By JAMES MACLEOD, Greenock.
THIS festival is a Jesuitical invention, and was unknown to the early Christians. The Christmas carols are of pagan origin. Indeed the word “carol” is Italian “carola” meaning “round dance” which the pagans of Rome were accustomed with at their festivals and sacrifices long before Christianity was introduced into Europe.
In the Roman Catholic Church three Masses are performed at Christmas, one at midnight, one at daybreak, and one in the morning. The Anglo-Catholic Church and the Lutheran Churches observe Christmas. The Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, and all the English dissenters used to reject to it as savouring of papistical will-worship. The Puritan Parliament abolished Christmas altogether. The origin of this festival is purely pagan. At the Reformation when the gospel was preached in purity and power, accompanied by the Holy Spirit into the hearts and consciences of sinners this papal Mass got a staggering blow which for a time forced it underground in several nations. As the light, glory, and spirituality of the Gospel declined, when the professors of it got cold, formal and indifferent, this wild beasts of the forest began to come forth again to prey more assiduously than ever on poor souls, who knew not the Gospel. The mighty voice of the Gospel appeared to be silent in the grave after the Reformers passed out of the Church militant to the Church triumphant. It was not with a slack hand, or with a feeble voice that the blessed Reformed divine condemned this Popish festival. Our own precious theologians left no doubt in the minds of the people of Scotland that the papal church was the “masterpiece of Satan.” The people of God own, acknowledge, and believe that the Son of God in assuming a human body, and a reasonable soul, uniting it to His divine and eternal Person was born of the Virgin Mother in the stable at Bethlehem! That would not be, however, a proof to them of His eternal deity, power, glory, and kingly majesty if He had not risen on the third day from the dead according to the Scriptures.
We have no evidence that the ungodly ever saw Him after His resurrection from the dead. He was to them dead, and buried for all time, the tombstone sealed, and a guard watching the approaches to the grave, and there was the world, and that is the same world to-day that makes such a noise about “Christmas” as if they cared whether the Messiah is born, dead, or risen. They are not concerned!
He was then, as now, as a root out of the dry ground without sap, or worldly benefit to the graceless world. When He came to His own (the Jews) they rejected and despised Him. When it was declared to them that He rose from the dead, they stoned, murdered, and persecuted the Messengers of the Messiah. There are men and women who observe Christmas who have no more regard, nor knowledge of His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession in heaven than the savage pagans of Japan!
This papistical craze, and Easter paganism is an invention of Satan to beguile simple souls as if singing carols made real Christians of them. What delusion, deception, and blasphemous hypocrisy! The many Masses the papal church performs at Christmas and Easter is the most remunerative season of the year to collect money from all parts of the world to replenish the Pope’s money chest.
The Lord Jesus said to one of the chief men of that age, “If he was not born again, he could not see the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Saviour was born in a stable because there was no room in the Inn. He was laid as a babe in the manger. That was a palace in comparison to the manger of the corrupt soul when a poor vile sinner is by faith united to Jesus Christ in the gospel promise.
That is the lowest stable and manger that the Saviour was ever laid in! The depraved sinner saved by the grace of God. Sin made the soul a manger for lusts, corruption, and awful depravity, compared to wild beasts, and the creeping worms of the earth. Oh! that papists and ignorant Protestants knew something of the depth of their natural depravity, corruption, and vileness, and if they did this “carol” would be Psalms, 51, 38, and 88, and not the Italian “carol” or round dance, like the Red Indian dance to the evil One. Let all who love the Lord Jesus in truth abhor the papistical Mass on the 25th day of December. We are not exhorted, nor is it anywhere commanded of believers to observe and remember the birth of the Saviour in the stable at Bethlehem. We ought to be ashamed of the fact that the God-man was born in the stable, which only intimates to the believer the low, ruined condition sin brought mankind to through the fall of Adam.
Sin is the reproach of any people, nation, or individual either here, or here after. Satan, however, must have his counter-feit gospel, and ruinous doctrines through his agents (the devil’s scavengers graceless priests, and graceless clergymen) to deceive the simple. In the Glasgow Herald on the 26th December, 1944, there was a report how “Christmas was celebrated throughout Europe (as if he knew all Europe in a few hours of time!) and in the Near East, perhaps more fervently than for years past, and on the battlefield, where bitter fighting is still going on, the day was not forgotten” (states Reuter). The writer goes on, “in Bethlehem there was the most crowded Christmas Eve pilgrimage living memory has witnessed, and in Rome, the Pope publicly celebrated midnight Mass in St. Peter’s.” The reader may notice how Reuter’s reporter joined Bethlehem and Rome in the celebration of Christmas! The Jesuit is busy.
