The Lost Word: A Christmas Legend of Long Ago

What happens when surrendering everything for faith leaves you emptier than before? Henry Van Dyke probes this aching question in his 1898 Christmas allegory, set in ancient Antioch during the early days of Christianity. Hermas has given up wealth, status, and comfort to follow Christ, yet on this first Christmas in his new life, he feels only hollow dissatisfaction. His sacrifice has cost him everything, and gained him nothing but silence. A mysterious stranger offers what God seems to have denied: warmth, beauty, love, the pleasures of the world he abandoned. In a moment of desperate weakness, Hermas surrenders the sacred name, trading his faith for fleeting comfort. But the cost is devastating. When his son falls gravely ill, Hermas must confront what he has lost, and fight to reclaim it. This is a meditation on spiritual wavering, on the terrible weight of sacrifice, and on the word that matters more than life itself. It endures because it asks what every believer fears: Is faith enough when the world offers so much less?