II

We shall remember the Christmas of 1921, partly, at any rate, by the

wonderful succession of pellucid, frosty, moonlit nights that preceded

it. We walked round and round our rustic grange trying to focus just

what we wanted to say to our friends as a Christmas greeting. A curious

misery was upon our spirit, for we felt that in many ways we had been

recreant to the spirit of friendship. When we think, for instance,

of the unanswered letters.... We have sinned horribly. Yet we wanted

to give ourself the selfish pleasure of saying a word of affection

to those who have been kind to us, and to whom, in the foolish but

unavoidable hurry of daily affairs, we have been discourteous. (The way

to love humanity, we said to ourself, is not to see too much of it.)

Moreover, to write a kind of Christmas sermon is, apparently, to put

one’s self into the loathsome false position of seeming to assume those

virtues one praises.

We remember the first clergyman who made an impression upon our

childish mind. It was in a country church in a village where we were

visiting some kinsmen. This parson was a great bearded fellow, long

since gone the way of flesh. He was a bit of a ritualist; his white

surplice and embroidered streamers of red and gold impressed us

enormously. He came very close to our idea of Divinity itself. We used

to sit and hear him booming away and think, vaguely, how wonderful to

be as virtuous as that. When the organ throbbed and his vast gray beard

rose ecstatically above his white-robed chest we thought that here was

Goodness incarnate. Years later we asked what had become of him. We

heard that he had lost his job because he drank too much. The more we

think about that the tenderer our feeling is towards his memory. Only

the sinner has a right to preach.

Thinking about this pre-Christmas feeling, and wanting to say something

about it, but not knowing how, we got (as we started to tell you) on

a train. We went, for a few hours, to another city. There we saw,

exhilaratingly different, but fundamentally the same, the shining

business of life going forward. The people in that city were carrying

on their own affairs, were hotfoot upon their own concerns; we saw

their eager, absorbed faces, and what struck us was, here are all these

people, whose lives are totally sundered from our own, but they have,

at heart, the same hopes and aspirations, the same follies, weaknesses,

disgusts, and bitternesses as ourself. And the same would be so of a

thousand cities, and of a hundred thousand. Then we got into one of

those things called a sleeper, which ought to be called a thinker. An

ideal cloister for meditation. All down the dark aisle we could hear

the innocent snores of our fellows, but we ourself lay wakeful. We felt

rather like the mystic Russian peasant who goes to bed in his coffin.

We were whirled along through a midnight landscape of transparent

white moonlight, and, quite as cheerful as the dead child in Hans

Andersen borne through starry space by the angel, we made our peace

with everything. We claim no credit for this. We would have slept if we

could. There was a huge bump in the middle of the berth, and there was

a vile cold draught. We read part of Stephen Crane’s magnificent sketch

_The Scotch Express_. But those miserable little dim lamps----

And then, strangely enough, there came a sudden realization of the

amazing richness and fecundity of life. Every signboard along the

railroad track is an illustration of it. Hideous enough, still it is a

kind of endless vista into the huge jumble of human affairs. Here is a

billboard crying out something about a Spark Plug, or about the Hotel

Theresa; or on the side of a little shabby brick tenement a painted

legend about Bromo Seltzer. Someone worked to put that advertisement

up; someone had sufficient credulity or gambling audacity to pay

for it; somewhere children are fed and clothed by that spark plug.

Christmas itself suddenly seemed a kind of spark plug that ignites

the gases and vapours of selfishness and distrust and explodes them

away. Everything seemed extraordinarily gallant and exciting. Take the

Hotel Theresa, for instance. We had never heard of it before. It is

on 125th Street, we gathered. We would like to wager that all sorts

of adventures are lying in wait up there, if we can slip away and go

looking for them.

As we were lying in our cool tomb (Carl Sandburg’s phrase) in the

thinking car, we meditated something like this: Christmas is certainly

a time when a reasonable man should overhaul his religion and see if

it amounts to anything. Christmas is a time when millions of people

are thinking of the same thing. Humanity is so constituted that you

can never get the world to agree about things that have happened; but

it is happily at one about something that probably never happened--the

Christmas story as told in the Gospels. If millions of simple people

believe a thing, that doesn’t make it true; but perhaps it makes it

better than true: it makes it Poetry, it makes it Beauty. Stephen

Graham says, in that moving book _With Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_

(which certainly ought to be read by every one who is at all interested

in religion; it is published by Thomas Nelson & Sons; you may have to

get it from London, we don’t believe it is in print over here)--Stephen

Graham says:

True Religion takes its rise out of Mystery, and not out of

Miracle.

Religion, which has proved to be one of the greatest dividing and

hostilizing forces in the world, is in its essence just the opposite.

