To Help You Use the Topics The truth a Topic teaches crystallized in two or three short expressions The Scripture that contains the truth taught The catechism synopsis of Scripture teaching Illustrations, side lights, seed thoughts, hints These are what the real student of the Topics needs. They have been written out for each Topic for the Church Year and printed in a little book to carry in the pocket. Send 10 cents for one copy, or 25 cents for three copies, to The Luther League Review P. O. Box 876 NEW YORK UNION PACIFIC OVERLAND CALIFORNIA With its lovely Seaside Resorts, UNION PACIFIC A picturesque journey combined Electric Lighted Trains Daily INQUIRE OF E. L. LOMAX, General Passenger Agent OMAHA, NEB. 5 PRIZE STORIES will be announced in the next issue. The First Chapter of the First Prize Story will also appear in the January Number. I Of the Church-By the Church-For the Church Luther League A Christmas Legend BY EMMA E. ALLEN. T was Christmas Eve and old Earth had wrapped herself in her whitest garments to grace the occasion. Most of her children were keeping high revel, and even those whose hearts were sad had caught something of the infection of the hour. Yet there were souls to whom even the opened to a legend of the Christmastide. It told how the peasants of Brittany firmly believe that on Christmas Eve, as the hour of midnight approaches, the dumb beasts in their stalls are given speech, and, because of those that stood by when the wonderful Babe was born, are allowed for a little time to praise the Lord with the voices of men. "A fitting belief for a religion of superstition," said the cynic, as he laid down the book with an impatient sigh born half of weariness and half of some feeling he could not analyze. Just then some carol singers paused beneath the window, and their fresh young voices rang out sweetly in the words of the old carol: "God rest you, merry gentlemen, They passed on, but the music still seemed to echo in the silent room, and, half unconsciously repeating to himself the words of a verse learned long ago in childhood, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord," the cynic leaned back in his chair and fell asleep. He dreamed that he stood on a vast plain, stretching away as far as the eye could reach. It was night and he was alone under the stars, which shone so steadily above him. One star, much larger and more brilliant than the rest, seemed to movę majestically across the heavens, and from it there came a compelling ray which drew him irresistibly onward. As he followed, he felt around him the influence of some unseen Presence, and his soul was filled with awe. Suddenly, the scene changed, and he was in an heathen temple. The smoke of sacrifice filled the place, but through it he could discern the mighty figure of the god, grim and forbidding, frowning upon the throngs of kneeling worshippers. The unseen Presence came nearer, and a voice seemed to say, "Wilt thou not worship also?" But he said scornfully, "Nay, I worship not a creature of men's hands." Then the temple vanished, and once more he was following the star. Through all lands it led him. He heard the Moslem chant his "Allah il Allah!"; he saw how men bowed down to the sun and moon and stars; how they worshipped the spirit of the fire; even the reptiles and beasts of the field. And always there was the invisible Presence, with the same voice saying, "Wilt thou not worship?" and he gave again and again the same haughty answer, "Nay, I worship not." At last he came to where a mother cradled her new born babe in a manger. Around were the patient cattle and the stamp of poverty was over all. Then the voice said softly, but this time with a touch of command in it: "Wilt thou not worship now?" The cynic trembled violently, but even as he tried to resist the influence, and to give his old answer, the place was filled with voices. They seemed to come from the dumb beasts standing near, and they cried in mighty chorus: "Praise ye the Lord! Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!" Again and again the words were repeated, and as they ceased a wonderful light transfigured everything, while before the cynic's wondering eyes the Babe changed into a God-like man who gazed at him with divine pity and said: "When even these find voice to speak my praises, wilt thou keep silence?" Slowly the glory faded, and with a start the cynic awoke. It was Christmas morning. The first faint beams of the rising sun were stealing into the library, and as he pulled aside the heavy curtains and looked out, he heard again in the distance the voices of the carol singers: "God rest you, merry gentlemen, Was born upon this day." A belated traveler passing by looked up and, seeing him, wished him "A Merry Christmas." The night before he would have scorned the greeting, but now he responded brightly. “It shall indeed be a Merry Christmas," he said to himself, "for I will spend it in praising Him to whom the star led me." The spirit of his dream was still strong within him, and he thought of the multitudes he had seen worshipping in ignorance of the truth, with no knowledge of God, while a rush of pity thrilled him. "O, thou divine Christ," he whispered, “I will speak Thy praises to them and carry Thy message of love to the ends of the earth." So the cynic, a cynic no longer, but a new man in Christ Jesus, filled with love for his fellow men, left his old life behind him, and went forth on his appointed mission. The memory of that Christmas Eve, of the strange old legend and his wondrous vision, never left him, and his preaching was ever an exaltation of the Christ. (Continued on page 24.) Christmas Eve, Then and Now 1705 IT was Christmas Eve, two centuries ago. Two young men were standing on the prow of a tossing ship, in the face of a biting December gale, looking out with wistful gaze toward India. Seventeen hundred years had passed since the shepherds knelt at the manger shrine of the Incarnate Lord from heaven, and all India was still bowing down blindly before three hundred million idol gods! Even the intrepid Xavier himself had abandoned the country in hopeless despair, more than a century before, utterly disheartened by the invincible obstacles on every hand! The blackness of darkness was over the land. No Hin 1905 opportunity of molding Asia before the rise of Mohammedanism! But alas! those medieval messengers from Alexandria brought a sadly mutilated Gospel, teaching it with a weak faith and a darkened intellect. Then the later Jesuits, in Xavier's day, converting by means of wholesale perfunctory baptisms, and by the terrors of the Inquisition-so, too, the Dutch, as a political scheme, doing practically the same thing, by equally wholesale and unspiritual methods, could only accomplish results which must be prefixed by the minus sign. It would have been better if they had not attempted that kind of missionary work at THE FOUNDERS OF PROTESTANT FOREIGN MISSIONS. doo soul knew or loved the Holy Babe in Mary's arms, nor did the professing Christians who lived among those benighted heathen ever speak a single word to make the Christ child known. And yet, the district of India to which these two pioneer missionary heroes of Protestantism were sailing was the very section in which the Apostle Thomas is said to have preached the Gospel within half a century after the Christmas event itself! The early Church in the Apostolic Age sent men to follow in the footsteps of St. Thomas, who founded the Syrian Christian Churches which still survive on the Malabar coast. Again in the twelfth century the Nestorian Church faced the waiting East, with its Macedonian missionary cry. and held within its very grasp the unparalleled all. India was worse off, after their ending, than before their beginning. But the Messianic prophecies which this advent season specially brings to mind are full of cheering assurance that there is a Kingdom which shall conquer every nation and transform every land. India had been waiting long, as the centuries slowly swept by, but she was not to wait forever in vain. It was Christmas Eve, 1704, when a desolate Danish Lutheran widow, whose husband and only son had both been murdered in an uprising of the natives at Tranquebar, wrote a letter to the King, Frederick IV of Denmark, voicing the bitter anguish of her soul, and setting forth the lamentable condition of the degraded heathen. The palace picture of the noble Christian sovereign poring over this let |