What can be said that has not been said before, or better said, or said so often that all available words are weakened, their meanings faded, their beauty dimmed? For, every minute of every hour, day by day, century by century, words gush forth from millions of lips. Now, they vibrate also through space on wires, or on waves of the ether, and through the cables under the sea. They pour by billions from the printing presses of the world. If the voices were united, Niagaras of noise would drown out all other sounds, roaring out their confusion to Sirius or Mars, a super-titanic tumult of agony, joy, grief, misery, happiness, pleasure, pain, hatred and love, inextricably commingled and confused.
Inextricably commingled also are the conflicting ideas animating the myriads of unspoken though possibly even more potent words that stream from the prInting presses—books, pamphlets, journals, reviews. magazines, daily newspapers, in all the languages and dialects of all the races, nations, tribes, and classes of mankind. Warfare ravages great portions of the earth. Famines and floods, storms auid plagues, sweep violently into death millions of men, women and children, in addition to the millions who die daily because of the ordinary causes of human mortality. And those who arc not dying yet but who shall die tomorrow, they, in the midst of this vast multitude of the dying and the dead, plot or toil daily for money, for power, fame, love, pleasure, security, or peace. And the words they utter, the words vibrating along the wires and through the cables beneath the sea, or on the waves of the ether, together with the printed words of the laboring presses, all arc concerned with these ceaseless wars, famines, plagues, revolutions, massacres, storms, disasters, and with the plotting or the molting to possess money or fame or love or power, pleasure, security, or peace.
What then can be said in the midst of all this clamor which may be heard, and if heard can be accepted as true?
Only the one Word that was in the beginning, the Word that is God, the same that will be the End, the Word by Whom all things were made and without Whom is made nothing. The Word in and by Whom only is there light, the light that is the light of men, the light that still shines in the darkness of this world, the darkness that is the failure to comprehend. That Word, which was made Flesh and dwells among us, speaks. Through Niagaras of noise, through the titanic tumult of voices and the roaring of the presses, through all the confusion of vain words for which men must render an accounting at the Judgment, the one Word speaks as it has spoken far 2,000 years: it speaks as it has spoken from the dawn of time, and as it speaks from eternity. It is for us to listen and to heed.
The Word that was made Flesh: the God that became Man: who was a Child: who suffered and who died, but yet who lives, not far away, but here and now. He is among us, everywhere. He speaks of peace, of joy, and life amid the wars, the storms, the plagues, the desolations, the abominations, the pain and the woe, and the darkness of the world: and He says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Who follows Me does not walk in darkness."
