But, thank God, if these considerations point to our weakness, they also point to our hope, and to the means for our deliverance. We have still as much reason to rejoice as the angels had when they sang this song, because the great joy of it lies in the eternal fact that there is a Saviour and there is a King, Who, if His people will trust Him, will save them from their sins and all the miseries that their sins involve. If our own lives and the life of our nation and the life of Europe can be made truly Christian, if we can bring more of the love of Christ and the life of Christ into our daily existence, we have the assurance that He will save us, and will extirpate the abuses and the falsehoods which have brought the nations of Europe to this terrible pass. In a few days we are to have a Day of Humble Prayer and Intercession to Almighty God. Let it be, above all, a day of humble acknowledgment of our failure as individuals and as a nation in His true faith and obedience. I would fain it had been called by the good old Christian and English name of a Day of Humiliation. We ought to be humiliated. We have, in such ways as I have indicated, been contented with a half-Christian life in public affairs and in society. We and our men of letters, and men of learning, and men of affairs, have been affected with the same half-heartedness in our allegiance to Christ, which shocks us when we see it displayed in all its nakedness in other countries, and especially in the one which is chiefly opposed to us. Let us be humiliated for it before God, not caring, in comparison with our true relation to Him, what interpretation the world may put on our repentance. But let us also rejoice more than ever in the assurance of Christmas that a Saviour has been born to us, that we have an eternal King in our Lord Jesus Christ, Who can save us from our sins, and our ruin, and ourselves, if we will but give ourselves up to Him absolutely. Let us realize with infinite thankfulness that the souls of those who are now sacrificing their lives for us are in His saving and merciful hands. Let us be reminded by the angelic vision that we ourselves, and the souls of those who have passed and are passing away, are not brought merely into contact with the “blackness and darkness and tempest” of war, but are come unto “Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, and to an innumerable company of Angels, and to the general assembly of the Church of the Firstborn and to Christ the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” Let us realize this more than we have yet done. Let us realize the truth of the Angels’ proclamation that Christ and Christ alone is our Saviour and our King, that He alone can save us, individuals and nations alike, from our sins; and then, in spite of all the distress and anxiety which surrounds us, this may prove the most blessed Christmas of our lives, and it may bring us a happiness which will last unto life eternal.