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 twelvemonths;[1] and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal andseasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayingshave not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit andsceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king--remembered and embodied allhis wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in thefamous "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 hoursare "numbered and imputed, " and the days go by; and when the last ofthese finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The verylength is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured;and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) tohave served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied inthe German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to gohome; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-wornexiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. _Sunt lacrymaererum_: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when aman has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may havenever been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least heshall have lost his teeth on the camp bread. 

The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noblecharacter. It never seems to them that they have served enough; theyhave a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest tobe singly thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies, those desperate characters--it is we ourselves who know not what wedo;--thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better thanwe think: that to scramble through this random business with handsreasonably clean, to have played the part of a man or woman with somereasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the endto be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have doneright well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but atranscendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to becontempt of self is only greed of hire. 

And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require muchof others? If we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it notto be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others? And hewho (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he hasbeen unconscionably long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think hisneighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? It is probable thatnearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it iscertain 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 shaltnot_. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defilethe imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men asecret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwellupon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with invertedpleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds--one thing of two: eitherour creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel it; orelse, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics andshould place our persons in restraint. A mark of such unwholesomelydivided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Foxwithout the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to betrusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have aflaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoilshis temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him intocruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never be suffered toengross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the farther side, and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminaryclearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kindand honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; lethim become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortifiedappetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortifyan appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a greatdeal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great dealof humility in judging others. 

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavoursprings in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, becausewe do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind andhonest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemenof our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress aheresy, 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 microscopicfineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is nocutting 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 renouncewhen that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a fewfriends but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grimcondition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that aman has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who wouldask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterpriseto be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that notblindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, weare not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so inevery art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of livingwell. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end oflife: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be nodespair for the despairer. 

II

But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us tothoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A mandissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in themidst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of theempty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to thisfashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial arenot 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 maimyourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of thechildlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who givepleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders andthe judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved thislovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if _we_ should lose it. Gentleness andcheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfectduties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither onenor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could notaway with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they arewrong. I do not say "give them up, " for they may be all you have; butconceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of betterand 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 againstthem. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusadeagainst dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversionof a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishingdenunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic--envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, thepetty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life--their standard isquite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not sowrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element ofgusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves thatthey reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturallydisclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblinold lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. Andyet in each of us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasurein which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particularimpatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we aresad, or because we dislike noise and romping--being so refined, orbecause--being so philosophic--we have an overweighing sense of life'sgravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frownupon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond ofresisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond ofself-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorilydenied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they shouldmake their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. Butmy duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying thatI have to make him happy--if I may. 

III

Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in therelation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved orless probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit ourconstitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be sobuilt as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and socircumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nervesvery 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 evenits own reward, except for the self-centred and--I had almost said--theunamiable. 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 avoidthe penalties of the law, and the minor _capitis diminutio_ of socialostracism, is an affair of wisdom--of cunning, if you will--and not ofvirtue. 

In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profitby it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not howor why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and mustnot ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, hemust try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what willdo it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comesin here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbourhappy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, sohard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound tobe his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How farmust he resent evil?

The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on thepoint 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: inour own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardonall; it is _our_ cheek we are to turn, _r_ coat that we are to giveaway to the man who has taken _our_ cloak. But when another's face isbuffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we areto suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable andsurely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice;its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in ourown quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in thequarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happinessis as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defendone with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, thatwe have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground ofaction against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to goto glory; and neither knows what he does. 

The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militantmongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade ofduties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of piousdisguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little morepatience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might befound in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fineheady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by somedenunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour'svices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy. 

IV

To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have strivenand to what small purpose: and how often we have been cowardly andhung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every dayand all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;--it mayseem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certainconsolation 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, andall the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as itis--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 surprisingjoys--this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fallthrough, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he mustthumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is afriendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. _Here lies one who meantwell, tried a little, failed much_:--surely that may be his epitaph, ofwhich he need not be ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons whichcalls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paulor Marcus Aurelius!--but if there is still one inch of fight in his oldspirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his life-longblindness and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required inthis last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with hisold bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the dayand the dust and the ecstasy--there goes another Faithful Failure!

From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautifuland 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. ]