“Before we separate we must all pledge ourselves in lemonade, et cetera, and wish one another ‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!’ Perhaps in all the year the few merry hours of Christmas Eve are the brightest and happiest to the whole world. This night, while we have been here enjoying ourselves together, thousands of homes have been full of gladness and merriment. Boys and girls from school have been telling the adventures of the ‘last half;’ apprentices, home for the Christmas-tide, have been giving their parents and friends an account of their trials and joys; family circles, broken throughout the year by circumstances, have been united round the old fireside in thousands of homes; sailors on the sea have struggled between cheerfulness and sorrow as they have told their shore stories and drunk to absent friends; settlers in the colonies, despite the differences of time and climate, have been linking themselves again with the associations of the old country; heaven and earth have been vocal with new songs of praise; and the blessed Redeemer Himself, whose birth in this world is the source of all our joy and gladness, has looked down on the delights which He has created, and seeing the results of the travail of His soul ‘has been satisfied.’ Well, my young friends, I am not going to preach you a sermon, but I do ask you to try and realize the pleasure of sharing the joy of the whole world. But do not forget amid the festivities that Christmas is the anniversary of the birthday of our Lord. He came to bless us and He lives to bless us. He gave to us all we have, and we should seek to give back to Him all we are. The cheerful heart, the smiling face, the happy thought, the kindly act, the friendly speech, are more acceptable to Him than the long drawn face and the sigh and the groan. His service is not simply that of the Sabbath-day or the appointed Church, but at the fireside, the play-ground, the office; in our hours of rest and toil and recreation, at home and at school, all through the life He requires, and is pleased with, our acknowledgment of Him. So now for all the happy hours of this happy season let us devoutly thank Him, and let us each determine that as He came this day to bless all the world, we will try to follow His example as far as we can.