“Now you see that He took no thought for the morrow.  And, in the name of the holy child Jesus, I call upon you, this Christmas day, to cast care to the winds, and trust in God; to receive the message of peace and good-will to men; to yield yourselves to the Spirit of God, that you may be taught what He wants you to know; to remember that the one gift promised without reserve to those who ask it—­the one gift worth having—­the gift which makes all other gifts a thousand-fold in value, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the child Jesus, who will take of the things of Jesus, and show them to you—­make you understand them, that is—­so that you shall see them to be true, and love Him with all your heart and soul, and your neighbour as yourselves.”

And here, having finished my sermon, I will give my reader some lines with which he may not be acquainted, from a writer of the Elizabethan time.  I had meant to introduce them into my sermon, but I was so carried away with my subject that I forgot them.  For I always preached extempore, which phrase I beg my reader will not misinterpret as meaning on the Spur of the moment, of without the due preparation of much thought.

   “O man! thou image of thy Maker’s good,
    What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood
    His Spirit is that built thee?  What dull sense
    Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence
    Who made the morning, and who placed the light
    Guide to thy labours; who called up the night,
    And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers,
    In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers;
    Who gave thee knowledge; who so trusted thee
    To let thee grow so near Himself, the Tree? 
    Must He then be distrusted?  Shall His frame
    Discourse with Him why thus and thus I am? 
    He made the Angels thine, thy fellows all;
    Nay even thy servants, when devotions call. 
    Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,
    To seek a saving* influence, and lose Him? 
    Can stars protect thee?  Or can poverty,
    Which is the light to heaven, put out His eye! 
    He is my star; in Him all truth I find,
    All influence, all fate.  And when my mind
    Is furnished with His fulness, my poor story
    Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory. 
    The hand of danger cannot fall amiss,
    When I know what, and in whose power, it is,
    Nor want, the curse of man, shall make me groan: 
    A holy hermit is a mind alone.

* * * *

    Affliction, when I know it, is but this,
    A deep alloy whereby man tougher is
    To bear the hammer; and the deeper still,
    We still arise more image of His will;
    Sickness, an humorous cloud ’twixt us and light;
    And death, at longest, but another night.”