1026 THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, than they do with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This season of the year is more given up hy the great hulk of peo ple in professedly Christian lands to over-indulgence of the flesh, and to the squandering of money for self-indulgence and giving useless gifts to people that do not need them, than it is to the worship and praise of our Lord Jesus and the doing of the things that the Lord Jesus would have us dpi Christmas should stand for the wonderful truth of the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, historically manifested in the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea. In the Babe of Bethlehem, born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Ghost, “ the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as the only begotten from the Father) full"of grace and truth.” The Christmas season should be a season o f great gladness, but it should also be a season of love and sacrifice, not love^merely for those who are bound to us by ties of kindred or of friend ship, but love for the unworthy, for the outcast, for the poor, and for our enemies. When fhe Lord Jesus was born God was manifesting His love to a hostile world, He so loved this world that had rebelled against Him that He gavé His own Son to become a man that He might die for those who had rebelled against Him and thus save them. Christmas time is not a time for bitterness and hate, it is a time for love and forgiveness, and for the sacrifice of self for the sake of others. It is not a time when we should be thinking what we can get from others, but what we can give to others, and sacrifice for others, and for our enemies as well as our loved ones. What we should long for and aim to bring about is not a “ Merry Christmas” but a blessed Christmas, by following in the footsteps of Him whose birth we celebrate on this day. While ,the day of His birth, of His first Coming should^ be a glad day, the day of His Coming Again will be a far gladder day. T h a n k s g i v i n g d a y Though this is the December number of The King’s Business it will get into the hands o f most of our readers early in November. Though the Presi dent has not yet made his proclamation, nor the Governors of the States, we take it for granted that Thanksgiving Day will be, as usual, the last Thurs day in November, that is to say, November 28th. Never did this country have greater reason for holding a Thanksgiving Day than this year. God has done wonderful things for us as a nation. He has given to us a marvelous illustration of His readiness to answer prayer. In the darkest days of the Civil War President Lincoln appointed a day of fasting and prayer, and from that very day the tide of war turned, and so this year President Wilson, in cordial response to the resolutions passed by both the United States Senate and the United States Congress, appointed a day of fasting and prayer for Decoration Day, May 30th. This day was yery widely observed, far more widely and earnestly we must admit than we thought it would be, and God heard the prayers that went up on that day, heard them in a way that has made the whole world wonder. The tide of ba,ttle completely turned, and the Germans and their allies* instead of being constantly victorious, from that time on have been constantly and now overwhelmingly defeated. Many are already forgetting our extremity and
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