When at the time of Jesus' birth the angels gave their heavenly message of universal peace and good will, they inaugurated a sense of joy and happiness which has ever since been associated in the thought of mankind with Christmas. In Christian lands men have been awakening more and more fully to the marvelous good which was to accrue from the appearing of this infant child. They do not always stop to consider that so stupendous was this event that the entire world has acknowledged it as the beginning of a new era. Whether Christian or pagan, men now commonly reckon time with its occurrences as either before or after Jesus' advent.
Four thousand years before and over nineteen hundred years since the first Christmas have brought the world forward in matters religious to a point where every wise individual is stopping to consider as never before the meaning of Jesus' life, his teaching, and his works. Comparatively few, however, yet realize that Jesus brought to the world the solution for every problem, the way out of every difficulty. He found and demonstrated the method whereby all perplexities and tribulations are forever to be done away; the way whereby the rule of Christ on earth is to bring to the human consciousness the marvelous good which God has always intended all men shall understand and enjoy.
Because men had for thousands of years believed in an existence separated from God, with all the discords, the sin, sickness, and death which inevitably resulted from such belief, it was necessary that God send His "only begotten Son" that "whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." It was therefore the mission of Christ Jesus to mark out the way of salvation from all evil for all men.
