THE ETERNAL CHRISTMAS
Holmes, John Haynes
The Eternal Christmas By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES JESUS of Nazareth was born not, as one would suppose, in the first year of the Christian era, but in the years 4-6 B.C. No one knows the exact date,...
...his given names Mohandas Karamchand...
...THE decade of the fifties in 19th Century India was dark with horror and despair...
...It is all a terrible and most painful story...
...Oh, cease...
...The country had long been subdued to British rule, which was a rod of iron...
...As late as his 25th year, he was an utterly conventional citizen of his unhappy country...
...Civil wars in Italy had led to the dictatorship of Augustus, which in turn had led to the tremendous era of the Empire, when Rome ruled the world...
...the forces of Pompey had followed triumphantly the trail of Alexander...
...Again this day the angels sing—"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men...
...This is what Christmas brings to our minds each year...
...This spirit, in its earthly manifestation, may be as feeble as a little child, but in its essence it is as potent as the stars...
...In receiving the surrender of Japan, an occasion of unparalleled military triumph, Gen...
...Mankind was enslaved forever—hope gone, and the very aim of life destroyed...
...The hot flame of freedom was extinguished in a veritable torrent of blood and tears...
...must men kill and die...
...Again today, as so many times before in the course of empire, arms have done their best—and worst...
...His father's name was Gandhi...
...In doing so, they spread terror everywhere...
...They rise only to decline and fall...
...Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, A humble and a contrite heart...
...It must be of the spirit, if we are to save the flesh...
...The cities of Palestine were garrison-posts for Roman legions, and on every highway marched the iron-shod soldiery of the occupation army...
...Douglas MaeArthur, speaking from the deck of the U. S. S. Missouri, to the ears of a listening world, uttered these unforgettable words: "We have had our last chance...
...Be of good cheer...
...In Palestine, the days of the Maccabees were long sinci...
...Roman arms, everywhere victorious, were everywhere supreme...
...No one knows the exact date, even within a-period of months, b'it it was some time before the death of Herod the King in 4 B.C...
...The atomic bomb, the logical completion of the long process of war as the art of self-destruction, seems at last to pronounce extinction upon, mankind...
...So terrific is the power of arms that now enmeshes and enslaves the world, that there seems nowhere any loophole for escape...
...it was a general popular rebellion . . . against the British...
...The British Governor-General, a titled official, became the Viceroy, an official clothed with absolute power...
...It was a time of terror, torture, and tyranny...
...And all in vain...
...gone, and the independence of the nation lost...
...MaeArthur really meant by this phrase is not so much "theological" as religious, or spiritual...
...No remotest village, no humblest home, was free from the watchfulness of alien guards...
...In place of the East India Company, the British Government now took complete charge of the country...
...The problem basically is theological, and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character...
...Lift up your heads and hearts...
...Hence the prophecy, "A little child shall lead them...
...CERTAIN it is that there is no other hope for mankind today, as there is no other way of life...
...It is a curious commentary on our times that it was left to a great soldier, a victorious conqueror, to discover and voice this truth...
...Cease...
...What had been a native autocracy now became an alien tyranny...
...How vain today seem3 Caesar in the shadow of the Bethlehem manger...
...Never, in all the long range of history, have force and violence been so dominant in the world as in this present age...
...This message is plain...
...This was "not merely a military revolt," writes Jawaharlal Nehru, in his Glimpses of World History...
...When and where had been such a vindication of the sword ? And on a day in Nazareth, in one of the meanest villages in one of the smallest countries of the world, a child was born who lived obscurely and died shamefully, and yet subdued the world to his own spirit...
...It is "the spirit" that alone can "save the flesh...
...The Moghal dynasty," writes Nehru, "was no more...
...The world is weary of the past, O, might it die or rest at last...
...This "crushing of the Revolt" was complete...
...The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her Winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream...
...In 1857-1858 had come the great Revolt, which, after incredible heroism on the part of the Indian people, had been put down by the sheer brute-power of British arms...
...EVEN at the moment of their uttermost vainglory, a little child is somewhere born to prophesy their doom and to conspire their overthrow...
...Nor by another war, or any use of arms, can we ever get anything else...
...large numbers were shot to pieces from the mouth of canon ; thousands were hanged from the wayside trees...
...IV...
...They move with pomp, power, and pride, and attract all the attention of the men of their time, as they still do, to so great an extent, of historians...
...Few knew of him outside the family circle...
...And on a day in 1869, fust 10 years after the stamping out of the Revolt, when the bleak shadows of servitude still hung impenetrable over all the land, there was born in India a little child...
...The sword conquered for a while, but the spirit conquers forever...
...How certain the passing of the British Empire before the inexorable patience of Gandhi's non-violent resistance to the Raj...
...I doubt if any country ever faced a blacker moment in its history than India in this hour of the total collapse of her courageous but completely unsuccessful struggle for liberty...
...The spirit of love and peace asserting its dominion over the direst work of discord and destruction...
...We have won nothing from this war but destruction, death—and the atomic bomb...
...Revolt was ruthlessly crushed, with crosses lifting high on every public road the writhing bodies of Jewish patriots...
...This was a moment of greatness and power for militaristic'Rome...
...This is the age-old proclamation of the Christmas-tide...
...The empires make all the noise—their clash of arms on the field of battle is terrific...
...They triumph only to crash at last in inglorious defeat...
...But their hour is brief...
...But at this very moment, in some obscure village, in some unknown home, there may be born some child gifted with that alchemy of the spirit which may change the whole character of our works and days...
...III...
...Never has empire ruled so ruthlessly over human affairs, or doomed such myriads of men to helpless and hopeless subjection...
...God may be preparing to reveal himself anew in some inspired soul destined, before it is too late, to possess this failing1 world as Christ possessed Rome and Gandhi is possessing India...
...Vast numbers were shot down in cold blood...
...As in ancient Israel, the spirit was once again to match the sword, and the spirit to conquer forever...
...Over the entire nation there settled down the darkness of despair...
...The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart...
...Greek civilization was dead, Jewish prophecy dumb...
...The Eternal Christmas is the eternal spirit of truth and love that lives on from age to age within the heart of man, and appears and reappears when least expected...
...Even today, if you go to many of the villages in our province, you will find that the people have still got a vivid and ghastly memory of the horrors that befell them during the crushing of the Revolt...
...drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy...
...Behold," writes Sholem Asch, in his great work, The Apostle, "Rome went forth against Jerusalem with the sword, and Jerusalem went forth against Rome with the spirit...
...The soul of man that can alone preserve civilization and deliver the human race from extinction...
...But in the heart of this man were the seeds of a revolt which was infinitely more significant than the historic Revolt of 1857, and was destined to stir the souls of Indians to a struggle for independence which would not end until it had been won...
...The assurance of the spirit as the secret of man's enduring life and ultimately triumphant faith...
...Prosperous villages were rooted out and destroyed...
...The armies of Caesar had fought their way to the English Channel...
...The Republic had conquered and subjected the Mediterranean area all the way from Spain to the Near East...
...must hate and death return...
...If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system (than that of arms), Armageddon will be at our door...
...And the freedom of India seemed permanently lost...
...This is Christmas come again each year...
...Cease...
...For "the problem basically is theological...
...Then he goes on: "The British crushed the Revolt...
...II...
...What Gen...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 51