Surely, in the origin of the word, religion means a binding together,

a ligament. Now take the most opposite people you can think of--say

Babe Ruth and the Sultan of Turkey (is there still a Sultan?); or say

Mr. Balfour and the chap who runs the elevator in this office. No

matter how different these may be in training and outlook, there will

be some province of human thought and emotion, some small, sensitive

spot of the mind, in which they can meet and feel at one. We can

imagine them sitting down together for lunch and having a mutually

improving time, each admiring and enjoying the other. Widen the

incongruity of the individuals as much as you like: imagine Mr. Joseph

Conrad and Dr. Berthold Baer; or Mr. James W. Elliott (the Business

Builder) and Mahatma Gandhi--we care not who they are, if they can

make their thoughts intelligible to each other they can find that

remote but definite point of tangency where any experienced mind can

meet and sympathize with any other human mind, discussing the problems

of destiny which are common to all. It is this Common Multiple of

humanity, this sensitive pulse in the mind, this realization of a

universal share in an overburdening mystery too real to be ignored, but

too terrific to be defined or blurbed about, that is the province of

religion.

And then the devil of it (for there is always a Devil in every sensible

religion) is that the best way to be sure there is this possible point

of junction is not to attempt to find it. Both Mr. Balfour and the

cheerful elevator boy would probably pray heartily to be delivered

from sitting down to lunch together. This mysterious mental sensitive

spot that we speak of remains sensitive only as long as it remains

private and secret. Perhaps religion can be defined as a sense of human

fellowship that is best preserved by not being too companionable.

We were thinking, too, how extremely modern and contemporary the

Christmas story seems. It is appropriate that the final instalment of

the Income Tax falls just before Christmas. The same thing happened

1921 years ago. “There went out a decree that all the world should be

taxed,” says Luke. That was why Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem--to

pay their tax. And we can imagine that the Bethlehem _Evening Star_,

if there had been newspapers at that time, would have had a column of

social notes just similar in spirit to those of our own press to-day.

The arrival of Joseph and Mary would not have been noticed. We might

have read:

Mr. and Mrs. Pharisee of “White Sepulchre,” Galilee, are

spending the winter at the Tiberius Hotel.

The Hon. Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judæa, is enjoying a

week-end visit with Tetrarch and Mrs. Herod at the tetrarchal

mansion.

Mr. and Mrs. Philip Herod are travelling in Syria for the

winter. Mrs. Herod was before her marriage Miss Herodias,

socially prominent.

Prof. Melchior, Prof. Balthazar, and Prof. Gaspar arrived last

night from the West. They are said to be in town for some

astronomical investigations. The professors had great trouble

in securing hotel accommodations, the city being so crowded.

Rev. Caiaphas, one of the most respected High Priests in this

diocese, has an apartment for the winter at Philactery Court.

The train pursued its steady way through the moonlight, and the

silvered loveliness of earth and trees made us think generously of

our own country. We are still foolish enough to love this America of

ours with a dumb queer love. We still believe that in spite of Senates

and Live Wires, in spite of the antics of some of the half-educated

and well-meaning men who “govern” us, this country has a unique

contribution to make to the world in future years. There should be

international Christmas cards: there should be some way of one nation

surprising another with a friendly message on the Morning of Mornings.

We believe (perhaps we are not impartial) that the English-speaking

race, by its contributions to human liberty, has a right to a leading

place in the world’s affairs; but if it gives way to its characteristic

vice of arrogance, we weary of it. We think of the feminine brilliance,

charm, and emotional volatility of France; of the beautiful sensibility

and self-control of Japan; of the melancholy idealism of Russia; of the

sober industry of Germany. Have we, then, nothing to learn from these?

Printers’ ink is scattered about these days with such profusion that it

becomes almost meaningless. Sitting in the subway, and raising our eye

plaintively from a newspaper to an advertising card, we have wondered

which was the greater menace, Pyorrhea or Japan? Both were said to

be menaces. It is our own conviction that nothing can be a menace to

America but itself.

This seems a dismal kind of Christmas homily, but we enjoyed ourself

immensely while we were meditating it in our lower berth. Very likely

if it had been an upper berth the result would have been different.

In any case, we take the liberty of wishing our friends--who are, by

this time, too indurated to feel surprise or chagrin at anything we may

say--a Merry Christmas. We wish for them a cheerful and laborious New

Year, with good books to read, and both the time and the inclination to

think. We even wish for them occasional eccentric seizures, such as we

feel at the present; when we have a dim suspicion that behind the noble

and never sufficiently praised comedy of life there lies some simple

satisfying answer to many gropings. A simple thing, but too terrible

and far-reaching ever to be wholly put into practice by puzzled and

compromising mankind. We mean, of course, the teachings of Christ.

Consider the German generals and military men, who lost everything. But

the German toymakers conquered the world.