The Columbus Dispatch

SOMEWHERE A VOICE IS CALLING
For its beautiful sentiment and sweet spirit the following editorial, written by Hon. Percy W. Maer, late editor of The Dispatch, as a Christmas editorial in 1916, is presented again at this season. Its thought and sentiment are imperishable and enduring, and it is well worth reading. It is as follows:

Somewhere a voice is calling. Perhaps it is the Master's voice, calling through the New Born Babe. Maybe it is calling us to duty-duty to our God, our home, our country.

It is calling us from worldly things to things eternal. It is calling us from the transitory and unreal things of life to the consideration and contemplation of things everlasting. It is calling away from the world to Heaven. It is calling from sin and the pleasures of the world to a realization of our relationship to God and the hereafter. At this season the call is strong, and clear, and true, and may it find an echo in our hearts and lives that as we take up the work of the New Year we may go forth stronger in faith, resolved to do better, to live better, and to reflect in our everyday lives some of the Divinity which is renewed to the world at this season.

Or perhaps it is the mother's voice calling to the wayward son. Out in the world, amid the glitter and glamour of our time, he has strayed from those paths of rectitude and right that her prayers would have him follow. Unconscious almost of her saintly presence back home, he is following his course forgetful-unmindful--of the dearest influence of his life. He may be riding ambition's crest-he may be attaining wealth-he may be a power among men--but his life is a failure unless he renders love and homage to the one who gave him life, who nurtured him to manhood, who laid the foundation for his career in lessons of love, and devotion, and sacrifice, and struggle, and toil, which, perhaps, he has never known. How sweet, and tender, and beautiful is and was mother's voice! It may be heard here, or it may be an angel's whisper from the other side. Let us hear mother's voice again at this Christmas season, for we will be the better for it.

Then, again, it may be the father's voice. The stern admonition of duty comes back to us now. The discipline that he enforced finds its counterpart in our habits of today. The lessons he taught of industry, frugality and economy have unconsciously shaped the success of our lives. The examples that he set, the precept that he taught, the influence that he exerted, are all a part of our everyday existence. Father's voice was stern and commanding, but for our good. It was firm and unyielding that we might acquire self-denial, self-restraint, and learn to be masters of ourselves. It may be with us yet, or long since stilled, but among the things we hear this Christmas, in all the sounds of sweet music, there comes back to us father's voice, like a blessing and a benediction.

And maybe it is our child's voice-calling from school or college from the lawn or the nursery. It is the music of heaven, and it is to us a melody divine. It fills our hearts with gratitude, and fills the cup of happiness to the brim.

Cold and cheerless and empty and desolate is the life which has never known the laughter and tears of little children.

Sad, indeed, is the fate of that man or woman into whose life there has not come the exquisite joy of fatherhood or motherhood. Children the anchors of our souls, the haven of refuge from all the trials of life, for in their little world of innocence and love we find that peace and consolation and comfort and hope that comes only from the pure and undefiled.

Or, perhaps, it is the voice of our children calling from the Beyond. It may be the prattle of baby, the voice of our boy or girl. What a flood of tender memories come trooping up as we again hear that voice. The little joys and sorrows, the little cares and trials, all that made that one a part of our lives, are renewed as we hear the angel voice from the echoless shore. It is bidding you to so live that somewhere and somehow and some day you will again feel that kiss, know that loving caress, and again hear that sweet voice.

Or, perhaps, it is the voice of sister or brother calling at the Christmastide.

Or, perhaps, it is the voice of civic righteousness calling to you for duty. It is a call for a better manhood and womanhood. It is a call for higher and better things in our community life. It is a call for a cleaner and purer city, a call for law, and order, and peace. It is a call for law enforcement, and the support of those charged with the enforcement of the law. It is a call for the suppression of those traffics which destroy the home and destroy manhood and useful citizenship. It is a call to save our young men, a call to create and build up a beautiful, moral atmosphere here, where religion, and morality, and justice, and opportunity, and happiness will prevail.

Somewhere a voice is calling YOU!