A Christmas sermon. By the time this paper appears, I shall have been
talking for twelve months, and it is thought I should take my leave in
a formal and seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and deathbed sayings have
not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and skeptic,
a man whose life has been one long lesson in human incredulity, an
easy going comrade, a maneuvering king remembered and embodied all his wit and skepticism,
along with more than his usual good humor. In the famous I'm afraid,
gentlemen, I'm an unconscionable time, a dying one, an unconscionable time,
a dying there's a picture, I'm 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 undishonored, and
to have lived at all all is doubtless. In the soldierly expression to have
served there is a tale, and Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in the
German wilderness, of how they mob Germanicus clamoring to go home, and of
how seizing their general's hands, these old war warned exiles passed his finger along
their toothless gums. Sunt lachrymae rerum. This is the most eloquent of the
songs of Simeon. And when the 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 notable character. It never seems to them that we have
served enough. They have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps
more modest to be stingily 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 a woman with some reasonable fullness
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 endeavor 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 on his own life can
see no more than that he has been unconscionably long a dying. Will he
not be tempted to think his neighbor unconsciably 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 center 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 introverted 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 worst man. And of such an one, a
great deal of cheerfulness will be requiredired in judging life, and a great deal
of humility in judging others. And may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our
life's endeavor springs in some degree from dullness. We require higher tasks because we
do not recognize 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 mold.
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 unraveled, to be honest, to
be kind, to earn a little and 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 and for the end of life, only
self deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.
Two. But Christmas is not the only 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 endeavors 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, maime 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 two penny concerns. The shame were indelible if we should lose it.
Gentleness and cheerfulness those come before all morality. They are the perfect duties.
And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor
the 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's 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 liar sounds of itself with relishing denunciations.
But for all displays of the truly diabolic envy, malice, the mean lie,
the mean silence, the calumniust 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, mister 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 neighbor's pleasures. People are nowadays
so fond of resisting temptations. Here is one to be resisted they are fond
of self denial. Here is the propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied.
There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good.
One person, I have to make good myself. But my duty to
my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him
happy if I may three happiness and goodness. According to Canting, moralists stand
in 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 centered. And I had almost said the
unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience. If quiet be what he wants,
he shall do better to let the organ perish from disuse, and to
avoid the penalties of the law and the minor capitis di minuto 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 neighbor
happy? How far must he respect that smiling face so easy to cloud,
so hard to brighten again. How far on the other side is he bound
to be his brother's keeper and the profit 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 our
coat. 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 neighbors, 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 defense 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
seen in private life or in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what
we are pleased to call our neighbor's vices, might yet have been unwoven by
the hand of sympathy. To look back upon the past year, and to
see how little we have striven into what small purpose, and how often we
have been cowardly and hung back or temorarius 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 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 where 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 I if he were
Paul or Marcus Aurelius. But if there is still one inch of fight in
his old spirit, undishonored 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 colored earth, out of the day and the dust and
the ecstasy. There goes another faithful failure from recent book of Verse, where
there is more than one such beautiful and manly poem. 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 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 the
sense of the triumphant night night, with her train of stars and her great
gift of sleep. So be my passing, my task accomplished, in the
long day, done, my wages taken, and in my heart, some
late lark singing. Let me be gathered to the quiet west, the sun
down, splendid and serene death. End of a Christmas sermon,