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Hear, oh, hear the Christmas bells! Everywhere, everywhere they remind the world: Forget not the poor, nor let the hope of the needy fail.

The bells and I sing and are glad for Christmas, the day of all those who labour and keep the world alive. For them we sing and we shall not be still. The bells and I sing the workers of the world, on the Day of Him who was a boy in the carpenter's shop. This is the spirit of Christmas, that they whose lives are useful, whose deems . are good should receive the gift of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Should they stop their labour for a season, the world would starve. The stars would look down upon a world of silent cities, upon a devastated earth. Punctual as the bells the workers come and go. In winter's cold and summer's heat they hasten to the work of the world. Nothing halts them -- sickness, fatigue, grief nor death. The mills of the world turn hourly, daily. We can tell the minute of their coming and going to their tasks; day after day, month after month, year after year the procession of the workers passes our doors. Through thousands of years have they been faithful, and Christmas shall open our hearts and let us say that in their lives the whole world lives.

Listen! Between the swelling peals of the Christmas bells do you not hear the tramp of countless feet? Behold the workers have marched in the night toward the land of their hearts' desire. In the night of long ages they have heard the call of the Great Change and at length they have answered. Through darkness, through anguish and horror they have risen to the awful height of manhood. Century by century they have grown in power and intelligence. Forever and forever onward chime the bells! There has been no halting in the vast journey mankind has come. Nothing has been wasted, nothing has been lost. Every effort has counted. Every purpose, every pulse has fulfilled its task; incessantly men have moved onward to the dawn of the Great Change.

Can you not see the wonders which the Christmas bells herald? Do they not sing to you of world-systems evolving and dissolving, coming and going like leaves upon the trees, like the human generations? And again they shall evolve into the Great Change. As the notes of the bells rise, blend, and melt away, so have the life-songs of old civilizations swelled to the heavens, echo upon echo, and sunk into silence. Persia, Greece, and Rome have flourished and decayed. The civilization of Briton, Frenchman, German, American is passing, changing into the broader, nobler ideals of the Great Change -- liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

Listen with your hearts. In a land but your will away from you, hear, oh, hear the Christmas bells ring, the winds blow, the rivers run, the earth break forth into flowers and the trees burst into leaf! Hear the birds singing and mating, and hear children freed from labour shouting in the streets, young men and maidens smiling and marrying, old people praising God that the Great Change has come in their day. "We have died to live again. We have suffered that we may rejoice and be glad. What matters it -- all upheavals, all revolutions, all systems sent to wreck, if the Great Change comes afterward?"

Then ring all the bells on earth! 'Tis Christmas Day hi the morning of brotherhood. Ring man's great joy from pole to pole, from sea to sea! Tug with mighty arms at the bell rope that the sound may ring out full and far and long! Light the world's Christmas tree with stars. Heap offerings upon its mighty branches. Bring the Yule-log to the world- fireplace. Deck the world-house with holly and mistletoe and proclaim everywhere the Christmas of the human race!

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