If we are honest, we must also acknowledge that in far too great a degree the same failure has prevailed among ourselves. It has, to say the least of it, not been sufficiently recognized in our literature of late years, or in our public life, that “all form is formless, order orderless,” which is not entirely subject to Christ and informed by His Spirit. The very vice with which we now charge the Germans has been more than a temptation among ourselves. We have had great writers among us exalting statesmen and kings of the past on the ground of their mere strength. It was a great English writer of the last century who glorified Frederick the Great of Prussia as an example of a really strong king; and it is not a long step from that glorification to the worship which has been paid on the Continent of late to the supremacy of strength and self-assertion. That is not the Christian spirit, and the “red ruin and the breaking up of laws,” into which Europe is now plunged, is to be charged, not to any weakness in Christianity, but to a grievous neglect, and in some degree to the very negation, of Christianity. The peace and goodwill which the message of the angels promised is, in fact, within the scope of Christianity, and might be realized in the world at large, but solely on the condition of the true methods being observed--on condition, that is, of Christ, and the law of Christ, being acknowledged from the heart as the true and only source of peace and truth and goodwill, and on the condition of penitent, humble, and earnest devotion to Him. That is the one supreme condition on which peace to the world is promised by the Gospel. When emperors, and kings, and statesmen, and soldiers, and men and women in general believe the angels’ proclamation that Christ is their only Saviour, their only King, that He alone, by His sacrifice, His laws, and His grace can save His people from their sins, then, but then only, may they hope in the life of the State, as well as in that of the Church, to realize the angels’ promise of peace and goodwill. In a word: it is not by strength, nor by liberty, nor even by law, that the blessings of which Christmas holds out the promise can be realized. It is only by Christian liberty, Christian law, and Christian strength--that is to say, liberty and law, and strength exerted in obedience to the will of Christ--that these blessings can be obtained. It is not Christianity that has failed; it is not the angelic song that has disappointed us. It is nominal Christians who have failed, from not being Christians in reality. And the angelic song has proved its truth by the very disasters which have fallen upon men who have not lived as though Christ were their Saviour and their King.