Even to this day the sight of a treeless grave arouses some
obscure instinct in us that it is God-forsaken.
Yes, he said, whatsoever modern temple man has anywhere reared for his
spirit, over the walls of it have been found growing the same leaf and
tendril: he has introduced the tree into the ritual of every later
world-worship; and thus he has introduced the evergreen into the
ritual of Christianity.
This then is the meaning of the Christmas Tree and of its presence at
the Nativity. At the dawn of history we behold man worshipping the
tree as the Creator literally present on the earth; in our time we see
him using that tree in the worship of the creative Father's Son come
to earth in the Father's stead.
"On this evergreen in the room falls the radiance of these brief
tapers of the night; but on it rests also the long light of that
spiritual dawn when man began his Adoration of the Trees. It is the
forest taking its place once more beside the long-lost Immortal."
Here he finished the first part of his story. That he should address
her thus and that she thus should listen had in it nothing unusual for
them. For years it had been his wont to traverse with her the ground
of his lectures, and she shared his thought before it reached
others.
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