But let us come back to earth—­to Bethlehem—­on that first Christmas eve and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing over the star-lit fields.  How near heaven seems!  How real is God!  How joyful is this season of peace to men of good will!  The message is of peace, but that peace will need to have its nature explained in the coming years if men’s hearts are not to fail them and their faith wither away.  It is not a general peace to the world that is being proclaimed.  Later on our Lord will say:  “My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”  It is such a gift as can be enjoyed only by men of good will; converted men, that is to say, men whose will is close set with the will of God.  For how should there be peace in any world on any other terms?  How can there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God?  Our Lord can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is bringing a new potency into human life.  He is a new way of approach to God, a new way into the Holiest of all.  Through His humanity God is united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God.  And one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord calls it His peace.

This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us.  This is the method of God’s work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to its external result.  We do not begin by finding peace with this world:  “in the world ye shall have tribulation.”  And most of the failure to attain peace, and much of men’s loss of faith is due to repudiation of the divine method.  We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet.  We constantly demand of religion that it should effect this for us.  So far as one can see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world.  Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice, and they turn upon the Church and ask, “Why have you not changed all this?  Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it?  Or if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your impotence.  Your self-confessed business is to make a better world.”

True; but only on the conditions which love imposes.  Religion does not propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the principles of worldliness.  It does not propose to turn stones into bread at the demand of any devils whatsoever.  It does not say, “If you will support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your efforts and increase the success of your undertakings.”  Religion proposes to improve the world on the condition