Speaker 1: 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,