--PHILIPPIANS ii. 7.
On Christmas-day, 1851 years ago, if we had been at Rome, the great
capital city, and mistress of the whole world, we should have seen a
strange sight--strange, and yet pleasant. All the courts of law were
shut; no war was allowed to be proclaimed, and no criminals punished.
The sorrow and the strife of that great city had stopped, in great
part, for three days, and all people were giving themselves up to
merriment and good cheer--making up quarrels, and giving and
receiving presents from house to house. And we should have seen,
too, a pleasanter sight than that. For those three days of
Christmas-time were days of safety and merriment for the poor slaves--
tens of thousands of whom--men, women, and children--the Romans had
brought out of all the countries in the world--many of our
forefathers and mothers among them--and kept them there in cruel
bondage and shame, worked and fed, bought and sold, like beasts, and
not like human beings, not able to call their lives or their bodies
their own, forced to endure any shame or sin which their tyrants
required of them, and liable any moment to be beaten, tortured, or
crucified at the mercy of cruel and foul masters and mistresses. But
on that Christmas-day, according to an old custom, they were allowed
for once in the whole year to play at being free, to dress in their
masters' and mistresses' clothes, to say what they thought of them
boldly, without fear of punishment, and to eat and drink at their
masters' tables, while their masters and mistresses waited on them.
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