Newspapers / North Carolina Christian Advocate … / Dec. 21, 1911, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page Two RALEIGH CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. Thursday, December 21, 191i. EDITORIAL N THi: r.lllTH OF CHRIST. O EVENT in the Christian calendar is more universally celebrated than the birth of our Lord. It is a time of joy and glad ness for many whose lives are otherwise dreary and desolate enough. It is an occasion tor the giving and receiving of tokens of re membrance and esteem, and the heart thrills with a sense of gladness that belongs to no other time. The cares and anxieties of business life are laid aside for the moment, and the millions of toilers in the various fields of labor slip the leash lor the nonce, while the taxed muscles relax and the heart beat pulses more strongly in response to the call of the day. Friends meet together and exchange cheery greetings, while memory charms back from the fleeting past the victories and the triumphs that the months have witnessed ,ince the last yule-tide. Men who have lived al most as strangers on the same street ot the thronging city, engrossed in the fierce pursuit of business achievements, pause long enough on this glad day to renew their comradeship, and cement anew the ties that were nearly broken un der the strain of the year. Families that hae scattered far, it may be, from the old roof-tree gather again about the old fire-side and recall the days when they played and romped through hall and yard, and over the hills and dales of the old estate. Tired nature unbends and, lifting its face upward, takes a rest from the weary load which it has been carrying through the year. It is the most joyous day the old year witnesses. We somehow feel this to be true, but did you ever stop to inquire why it should be true? Why has this joyous spirit gathered about the birth dav of Christ? He is not pictured to us in the gospel records as a joyous man. He headed no coterie of pleasure-seekers. He was never the animating spirit of the gay and festive throng. He never put His hand upon the head of a care worn toiler and bade him stop work to have a good time. It is true that His presence was noted a few times on festive occasions, but His part in them was never pronouncedly of the gay type. On the contrary, He is distinctly pictured as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Wher ever there was sorrow and suffering His presence seemed to be more imperatively needed and most often found. He carried the burdens of the whole world upon His own shoulders, and sought to assuage the great grief at its heart. His life among men was pre-eminently one of self-denial, and His lot would be regarded as an exceedingly hard one by the world. He had but few friends, and by them He was often misunderstood a fact which must have brought Him some of His keen est anguish of spirit. At the last He trod the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with Him. Not only disowned and reject ed, but also despised and bitterly persecuted, He went to His death under the darkness of the world's disfavor and bearing the opprobrium of the world's condemnation. Yet it is this man's birth that the world to-day celebrates with such universal gladness. And the joyousness of this celebration is what we should expect. The effect of His life upon that of the world has been altogether beneficent. At no point has He touched human life but that men have been better for that touch. If He bore the world's burden, it was that the burdens of every man since should be lightened. If He took the grief of men to His own heart, it was that the thrilling inspiration of a new joy might impel men forward to worthier achievements through all the years that are to come. If He suffered the scorn and rejection of men, it was that by patient endurance and persistent fidel ity to truth He might reveal to them the true nobility of character. If He bowed His head to the furious storm that broke upon Him at the last and went down into what seemed like a sor rowful and hopeless death, it was only that men over whom hung the condemnation of eternal death might be redeemed from the penalty of their own evil deeds and made heirs to the glory which He had won despite the stress and the storm of His sufferings. So that in all of His life, we see through the shadowed valley to the sunlit hills beyond; and to-day the world has come to know that the whole life of the Man of Galilee was sur charged with its highest hopes and with the rich est blessings to which men can look forward. But ihere is one fact that detracts still from the joy of this great day in our annals. Men will so often give themselves over to the baser pleas ures of sense, to the unbridled indulgence of per verted appetites, and to the dissipation of that which is highest and best in human life, in the vulgar name of pleasure on this day. In mem ory of His coming to men, they do those things that are so contrary to His Spirit and that bring such defeat to His high and glorious purpose! When will the world learn the real spirit and na ture of the Christmas joy? AX UNUSUAL ANNOUNCEMENT. TP T5 XT' trnintr tn crivo tn niir rpaflPt'S. he- Ai I ginning with the issue of January 4th, and ffl continuing through the year, A Journey mm" Through Palestine under the guidance of Kev. Jesse Lyman Hurllmt, ).!. Millions of peo ple have longed to see, and to have their fam ilies see, the most important places in far-off Bible lands. But to these millions it has always seemed that such longings could never be satis lied, because there was no way of having these experiences except at the great expense of actual bodily travel. To-day, however, the Underwood Travel System has been perfected, by the use of which people may gain, as educational authorities declare, real experiences of being in and seeing these distant places even though we remain at home. And lest anyone should say at this point that apart from bodily travel it is impossible to get anything but make-believe experiences of seeing distant places, it will be well to call to mind the telephone and the experiences it makes possible. In fact, this Travel System is analogous to the telephone, and it has been declared to be as important in its field as is the telephone in its field. The tele phone gives us direct access to distant people through the sense of hearing. The telephone is an instrument which reproduces near our ear, sound waves so similar to those being produced by a distant person that we not only understand the words spoken, but also we feel we are in the pres ence, not of a machine, but of the person himself. Likewise this Travel System is a means of re producing near our eye light wave so similar to the light waves reflected by a distant place, that we not only see with wonderful accuracy how the place looks but also actually feel, not that we are looking at a representation merely, but. at the place itself. The features of this system through which this truly remarkable result can be accomplished are, as are those of the telephone, apparently simple. There are three features: (a) The stereograph and the stereoscope, (b) a unique system of patented locating maps, and (c) authoritative guide books. (a) The Stereograph, "the most remarkable material product of human skill," is fundamen tally different from the ordinary photograph in being made on the principle of two-eye vision. That is, the ordinary photograph is made by a camera with a single lens, like a person with one eye, while the stereograph is made by a camera having two lenses set about as far apart as our two eyes. A STEREOSCOPIC CAMERA This stereoscopic camera gives two slightly different photographs, and when mounted side by side on a card, they are looked at in the stereo scope, the result is: First, that we get perfect space for our minds as contrasted with the ap pearance of space in an ordinary picture. Objects stand out in all three dimensions as solids in na ture. Second, we see objects or places life-size, that is, in natural size and at a natural dis tance; the two small photographic prints, a few inches from the eye, serve as windows through which to look. (b) The Patent Map System. By the use of this map system a person is able to know at once just what part of a country or city he is looking at through the stereoscope, and the direction in which he is looking, as well as to know his sur roundings. For instance, the map given here with shows Jerusalem and the old Temple grounds as they exist to-day. Each figure in a circle is connected with the point of a great V and indicates that in a stereograph similarly number ed one stands at the point of the V and looks over the territory included between the two lines of the V. ic) The Authoritative Guide Hook. In these books authorities on each country serve as guides, giving the most definite and interesting informa tion about each place seen. As most of us would make entirely too much 5 sent j tT i-j.i ?; Vv. tSrt&V."- v?V MpaM-pJ oimj ouimn . "r ,....., .,.-: . K ,(Vc..s,is4 Slap Pftlent No. 6i6,itiS ly Uh Jcrwood i Vudel " i .JERUSALEM of the presence or absence of the material place or object and thus suppose that any experience to be gained by the use of such system cannot be a real experience of the place or object in any true sense, it is well that the matter has been submitted to many psychologists, philosophers and educators, with the result that those whose names are given below have united in signing the following striking statement: "If a stereoscope photograph of a place is used with certain accessories (as special maps which
North Carolina Christian Advocate (Greensboro, N.C.)
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Dec. 21, 1911, edition 1
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