Adela Cathcart, vol 1 | Page 9

I forgot my own thoughts
in listening to the Holy Book. For is not the voice of every loving spirit
a fresh inspiration to the dead letter? With a voice other than this, does
it not kill? And I thought I had heard the voice before, but where I sat I
could not see the Communion Table.--At length the preacher ascended
the pulpit stairs, and, to my delight and the rousing of an altogether
unwonted expectation, who should it be but my fellow-traveller of last
night!

He had a look of having something to say; and I immediately felt that I
had something to hear. Having read his text, which I forget, the
broad-browed man began with something like this:
"It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His.
And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are
His--the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of
our unhappiness--even 'the winter of our discontent.'"
I stole a glance at Adela. Her large eyes were fixed on the preacher.
"Winter," he went on, "does not belong to death, although the outside
of it looks like death. Beneath the snow, the grass is growing. Below
the frost, the roots are warm and alive. Winter is only a spring too weak
and feeble for us to see that it is living. The cold does for all things
what the gardener has sometimes to do for valuable trees: he must half
kill them before they will bear any fruit. Winter is in truth the small
beginnings of the spring."
I glanced at Adela again; and still her eyes were fastened on the
speaker.
"The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year
came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all
descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need: My
son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a
child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old
and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful;
you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you
must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak, and
foolish; you must become a child--my child, like the baby there, that
strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother's arms in
the stable.
"But one may say to me: 'You are talking in a dream. The Son of God
is a child no longer. He is the King of Heaven.' True, my friends. But
He who is the Unchangeable, could never become anything that He was
not always, for that would be to change. He is as much a child now as

ever he was. When he became a child, it was only to show us by itself,
that we might understand it better, what he was always in his deepest
nature. And when he was a child, he was not less the King of Heaven;
for it is in virtue of his childhood, of his sonship, that he is Lord of
Heaven and of Earth--'for of such'--namely, of children--'is the
kingdom of heaven.' And, therefore, when we think of the baby now, it
is still of the Son of man, of the King of men, that we think. And all the
feelings that the thought of that babe can wake in us, are as true now as
they were on that first Christmas day, when Mary covered from the
cold his little naked feet, ere long to be washed with the tears of
repentant women, and nailed by the hands of thoughtless men, who
knew not what they did, to the cross of fainting, and desolation, and
death."
Adela was hiding her face now.
"So, my friends, let us be children this Christmas. Of course, when I
say to anyone, 'You must be like a child,' I mean a good child. A
naughty child is not a child as long as his naughtiness lasts. He is not
what God meant when He said, 'I will make a child.' Think of the best
child you know--the one who has filled you with most admiration. It is
his child-likeness that has so delighted you. It is because he is so true to
the child-nature that you admire him. Jesus is like that child. You must
be like that child. But you cannot help knowing some faults in
him--some things that are like ill-grown men and women. Jesus is not
like him, there. Think of the best child you can imagine; nay, think of a
better than you can imagine--of the one that God thinks of when he