A CHRISTMAS SERMON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 273, 24 December 1909, Page 4

A CHRISTMAS SERMON.

(This esaav by Koliert Louis Stevenson was first published in Scribner's Magazine in 18S8.)

By tiie tiu.e this paper appears, 1 ! shall ha\c ooen tolKiug for twelve month-; and it is thought i should take .»iy lea»e iu u formal aud seasonable .uauiiur. valedictory eloquence is iu.l, aud ueaiuued sayings have not ouui hit the mark of .the occasion. Lii..ijes Second, wit and sceptic, a wan wJiusu life had been one long lesson in liuiiiaii iuereuuuiy, au easy-going cornice, a wanocuvnug kiug, remembered awit embodied ali liia wit and scepticism uiuiig with wore than his usual good huuior iu the famous "1 am afraid, gciuieuicu, 1 am an unconscionable time " a-dyiug." 1.

An unconscionabiu time a-dying there is the picture ("1 am afraid, geutluuou") oi \our life and mind. Tiie saud* riiu out, and the hours are "numbered aud imputed,' and the days go by; and whfn the last of these finds us, we have been a long time dyiug, and üba t else If The very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation uiidialionoredj and to have - lived at all is douutleas (in the soldierly expression) to have served. There is a taJe in i'acitus of how the veterans * mutinied in the liennan wilderness; oi how they mobbed Germanic us, clamoring to go home; and-of how, seizing their . general's .hand, these old war-worn exiles passed his fiftger along their toothless' gums. Sunt Tacrymoe rerum: this was tne most eloquent of the songs

of Simeon. And when'a man has lived . ' to u fair age he bears bis marks of service. He may have never even remarKcd upon tue ureach at the head of the aimj; at ieast he shall have lost h'ls teeth ou the camp bread. The idealism 01 serious people in this age of ours is of a noble character. It never seems to Uem that they have served enough; tuey have a line impatience of iheir virtues. It were pernaps more modest to be singly thaukyfid that wc are no worse. It iB not only our enemies, those desperate characters —it is we ourselves who know not what wc uo 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 mail or woman with some reasonable fulness, to have often resisted ithe diabolic, and at the end te 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 ia only greed of hire. And, again, if we require so much of - ourselves, we shall 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 tie trespasses of others ? And he who (looking back ;ipon 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 unconscionably long of getting' hanged? It is probable that nearly aU 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 o" negative morality; thou sli&lt was ever His word, with which he euperseded thou shalt not. To make our idea u c 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 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 iAi; or else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and should place our persons in restraint. A mark qf such unwholesotnely 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, ttiat " nafit9'>Ubn for the duties of life, that topper, that threatens his .or that betrays him into be conquered; but it be suffered to engross lis >ftwe gvtiea iic all upon lUHpfciuit be attended nun 4 .«o sqon as thi& Acting ofthedecks has' be. k total abstainer; then, aajd the next day circumstance. Try-, honest will require a mortified appetite wise companion; in so mortify an appetite,: be the worse mail; and of such an' oae i great deal, of cheerful- - nesS willbe required in judging life, and a great deal of humility in judging ■j . other*. It may be argued, again, that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavor springs in some degree from dulness. •We require higher tasks, because we do . not recognise the height of those we save. ' Tryisg to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and top inconsequential for gentlemen of ou: 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 / {land or mortify an appetite. But the (task before us, ,which is- to 00-endure jwith our existence, is rather one ol microscopic 'fineness, and the heroism Required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; (each must smilingly unravelled. To bo honest, to be kind —to earn a little and to spend a little lees, to make, upon the' whole, a family happier for iiis 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 ambitions soul who would ask mare; he has' a hopeful spirit who should look in snch an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert; whatever else we arc intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted, it is so in every art and study; it is sii, 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.

But Christmas is not only the milemark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-axamination: 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 she should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to he admired, not oveh to he 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 i of the childlike, of those who arc easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their lands, the smitcrs 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 dtifcie?. And it is the trouble with moral mm that they have neither one nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not do 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; hut 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 tliem: to aim all you have; hut conceal them like a year a lady (singnlar iconoclast!) proclaimed a. crusade against dolls; and the /•/.■■■ racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such mora 1 - ists insecure. At any excess of pervei-MUb-l sion of a natural appetite, their lyre -4- sounds of itsnlf with relishing denunci- - lations;. but all displays of the truly N 'dabolic—envv, malice, the mean lie, the the thlumnious truth, the ;, backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish if •poisoner of family life—their standard Js 'quite different. These are wrong, jr-i ;'" they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault f'l . thejn, no secret element of gusto to IK;

warm up the sermon; it is for tilings ( not wrong in themselves' that fcbey reserve the choicest of their imliguatio'i. A man may naturally disclaim all ?norai kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls; tor | these are gross and naked instances, i And yet in each ot* us some similar ele-'niL-ut resides. The sight of a pleasure in whrch we cannot or else will not share moves us t.o a particular impatienee. l't may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we dislike noise and romping—being so refilled; 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 a pro- , pensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among I moral people that they should make their neighbors good. Une person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that 1 have to make'him happy—if I may. 111. Happiness' and goodness, according to * Wanting 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; j we inuerit our eotisliiutiuu; we stand * buffet among friends and enemies'; we ' may be so built as to leei a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, 1 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—l had almost sad—the unamiable. fto 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 minor capitis dimmutio of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom —of cunning, i! 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 ife', he must U\ to .j good; somehow or other, though lu; notj tell what will do it, he must try to <nve happiness to otuers. And no doubt there comes in here a frequent clash of duties. , How far is he to make his neighbor happy V 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 keener 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 teachings would seem to be this: in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and pardon all; it is our cheek we arc to turn, our coat that we are to give away to the man who has taken our cloak. But when another's face is butfeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That wc are Tb 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 neighbor, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let ua 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 go to glory; and neither knows what lie does.

The truth is, that all these interventions and denunciations and militant I mongerings or morel half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though tliey are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of duties. 111-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 gentlej and wiser method might found-in almost every case;, and the knot that we cut by some fine Heady quarrel-scene'in private life, or, in public affains, by some denunciatory;, act, .against s'hat we are pleased to cftll neighbor vi<#B, might yetMveueeiT 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 temerious and rushed unwisely in: and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindnessit 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 go»s 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 throug'i, 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, Med 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 lie were Paul or Marcus Aurelius! —but if there is still one inch of fight in his old spirit, undisbonored, the faith which sustained him in his lifelong 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 eartn, out of the day and the dust and the ecstasy—there goes another Faithful Failure!