The Forerunner Part 165

When the Writer or the Preacher or one who chances to be both considers a Christmas sermon, a Christmas story, what is the idea that comes uppermost?

Love, of course. Not s.e.x-love: that's for every day. Not Mother-love: that's always and always. Not any of the minor brands of admiring devotion, grat.i.tude, sympathy, friends.h.i.+p, attraction of any sort. No.

When we say "Love" at Christmas time we mean Love, the Spirit of Life.

About once a year we give thought to it. About once a year we seek to express it; and, pitiful and limited though that expression be, its forms are right.

These main forms of Christmas expressions are two-fold: the Spirit of Joy, of Celebration, of High Festival--the highest of all; and the Spirit of Giving. These are found wherever Christmas is kept, and make it, as it should be, the glory of the year. In joy and in giving we are most absolutely in line with the mainspring of the Universe: unmeasured happiness--happiness that cannot be quenched--cannot be kept to ourselves. What must run over and pour forth on other people: that is real Love, Christmas Love--and that, of course, finds physical expression in gay festivities and showering gifts.

Light, color, music--all that is sweet and gay and comforting; games, dances and performances that show the happy heart; and always the overflow--giving, giving, giving. That is the Spirit of Life.

It is the children's festival because children are more in line with the Life Spirit than weazened old folk: the child has the pa.s.sionate thirst for joy which marks his high parentage.

Whatever else is true about the Central Power of the Universe, this is true: it _is_ power. And it pours forth in Radiant Energy. All "inanimate nature," so called, expresses this Power, each form after its kind; and all animate nature, crowned with consciousness, not only expresses it, but _feels_ it,--which is called "Living."

We human beings are the highest, finest, subtlest instrument on this planet to receive and to transmit these waves of pouring Power. When we feel it most we call it Happiness. In two ways it reaches our consciousness, as it comes in and as it goes out, via the sensory and motor nerves. The joy of receiving power is great: "stimulus" we call it. It comes to us along the avenues of sense and thrills us with increased well being. But this kind of pleasure is sadly limited by those sense nerves of ours. We are but a little tea-cup: we cannot hold much. The Music of the Spheres might pour round us; the light of a thousand suns, the sweetness of piled banks of flowers, and all honey and sugar and rich food: every sense can be fed to its little limit only--and there the Happiness stops.

We can only feel so much--coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Why _of course_ it is: any child even knows that.

True, a child, having a fresh, unsated sensorium, can receive with more vivid pleasure than an adult--for a while. But it is easily over-tired, easily over-fed with sensation, easily bored and weary with receiving.

Not with giving! Every child delights to let out the Power which is in him--in her; delights to make and delights to give. Therefore, to children is this their festival: the busy weeks of happiness in making gifts, the swelling, glowing pride of giving them!

It's all right as far as it goes, but why, when such a thing is such transcendent splendid blessedness, why only once a year? Why should this beautiful experience in which we not only remember the birth of the man who taught the world most of love but even try to practise what He preached--why should it be limited to a mere memorial of His birthday, plastered over the remnants of ancient festivals of the return of the Sun G.o.d--the Goodness of the Earth Mother?

If Christmas is good, why not more of it? Then we smile, wryly, and say, "Why, of course, we couldn't. The rest of life isn't like that--and we have to live, you see."

Ah, that is where we are wrong--utterly wrong. The rest of life _is_ like that. That is _life_--Loving and Giving.

"Tut! Tut!" says the Practical Man. "That's emotional nonsense. That's womanish." Two-thirds right, my practical friend. It is not nonsense, but it is "emotional" and it is "womanish."

Emotion is _consciousness under pressure._ When we feel Power, we call it emotion. Emotions vary: some are helpful and some hateful, according to the nature of the instrument; but not to be emotional at all is not to be alive. Those who spend their lives lit by a blaze of emotion, warmed by a deep, slow-burning fire of emotion, pouring forth that emotion in great works--we call Geniuses. Genius is simply more Power.

As to being womanish: that word is no longer a term of reproach or belittlement. To be womanish is to be human, and we may now turn round and pitifully dismiss much old world folly and pa.s.sion as merely "mannish." To be womanish--and practical--let us repeat, Life _is_ Loving and Giving. When we realize this, intelligently and completely, we shall have a "continuous performance" of Christmases and a higher level of happiness the year round, varied by greater heights. At present the natural flood of Life Force, pouring through us in unbounded creative energy, resulting in the myriad forms of human achievement and manufacture, is sadly thwarted in its output by lingering remains of our old period.

For a long time we lived by getting: to hunt, to catch, to kill, to eat was all we knew: no loving or giving there save as the mother fulfilled the law. But since our Humaness began, since all our thousand powers and talents grew for mutual service, since we learned to do things for each other--to make things for each other, to give things to each other--then grew in us that rising tide of Power which lives out in expression.

