy James brought a coat to be
mended He heard His mother say with a weary sigh: 'I have mended this
again and again: nobody can keep boys in decent clothes; so different
from girls; a new patch will just tear a bigger hole in the old.'
Often He saw His mother cast a half-farthing into the treasury, for she
had nought else. The tax-gatherer comes, and there isn't a coin to
pay. Jesus gave much, but He never gave any money, for He had none to
give. He was homeless for three years, deemed mad by His family, with
no place where to lay His head. A grave given in charity receives Him
at the last. The place of Jesus from the manger to the grave is among
the poorest of the poor. He belonged to the great class of the
disinherited. If the greatest thing on earth sprang from poverty such
as this, then surely Christmas pours the contempt of heaven upon Mammon.
II
We have only to look at him with eyes cleansed by gazing at the Child
in the manger and we realise how tawdry a god this Mammon is. What can
he do for us? Nothing of any worth. He has never minted a coinage
which can buy the inspiration of a noble thought, which can purchase
love for the starved heart, or can endow a man with the vision and the
faculty divine. One has but to consider a moment and he will realise
the poverty-stricken condition of Mammon's devotees. They can command
speed on earth or in the air; they can fly a hundred miles an hour; but
what is the good when at the end of the hundred miles they are as at
the beginning--sated, restless, and dissatisfied? They can command no
speed by which they can escape from themselves. And it is vain to wing
a flight upwards through the air if heaven be empty overhead; vain to
alight five hundred miles away if on earth there be no temple, no holy
day, no shrine at which to worship. 'You own the land,' said the poor
painter to the new-rich who boasted his land: 'you own the land but I
own the landscape.' The great gift is to own the landscape. And no
money ever bought that. The only thing Mammon can do is to secure
food, shelter, and clothes. It can also secure freedom from work--but
that is a freedom shared with the tramp. Life is greater far than
livelihood; and the worshippers of Mammon lose the very essence and the
end of life in a vain pursuit of the means of living.
That is the witness raised by Christmas as it calls the nations to
realise the true greatness of man. To a generation that has made life
a hectic rush after money and pleasure, Christmas testifies that to
estimate any man by the money he owns is to blaspheme against the Child
laid in the manger. The wealth of Croesus makes him but the prey of
the conqueror, and the dust of centuries has buried the pomp and glory
of emperors. But this Child, cradled in poverty, reigns from
generation to generation. The voice of an Alexander or a Napoleon
would to-day cause no heart to beat quicker; but millions would die for
Him. And that because He alone revealed to men the things that are
unpurchasable, the riches that are unseen. He alone made men realise
that a man's life consisteth not in the things that he possesseth, but
rather in the thoughts that he thinks, in the motives that sway his
action; in the ideals towards which he presses; in the God whom he
worships and makes his own. How great a revolution He made. That one
hour in the manger has changed the world. Every time I sit down to
write a letter and head it 1922 I bear witness to the truth--that the
world I know began when a Child laid in the manger brought to earth the
realisation that all the great and noble things in life can be
mine--though my raiment be shabby and though my banker never thinks it
worth his while to throw me even a word when I reluctantly pass in
through his swing door. What a wonderful new wine He brought, and how
generously does He pour it into our bottles. Still new--after nineteen
centuries! Still bursting the old bottles on all sides! I can be
quite patient. There is no need for passionately tearing them in
pieces. Nineteen centuries! What are they in the arithmetic of
eternity! Give the Child time--and all the bottles of Mammon and
vulgarity will at last be burst.
III
No wonder Christmas sends a glow of warmth round the heart, and causes
joy bells to ring in the souls of even the drooping. It is to-day as
it was of old, when the disciples--poor, dull, purblind men--were
disputing even near the end as to which of them would have the greater
position and the greater wealth and honour. And Jesus placed a little
child in the midst and said, 'Except ye be converted, and become as a
little child, ye cannot enter the kingdom.' And in a world weary of
disputing, sated with strife as to who is to have the higher place and
the greater portion, Christmas places the Child in the midst and says,
'Except ye be converted...' What men need is not the sharing of a
booty, but the regenerating of a Spirit. The faith, the trust, the
purity, the love of the childlike spirit--that's what we need. What we
do or what we get matters nought, if only that spirit be in the heart.
One man may whirl past in a Rolls-Royce, befurred, bejewelled, and may
be the most pauperised soul on earth; while the stone-breaker at the
roadside may be the inheritor of all things and rich beyond all dreams.
Christmas is the surety of that. That was the wisdom of 'Stonecracker
John,' who sang:--
'The good Lord made the earth and sky,
The river and the sea--and me!
He made no roads, but here am I
As happy as can be;
For it is just as if he said--
"John, that's the job for thee."
And so in my appointed place,
By God's good grace,
I work, according to his plan,
And would not change with any man.'
To-day, as it has done for the centuries and the years that are so many
that one wearies in counting them, Christmas throws the halo of beauty
over all shepherds abiding in the fields calling on their dogs; over
all toilers in mines and workshops; over all stonebreakers and
street-sweepers; over all mothers and all babes. It proclaims to-day
with a voice whose certainty changes not that the man who serves Mammon
and gains the world while he loses his soul makes a grievous and a
profitless barter.