Life — December 26, 1889 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHRISTMAS SERMON. OME up here out of the muck and the rush of a mad world, dearly beloved, and let us try to get some tinge of a real Christmas in our hearts! We must get it where we can. Perhaps we ought all to be able to get it in church, but you know and we know that, fallen creatures as we are, the best feelings we have in church are too apt to be feelings that we carried there with us. Have we any dispositions that are fit to take to church with us on Christ- mas Day, or (if we don’t go, as a good many of us won't) that are fit for us to stay at home with and be happy? Oh, men and brethren, the world is a hard world if we let it be so! It is push, struggle, and grasp after things ma- terial, which only please us for a little while after we have got them; it is strife with our fellows, and a great straining of our resources to beat them and get more than they; or it may be abandonment of all things that are hardly come by and relapse into effortless degeneracy. It isn’t much of a world unless we are able to ring in some sort of enchant- ment upon it that will glorify it for us and make the things material, the ambitions and strifes shrink out of the front of the picture into the background where they belong. Only one thing that Lire knows of can glorify the world and make us worldlings very much pleased with it, N | and that, of course, is Love. If we can love our neighbor the world is bound to be interesting to us, and if not it is a dull hole and we might as well go and be colonels in Kentucky and see what fun can be had with shotguns, backed by hate. Don't doubt, don’t forget it. If you love no one, you are a wretched failure, a poor old machine, the parts of which are wearing out without anything to show for their activity. If you love your friends there is hope for you; you must be getting some comfort out of life. If you love your neigh- bor, that is the fulfillment of the law. Great is duty, and it pays to do it, for that makes life sweet. But if you love your enemies, that, brethren, is the fulfillment of the Gospel. If you can do that the true Christmas spirit must be in you. Let it out, comrade, let it out; it is rare in the world. Not every one knows that it exists, but you, who have felt it, know that it is the golden key to life. And so, A Merry Christmas to all the world, and to all Lire's friends in particular! Be kind to everybody, dears, including yourselves, and make it your business to have some fun, even if you have to put in a full day's work to get it, Here's a bumper to the whole host of you, and may the true Christmas spirit live in your hearts! comicbooks.com