In spite of our old world perverseness, that Power pours on. Though we scorn the gifts of those who make the comforts of life for us, though we despise their service and so cruelly use them as to greatly thwart their love--still we are fed and housed and clothed and carried by the love and service of our kind, the daily, hourly gifts of those who work.

"They are not gifts," cries the Practical Man. "They are paid for--every bit of 'em." Yes, Brother. And how paid for? Paid how much? What scant reward, what meagre living, what miserable houses, what stinted food, what limited education, and what poisoned pleasures do we pay to those who make every necessity, comfort, convenience and luxury for us!

Pay indeed! If a man "saves your life" once, and you give him twenty cents an hour for his exertions in your behalf--have you paid him? By the life-long labor of the human race--all those dead workers who built up the structure of our present world, all those living workers who keep the wheels revolving now--by these labors we live, all of us, all the time.

Pay? Pay for daily--hourly--maintenance, protection, food, shelter, safety, comfort? Pay for being kept alive?

Life is giving--Loving and Giving. You can't pay for it. You don't pay for it. But this you do: you hinder it, by your paying. This pitiful trickle of measurement, this ticking and pricing and holding back the world's flood of outpouring energy by our wretched turnstiles--this is what keeps us poor!

We need to let loose the Power that is in us. We need to Love more and Give more--a plain truth, Jesus taught some centuries ago, largely in vain. We have but to let out the love that is in us: there is no limit to its flood.

To so love every child that is born on earth as to provide that child with all that it needs for richest growth, for full appreciation of the splendor of human life--of conscious citizens.h.i.+p! Children so reared will have a thousandfold more to give, and a thousandfold greater joy in giving. Then life will roll out through our glad hearts and willing hands as the sun's light pours abroad--only that we are conscious, we feel this light, this heat, this radiant energy. We call it--_love._

WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER XIV.

AND HEAVEN BESIDE.

They were married while the flowers were knee-deep over the sunny slopes and mesas, and the canyons gulfs of color and fragrance, and went for their first moon together to a far high mountain valley hidden among wooded peaks, with a clear lake for its central jewel.

A month of heaven; while wave on wave of perfect rest and world-forgetting oblivion rolled over both their hearts.

They swam together in the dawn-flushed lake, seeing the morning mists float up from the silver surface, breaking the still reflection of thick trees and rosy clouds, rejoicing in the level shafts of forest filtered sunlight. They played and ran like children, rejoiced over their picnic meals; lay flat among the crowding flowers and slept under the tender starlight.

"I don't see," said her lover, "but that my strenuous Amazon is just as much a woman as--as any woman!"

"Who ever said I wasn't?" quoth Diantha demurely.

A month of perfect happiness. It was so short it seemed but a moment; so long in its rich perfection that they both agreed if life brought no further joy this was Enough.

Then they came down from the mountains and began living.

Day service is not so easily arranged on a ranch some miles from town.

They tried it for a while, the new runabout car bringing out a girl in the morning early, and taking Diantha in to her office.

But motor cars are not infallible; and if it met with any accident there was delay at both ends, and more or less friction.

Then Diantha engaged a first-cla.s.s Oriental gentleman, well recommended by the "vegetable Chinaman," on their own place. This was extremely satisfactory; he did the work well, and was in all ways reliable; but there arose in the town a current of malicious criticism and protest--that she "did not live up to her principles."

To this she paid no attention; her work was now too well planted, too increasingly prosperous to be weakened by small sneers.

Her mother, growing plumper now, thriving continuously in her new lines of work, kept the hotel under her immediate management, and did bookkeeping for the whole concern. New Union Home ran itself, and articles were written about it in magazines; so that here and there in other cities similar clubs were started, with varying success. The restaurant was increasingly popular; Diantha's cooks were highly skilled and handsomely paid, and from the cheap lunch to the expensive banquet they gave satisfaction.

But the "c. f. d." was the darling of her heart, and it prospered exceedingly. "There is no advertis.e.m.e.nt like a pleased customer," and her pleased customers grew in numbers and in enthusiasm. Family after family learned to prize the cleanliness and quiet, the odorlessness and flylessness of a home without a kitchen, and their questioning guests were converted by the excellent of the meals.

Critical women learned at last that a competent cook can really produce better food than an incompetent one; albeit without the sanct.i.ty of the home.

"Sanct.i.ty of your bootstraps!" protested one irascible gentleman. "Such talk is all nonsense! I don't want _sacred_ meals--I want good ones--and I'm getting them, at last!"

"We don't brag about 'home brewing' any more," said another, "or 'home tailoring,' or 'home shoemaking.' Why all this talk about 'home cooking'?"

What pleased the men most was not only the good food, but its clock-work regularity; and not only the reduced bills but the increased health and happiness of their wives. Domestic bliss increased in Orchardina, and the doctors were more rigidly confined to the patronage of tourists.

Ross Warden did his best. Under the merciless friendliness of Mr.