Victory out of Ruin

by Norman Maclean

CHAPTER XI

THERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS

'He would denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made me blush to look at a hollyberry.'—EDMUND GOSSE'S Father and Son.

The world is moving so fast that, before each nightfall, yesterday is forgotten. Sitting here before the fire I have been stirring up my memory, and, out of the subconscious, queer recollections have emerged. I can see now the grim-faced Highland minister demonstrating in the month of December to his perfect satisfaction that the Founder of Christianity was born in midsummer, and that Christmas was but a pagan festival sprinkled over with holy water so-called. I think it was the first time I heard of Christmas. That good man denounced the horrors of Christmas with such zest that I, too, would have blushed to look at a hollyberry—only no holly grew in that part of the Isle. And that was so not because the Isle was remote and the folk spoke there an ancient and little-known language that segregated them from the great life of the world. It was the same in great centres very conscious of their own culture. It was really only yesterday that Walter Smith was dealt with by his presbytery for holding the first Christmas service in his church in Edinburgh. But we have travelled far since that particular yesterday, and I am glad that the children of to-day will never need to blush before a hollyberry. For from the Solway to the Pentland Firth the church bells everywhere to-day summon the people to keep holy day and go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

I

There was never a time when the people of this land needed more to go on such a pilgrimage. There are ample signs that Mammon has captured the hearts of this generation. The day is gone on which Ruskin declared that there is no wealth but life. We have outlived that. A full bank account and an empty house—that is our modern wealth. The rich flaunt their riches in a world seething with discontent. And the aforetime quiescent masses now demand that Mammon should smile on them. Society may perish, but they must have their full share in the largesse of Mammon. On the altar of that god duty and patriotism are laid as the meet offering. 'Great is Mammon,' is the burden of the praise of our day. And what a god before whom to bow the knee!

It is only when I go on pilgrimage to-day to the grotto in the rock in which the asses were stabled in Bethlehem and to the stall where the Child is laid that I can realise the vulgarity and the meanness of Mammon. Out of that manger there issued a power compared to which all other influences that moulded men are as the rushlight to the sun; in that stable lies the fountain out of which sprang the river that has borne on its bosom for nineteen centuries all of beauty and of truth and of love wherewith humanity has been blessed; and yet all that came out of the direst poverty. Mammon had no smile for the greatest and most radiant thing in all the world's history. Money secures at least food and shelter, and it was because they had none that the innkeeper shut them out. If they could have showed him a purse full of gold pieces, he would soon have made room. And all the life of this Jesus was woven after that pattern. The cheapest food sold then were sparrows. It was because He was often sent to buy them that He knew that two of them were sold in the market place for a farthing. The patched garment is the symbol of poverty—or used to be! And He knew all about garments being patched and patched until they were past mending. At the eventide when the boy James brought a coat to be mended He heard His mother say with a weary sigh: 'I have mended this again and again: nobody can keep boys in decent clothes; so different from girls; a new patch will just tear a bigger hole in the old.' Often He saw His mother cast a half-farthing into the treasury, for she had nought else. The tax-gatherer comes, and there isn't a coin to pay. Jesus gave much, but He never gave any money, for He had none to give. He was homeless for three years, deemed mad by His family, with no place where to lay His head. A grave given in charity receives Him at the last. The place of Jesus from the manger to the grave is among the poorest of the poor. He belonged to the great class of the disinherited. If the greatest thing on earth sprang from poverty such as this, then surely Christmas pours the contempt of heaven upon Mammon.

II

We have only to look at him with eyes cleansed by gazing at the Child in the manger and we realise how tawdry a god this Mammon is. What can he do for us? Nothing of any worth. He has never minted a coinage which can buy the inspiration of a noble thought, which can purchase love for the starved heart, or can endow a man with the vision and the faculty divine. One has but to consider a moment and he will realise the poverty-stricken condition of Mammon's devotees. They can command speed on earth or in the air; they can fly a hundred miles an hour; but what is the good when at the end of the hundred miles they are as at the beginning—sated, restless, and dissatisfied? They can command no speed by which they can escape from themselves. And it is vain to wing a flight upwards through the air if heaven be empty overhead; vain to alight five hundred miles away if on earth there be no temple, no holy day, no shrine at which to worship. 'You own the land,' said the poor painter to the new-rich who boasted his land: 'you own the land but I own the landscape.' The great gift is to own the landscape. And no money ever bought that. The only thing Mammon can do is to secure food, shelter, and clothes. It can also secure freedom from work—but that is a freedom shared with the tramp. Life is greater far than livelihood; and the worshippers of Mammon lose the very essence and the end of life in a vain pursuit of the means of living.

That is the witness raised by Christmas as it calls the nations to realise the true greatness of man. To a generation that has made life a hectic rush after money and pleasure, Christmas testifies that to estimate any man by the money he owns is to blaspheme against the Child laid in the manger. The wealth of Croesus makes him but the prey of the conqueror, and the dust of centuries has buried the pomp and glory of emperors. But this Child, cradled in poverty, reigns from generation to generation. The voice of an Alexander or a Napoleon would to-day cause no heart to beat quicker; but millions would die for Him. And that because He alone revealed to men the things that are unpurchasable, the riches that are unseen. He alone made men realise that a man's life consisteth not in the things that he possesseth, but rather in the thoughts that he thinks, in the motives that sway his action; in the ideals towards which he presses; in the God whom he worships and makes his own. How great a revolution He made. That one hour in the manger has changed the world. Every time I sit down to write a letter and head it 1922 I bear witness to the truth—that the world I know began when a Child laid in the manger brought to earth the realisation that all the great and noble things in life can be mine—though my raiment be shabby and though my banker never thinks it worth his while to throw me even a word when I reluctantly pass in through his swing door. What a wonderful new wine He brought, and how generously does He pour it into our bottles. Still new—after nineteen centuries! Still bursting the old bottles on all sides! I can be quite patient. There is no need for passionately tearing them in pieces. Nineteen centuries! What are they in the arithmetic of eternity! Give the Child time—and all the bottles of Mammon and vulgarity will at last be burst.