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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14535 ***
+
+A CHRISTMAS SERMON
+
+by
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+New York
+
+1900
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS SERMON
+
+
+By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve
+months;[1] and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and
+seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings
+have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and
+sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity,
+an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king--remembered and embodied all
+his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the
+famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying."
+
+[Footnote 1: i.e. In the pages of _Scribner's Magazine_ (1888).]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+An unconscionable time a-dying--there is the picture ("I am afraid,
+gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours
+are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of
+these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very
+length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured;
+and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to
+have served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in
+the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to go
+home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn
+exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. _Sunt lacrymae
+rerum_: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a
+man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have
+never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he
+shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.
+
+The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble
+character. It never seems to them that they have served enough; they
+have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to
+be singly thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies,
+those desperate characters--it is we ourselves who know not what we
+do;--thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better than
+we think: that to scramble through this random business with hands
+reasonably clean, to have played the part of a man or woman with some
+reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end
+to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done
+right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a
+transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be
+contempt of self is only greed of hire.
+
+And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require much
+of others? If we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it not
+to be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others? And he
+who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he has
+been unconscionably long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think his
+neighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? It is probable that
+nearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it is
+certain we all think too much of sin. We are not damned for doing wrong,
+but for not doing right; Christ would never hear of negative morality;
+_thou shalt_ was ever his word, with which he superseded _thou shalt
+not_. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile
+the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a
+secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell
+upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted
+pleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds--one thing of two: either
+our creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel it; or
+else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and
+should place our persons in restraint. A mark of such unwholesomely
+divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Fox
+without the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be
+trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have a
+flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils
+his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into
+cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never be suffered to
+engross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the farther side,
+and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary
+clearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kind
+and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let
+him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance.
+Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified
+appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify
+an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great
+deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal
+of humility in judging others.
+
+It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour
+springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because
+we do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and
+honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen
+of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold,
+arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a
+heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us,
+which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic
+fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no
+cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.
+
+To be honest, to be kind--to earn a little and to spend a little less,
+to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce
+when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few
+friends but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grim
+condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a
+man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would
+ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise
+to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not
+blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we
+are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in
+every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living
+well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of
+life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no
+despair for the despairer.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to
+thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations,
+whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man
+dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the
+midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the
+empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this
+fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial are
+not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.
+It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim
+yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the
+childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give
+pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and
+the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this
+lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns,
+the shame were indelible if _we_ should lose it. Gentleness and
+cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect
+duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one
+nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not
+away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are
+wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but
+conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better
+and simpler people.
+
+A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures,
+even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against
+them. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade
+against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age.
+I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion
+of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing
+denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic--envy, malice,
+the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the
+petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life--their standard is
+quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so
+wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of
+gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that
+they reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally
+disclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin
+old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And
+yet in each of us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasure
+in which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular
+impatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we are
+sad, or because we dislike noise and romping--being so refined, or
+because--being so philosophic--we have an overweighing sense of life's
+gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown
+upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of
+resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of
+self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily
+denied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should
+make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But
+my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that
+I have to make him happy--if I may.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the
+relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or
+less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our
+constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so
+built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so
+circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves
+very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful.
+Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even
+its own reward, except for the self-centred and--I had almost said--the
+unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want,
+he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid
+the penalties of the law, and the minor _capitis diminutio_ of social
+ostracism, is an affair of wisdom--of cunning, if you will--and not of
+virtue.
+
+In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit
+by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how
+or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must
+not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he
+must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will
+do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comes
+in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbour
+happy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so
+hard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound to
+be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How far
+must he resent evil?
+
+The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on the
+point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them)
+hard to accept. But the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in
+our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon
+all; it is _our_ cheek we are to turn, _r_ coat that we are to give
+away to the man who has taken _our_ cloak. But when another's face is
+buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are
+to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable and
+surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice;
+its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our
+own quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the
+quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness
+is as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend
+one with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that
+we have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of
+action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to go
+to glory; and neither knows what he does.
+
+The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant
+mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful,
+though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of
+duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious
+disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more
+patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be
+found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine
+heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
+denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's
+vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven
+and to what small purpose: and how often we have been cowardly and
+hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day
+and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;--it may
+seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain
+consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity.
+He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and
+all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it
+is--so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend,
+or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising
+joys--this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall
+through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must
+thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a
+friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go,
+there need be few illusions left about himself. _Here lies one who meant
+well, tried a little, failed much_:--surely that may be his epitaph, of
+which he need not be ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which
+calls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paul
+or Marcus Aurelius!--but if there is still one inch of fight in his old
+spirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his life-long
+blindness and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required in
+this last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his
+old bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day
+and the dust and the ecstasy--there goes another Faithful Failure!
+
+From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautiful
+and manly poem, I take this memorial piece: it says better than I can,
+what I love to think; let it be our parting word.
+
+    "A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
+    And from the west,
+    Where the sun, his day's work ended,
+    Lingers as in content,
+    There falls on the old, gray city
+    An influence luminous and serene,
+    A shining peace.
+
+    "The smoke ascends
+    In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
+    Shine, and are changed. In the valley
+    Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
+    Closing his benediction,
+    Sinks, and the darkening air
+    Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
+    Night, with her train of stars
+    And her great gift of sleep.
+
+    "So be my passing!
+    My task accomplished and the long day done,
+    My wages taken, and in my heart
+    Some late lark singing,
+    Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
+    The sundown splendid and serene,
+    Death."[2]
+
+[1888.]
+
+[Footnote 2: From _A Book of Verses_ by William Ernest Henley. D. Nutt,
+1888.]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14535 ***