That we have the men now who are making it a constant and prayerful effort to reproduce the gospel and all its fruits; to reproduce the Church and all its blessings to man; to maintain all things as delivered to us by Christ and his apostles, we rejoice to know. That we have another class of men, who have no heart in this, and have even repudiated the idea, we entertain not a doubt. Those determined to reproduce the gospel of Christ and all its fruits, the Church, and all its blessings to man, introduce no innovations; nothing new and foreign to destroy the peace of the children of God, and are the cause of no dissensions and no divisions. Those standing off are not from among them. They will stand with God, with Christ, with the Holy Spirit, with the things of God as set forth in Scripture. We stop not to count the number, whether great or small, nor to consider whether they shall be popular or unpopular, rich or poor. The only question is, are they of God? Does God require that the gospel of his grace, as given by his Son and the apostles, shall be reproduced? Does he require that the church shall be reproduced? We maintain that he requires that the gospel, in all its entirety and completeness, shall be reproduced, and we shall be satisfied with nothing short of it. He requires that the Church, in its entirety and completeness, shall be reproduced. These are matters settled with us. The man whose heart is not in this work, and who aims not at it, is not one with us, nor in sympathy with us. CHRISTMAS. We do not believe that the 25th of December is the birthday of our Lord. We have seen abundant reasons for this, and could adduce them, if the importance of the matter required it, though we have not the works at hand now to refer to, as we think, settling the matter. There is not an intimation of the first Christians making anything of the birthday of our Lord, observing it religiously in any way, or regarding it as a holiday, or a _holy day_ at all. This accounts for the uncertainty about the day. If the first Christians had observed it, or in any particular way celebrated it, as the Jews did the Passover, there never could have been any doubt about the day. Anti-christ is great on _holy days_, specially if, of his own appointment, or if some paganism is mixed in them. This was one source of corruption in the primitive church—the continual tendency to mix up pagan ceremonies and superstitions with the simple, pure and holy religion of our Lord. Worldly and carnal-minded men in the early ages conceived the idea of popularizing the religion of Christ and commending it to the world by mixing pagan ceremonies, customs and superstitions with it; adorning it with philosophy and the pagan ideas of refinement. But all this only corrupted and degraded it.