“The winding streets leading to the church (Rome) of the Nativity in Bethlehem were on Christmas Eve crowded with vehicles, tens of thousands of people, mostly in uniform representing almost all the Allied Services gathered to attend the ceremony at the manger but only a few could enter the (Roman) Church of the holy Nativity? That was not enough there must be more for the “tens of thousands of Allied Service men and women” as they could not all enter the church of the holy Nativity? What is this huge army doing in or about Jerusalem? The reader must bear in mind when it suits the Jesuit he will swell figures out of all proportion to the actual facts, or minimise figures to suit his purpose. You see the Jesuit has no more respect to facts, and truth, than Satan has to truth! The end in view justifies he means used let it be facts, fiction, lies, or anything that suits him, to murder, the Jesuit will not hesitate if it suits his purpose, and end in view. The Jesuit is as like the devil as can be, only he is a human being, Satan is a vile fallen angel! History records that the Jesuit order murdered kings, princes, prime ministers, presidents, judges, and ladies of royal descent!
The Jesuit Order is the vilest society out of hell that ever was known, or ever will be known, we believe in the history of our ruined race. He may be as gentle as a lamb as fierce as a lion, as holy as an angel, a splendid politician, first-class diplomat, as a Protestant Clergyman in a Protestant pulpit, college, senate, or assembly, in the school teaching Protestant children, in the Palace doing menial service in order to gain some information for the use of his order. The Jesuit would engage as an ordinary street scavenger for that matter of it if it would add to the advancement of the Society of “Jesus!” Reuter goes on to tell us, “the usual ceremony celebrating the Shepherd’s Supper in the field below Bethlehem, and the journey of the three wise men (the wise men never came from the Vatican) from the east attracted thousands.” We see here Rome unfurling her banner, and hoisting the Vatican flag on the plains below Bethlehem! This is done under the aegis of the Union Jack. Oh! Britain when will you stop helping the enemies of the Lord? When the Anglo-Catholics of England and the Scoto-Catholics will read this report of Reuter, no doubt, they will sing another Italian carola.
“In Rome between 30,000 and 50,000 people (vast difference between thirty and fifty thousand!) were present at midnight mass celebrated by the Pope. One wonders how many were present last year when Herr Hitler was master of Rome? It was not of course such a money gamble last year as it is this year. Reuter says, “Special seats were reserved for British troops, and in all about 15,000 members of the Allied Forces attended. In the vast assembly were high Allied officers, diplomats, and members of the Italian Government.” Here is popery in its nakedness. This is Christmas in all its horrors, blasphemy, paganism, and deception. The Pope in person celebrated the midnight mass. He would be tired and should sleep well after all the antics he had to perform in celebrating his mass. The priests resemble acrobats in celebrating mass, especially high mass. Their approach to the high “altar” is not of course solemn, but the bowing, bending, gesticulations before they swallow their wafer god, and drink the best wine that Spain or France produces let me assure the reader who never saw mass celebrated that the official, and the rest of the crowd following behind the priest or Pope will be perspiring freely before this papistical ceremony is over. The worshippers must have their heads down, but as soon as the wine is taken the organ peels out a bellowing noise, and the congregation are assured that mass has been celebrated once more!
It is so real to the papist, and so blasphemous to the believer. The interior of St. Peter’s has no resemblance to the stable at Bethlehem, the Pope has no resemblance to Peter the fisherman!
This was the kind of mass Luther thundered against! Calvin characterised Rome as the mystical Babylon: John Knox preached against it as the harlotry of Rome. Are the nations of Europe to be steeped deeper and deeper into this slough of the Vatican? Are our gallant lads to be told that the Pope must have a chief place at the peace table, and that all the world must listen to the double-faced Italian bachelor, the Pope? Popery is the greatest curse that every plagued the human race since the fall of Adam. Will this war bring the papistical religion to an end? We are afraid not. The Protestant churches (with few exceptions) are vying with each other who will resemble the Roman Church most, and who will approach near the Vatican religion. President Roosevelt has a personal representative at the Vatican. In fact the President declared that the present reigning Pope was a personal friend of his. Mr. Churchill, Attle, Amery, and high Army officers visited the Pope. Public memory is very short, and all is forgotten, the silence of the Pope when London was partly burning brought no protest from the Pope. The Anglo-Catholics of England are papistical to a man, bishops and powerful lay-members, such as Lord Halifax, Lord Templemore, and Sir Anthony Eden were nursed in the school of the Tractarians. Their only mental conception of the Christian religion is from the Anglo-Catholic ritualistic buffoonery. The Bible to them is a book of reference, not the inspired Word of God, and their books of religious devotions are far more authoritative in their blinded judgment than the unerring Word of God. Their whole sympathy is with the Vatican. Their democratic philosophy is a questionable quantity. The bright side is what the gospel can do, and will do in destroying Pope, and popery, ritualism, and paganism, Christmas, Easter, and all masses!
Let all who love Jesus Christ in sincerity witness for Him, for His Gospel, Word, and ordinances against all the shifts, crafts, and idolatry of Rome!
The most relentless enemy to democracy, civilisation, the betterment of the working classes, and the glorious Gospel of our Lord and Saviour is the Roman Catholic religion, centred in Rome, and propagated by the Jesuits the World over.