In many respects the world has been growing younger ever since the Christian era.  A new spirit came into it then which makes youth perpetual, a spirit of living in others, which got the name of universal brotherhood, a spirit that has had a good many discouragements and set-backs, but which, on the whole, gains ground, and generally works in harmony with the scientific spirit, breaking down the exclusive character of the conquests of nature.  What used to be the mystery and occultism of the few is now general knowledge, so that all the playing at occultism by conceited people now seems jejune and foolish.  A little machine called the instantaneous photograph takes pictures as quickly and accurately as the human eye does, and besides makes them permanent.  Instead of fooling credulous multitudes with responses from Delphi, we have a Congress which can enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough to satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation.  Instead of loafing round Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk words into a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to the remotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we said those words in jest or earnest.  All these mysteries made common and diffused certainly increase the feeling of the equality of opportunity in the world.  And day by day such wonderful things are discovered and scattered abroad that we are warranted in believing that we are only on the threshold of turning to account the hidden forces of nature.  There would be great danger of human presumption and conceit in this progress if the conceit were not so widely diffused, and where we are all conceited there is no one to whom it will appear unpleasant.  If there was only one person who knew about the telephone he would be unbearable.  Probably the Eiffel Tower would be stricken down as a monumental presumption, like that of Babel, if it had not been raised with the full knowledge and consent of all the world.

This new spirit, with its multiform manifestations, which came into the world nearly nineteen hundred years ago, is sometimes called the spirit of Christmas.  And good reasons can be given for supposing that it is.  At any rate, those nations that have the most of it are the most prosperous, and those people who have the most of it are the most agreeable to associate with.  Know all men by these Presents, is an old legal form which has come to have a new meaning in this dispensation.  It is by the spirit of brotherhood exhibited in giving presents that we know the Christmas proper, only we are apt to take it in too narrow a way.  The real spirit of Christmas is the general diffusion of helpfulness and good-will.  If somebody were to discover an elixir which would make every one truthful, he would not, in this age of the world, patent it.  Indeed, the Patent Office would not let him make a corner on virtue as he does in wheat; and it is not respectable any more among