To confuse the traditional observance of
this day with the horrors and agonies of war, its mixed motives
and its dubious issues, was indeed a triumph of ineptitude.
[Footnote *: January 6th, 1918.]
Tennyson wrote of
"this northern island,
Sundered once from all the human race";
and when Christians first began to observe the Epiphany, or Theophany
(as the feast was indifferently called), our own forefathers were
among the heathen on whom the light of the Holy Manger was before
long to shine. It has shone on us now for a good many centuries;
England has ranked as one of the chiefest of Christian nations,
and has always professed, and often felt, a charitable concern
for the races which are still lying in darkness. Epiphany is very
specially the feast of a missionary Church, and the strongest appeal
which it could address to Heathendom would be to cry, "See what
Christianity has done for the world! Christendom possesses the
one religion. Come in and share its blessings."
There have been times and places at which that appeal could be
successfully made. Indeed, as Gibbon owned, it was one of the causes
to which the gradual triumph of Christianity was due.
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