Mary, worn with grief and fear, covers her emaciated face with scarred
hands, as she kneels in prayer before the infant Jesus. Joseph, grown
old and feeble, nails up a barricade of planks to strengthen the door
against the missiles of Kultur already bursting through it and
threatening the sleeping child. So in that first Christmas, nineteen
centuries ago, he saved Mary's child from the baby-massacre ordered by
Herod to preserve his own throne.
Kultur, the gathered wisdom of the ages, has brought us back to the same
Holy War. What a Christmas! What a Festival of Peace and goodwill
towards men!
People ask: Why does God allow it? Is God dead? Foolish questions. When
I was at school I had the good fortune to be under a great teacher whose
name is honoured to-day. He used to tell us that the most terrible verse
in the Bible was: "So He gave them up unto their own hearts' lust and
they walked in their own counsels" (Ps. lxxxi, 13).
Man has the knowledge of good and evil; he has eaten of the tree and
insists on going his own way. He knows best. Is not this the age of
science and Kultur? We must not cry out if the road we have chosen leads
to disaster.
Yet still the Child of Christmas lives and a divine light shines round
His head. He sleeps.