It is an old and well-known story, recounted anew each Christmas time, that the Wise Men from the East were led to the cradle of the infant Jesus by a star. That fact has taken a large place in Christian imagery and symbolism. But of what is a star a symbol? It is suggestive of an ideal. How appropriate that a star should have shown the world to the cradle of one who set it thinking about ideals? Jesus was a dreamer. His spiritual lineage ran far back into the life of the Jewish race. The nature of Esau was such that wherever he went, he was haunted by his physical desires. The nature of Jacob was such that wherever he lay down at night, even though his head were pillowed upon a stone, he dreamed of heaven and of angels. Jesus was of the line of Jacob. He lived with His head among the stars. He wasted no time in getting the current of idealism under way. He began at once promoting the kind of thing the practical world calls impossible because it is right. The night He was born angels sang of glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will among men. It was a warring and hating world to which they sang, but their song was a note in the new harmony He had come to establish. This man who walked with His head among the stars did and said all kinds of impractical things. He said a kingdom of happiness was at hand, but that a man had to be born again in order to see it. He said the best way to save one’s life was to lose it. He said one should treat others as he wished them to treat him. He said one should love his neighbor as well as he loved himself. He told a rich, young man to give away everything he had and consecrate his life to service. The world is slowly catching the idea. You cannot conquer an ideal. Some time it will win. What was this ethereal, star-like dream that so commanded His life? It was a race redeemed from its sin, ignorance, littleness, and woe. He saw how His people were fettered by their own tendencies. He dreamed of a day of freedom to be and achieve their best. And it will come. Some day the world will be a picture of the vision of the Man who lived with His head among the stars. The light of the Bethlehem star falls across the centuries lighting the way to a new heaven and a new earth. The Comrade Perfect: An Appreciation (1929) In the “Passage to India,” Walt Whitman speaks of the longing of the soul for the “Comrade Perfect,” and asks if somewhere such a comrade does not wait for us. We all know perfectly well that life is not all that it ought to be without the presence of the Personality which completes us. There is such a comrade, and He does something better than wait for us. He comes to us. The abstraction of the idea of God found concrete realization in Him who was called Immanuel, or God with us. All this was made more intimate still by the coming of the spirit divine, which brought God not only to us but into us.