generously does He pour it into our bottles. Still new--after nineteen centuries! Still bursting the old bottles on all sides! I can be quite patient. There is no need for passionately tearing them in pieces. Nineteen centuries! What are they in the arithmetic of eternity! Give the Child time--and all the bottles of Mammon and vulgarity will at last be burst. III No wonder Christmas sends a glow of warmth round the heart, and causes joy bells to ring in the souls of even the drooping. It is to-day as it was of old, when the disciples--poor, dull, purblind men--were disputing even near the end as to which of them would have the greater position and the greater wealth and honour. And Jesus placed a little child in the midst and said, 'Except ye be converted, and become as a little child, ye cannot enter the kingdom.' And in a world weary of disputing, sated with strife as to who is to have the higher place and the greater portion, Christmas places the Child in the midst and says, 'Except ye be converted...' What men need is not the sharing of a booty, but the regenerating of a Spirit. The faith, the trust, the purity, the love of the childlike spirit--that's what we need. What we do or what we get matters nought, if only that spirit be in the heart. One man may whirl past in a Rolls-Royce, befurred, bejewelled, and may be the most pauperised soul on earth; while the stone-breaker at the roadside may be the inheritor of all things and rich beyond all dreams. Christmas is the surety of that. That was the wisdom of 'Stonecracker John,' who sang:-- 'The good Lord made the earth and sky, The river and the sea--and me! He made no roads, but here am I As happy as can be; For it is just as if he said-- "John, that's the job for thee." And so in my appointed place, By God's good grace, I work, according to his plan, And would not change with any man.' To-day, as it has done for the centuries and the years that are so many that one wearies in counting them, Christmas throws the halo of beauty over all shepherds abiding in the fields calling on their dogs; over all toilers in mines and workshops; over all stonebreakers and street-sweepers; over all mothers and all babes. It proclaims to-day with a voice whose certainty changes not that the man who serves Mammon and gains the world while he loses his soul makes a grievous and a profitless barter. CHAPTER XII THE FULNESS OF THE TIME If there be no will guiding the affairs of men towards a predestined end, what a meaningless welter it all is! What a record of wars and feuds, of rising and of perishing empires, of civilisations born and civilisations overwhelmed: in very truth 'A tale Told by an idiot: full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.'