December 1999 Sermons

• 12/5 Sermon
• 12/12 Sermon -- Promises, Part 1: What We Want?
• 12/19 Sermon -- Promises, Part 2: What We Get
• 12/24 Sermon -- Celebrating Scrooge: We Who Would be Changed
• 12/26 Sermon -- Lay Service

December 12, 1999 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

December 12, 1999

Promises, Part 1: What We Want?

As the title implies, this is the first of a two-part sermon on promises. If you miss the next one you will be able to get a copy. Jay Gibson, one of the most industrious members in this congregation, has been putting my sermons into an attractive PageMaker format, and you can get copies for the modest sum of 50¢, and soon you will be able to go to our new web site and find them there. We have several of our computer savvy members working on this effort which will be a great addition to our attempts to get the word out to other interested people as well as our own membership. More news about that will be forthcoming in our monthly newsletter, The Grist. Anyway, that is what I am promising today.

Having the children do their annual holiday play is one promise we will always try to keep, for this congregation stated at the founding ten years ago, that children would be an integral part of our planning and thinking. We have made good on that every year. We know that without the children, the promise of future that children hold, we would not survive.

It was actually children, the promises we make to them, that got me thinking about this whole arena of promising in the first place. And I realized that there is often a huge difference between what we hold as unstated or stated promises for them and what often becomes reality. Further, many unstated promises direct the course of our lives, and what I want us to consider this morning is how such unstated promises can be sometimes a good and necessary thing, but often they become a heavy veil between ourselves and living a fuller, richer life. So I am asking us to think about what promises are directing our lives, and next week what promises deliver.

Every parent goes into pregnancy and childbirth with great hopes, even as we remind ourselves that there are things that could go wrong, we live in hope. I have a relative who had many miscarriages, so many that I wondered how she could bear to get pregnant again. It knew it was true that her religious convictions did not permit birth control, but when I pressed her on the subject, she simply said, "God will provide. What he gives I will bear." So for her the promise was much more than just about whether she would ever give birth to the many children she conceived; but that God was giving her an opportunity to show her faithfulness. I continue to be impressed by people who can go through much pain and suffering and still not challenge the importunings of their faith or of God. I will come back to the promises of religion later.

When we act on the biological impulse to reproduce, we all act on many levels of unstated promise. Garrison Keillor captures a major part of it in his regular closing line about the people of his fictional hometown, Lake Wobegon, where: "All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

There is for every one of us a promise, I believe moreso in this country than most others, but a promise that if we do the right set of things we will get the right results. I can promise you that if you go to any major bookstore, you will find several shelves of books that tell you this in many different ways. Tony Robbins, Barbara DeAnglis, Steven Covey, Laura Schlessinger, Dale Carnegie, and scores of much lesser known writers who all have a promise for you if you follow their prescriptions for the good life.

Perhaps this whole realm of promotion for a good or better life is the main reason to ask the question of "Promises, Part 1," which is "What do you want?"

There are dozens, hundreds of promises implicit in our culture, and there is something significant, something very important to pay attention to in the promises that we hang on to. Here in, my friends, lies the spiritual connection. What we want in life, those things, the states of being, all of our motivating forces are related to what we want. What we want is absolutely about what we crave in our souls.

What we want is about both the good and the bad. The best and the worst, or as my Confucian sage would have it: Every front has a back. (Is there a soul in this congregation who does not yet know that this is my favorite aphorism? This saying is also about promise, but that is in "Promises, Part 2.")

I love the laid back nature of Vermont. When I lived in Massachusetts, I often visited that enlightened state. Vermont, though, has had a reputation common to all the New England states for thriftiness. Many years ago a man from Vermont, Walter Hard, wrote a collection of Vermonter anecdotes in a book titled, A Matter of Fifty Houses. These two are from that book. One such story is about a Vermonter who reputedly had a bag in his attic labeled, "Pieces of string too short to use."

Keep in mind, as Eric Johnson said: "Vermonters may not be what they used to be, and perhaps they never were."

My favorite story is about the Vermont carpenter who promised some people who owned a vacation summer house to get some work done by the end of August. When the couple arrived they found to their dismay that the work was not yet done, despite many solemn promises made by the carpenter when he gave his bid. In annoyance, they asked, "Why is the work not done as you promised?" The Vermonter’s reply: "Well, I’ll tell you, August just didn’t turn out to be as long as I calculated."

Promises are so much a part of who we are, how we live our lives that we hardly realize that we live in them every day, morning to night. The key, though, to having a healthy and enlighten sense of ourselves is to know which of those many promises really matter the most to us. For promises are not all equal. Consider with me then, what are the promises that are major motive forces for us here in this country, and right here in this congregation? What do we want?

I think that the holidays certainly give us a highlighted version of much of what we want. We want festivity, generosity, hope, excitement, family solidarity, and mostly we want to feel good. I enjoy the holiday party we have in December each year. Last night dozens of us gathered at the Loeffelholz home, and it was such fun to eat together, talk, have the wonderful silliness of the Yankee gift exchange (somebody went home with a four feet tall pink flamingo; we missed the dog-ear hat that has made the rounds most years). Just good, clean fun.

Beyond this special time of year, we still want these things, but we want so much more as well. But, what we want can feel very amorphous.

Children bring us most closely to our deeper sense of promise. In this country we are given the promise of equal access to education, which is wonderful, but in the process we find many other layers of promise. We are led to believe if we give our children lots of love, good nutrition, quality time, etc, that all our children will be good students, even high achievers, then go on to lead productive lies. That is what we want.

Modern science has given us a century of promises, many went far beyond our expectation. Then, for example, we find we have so much food anytime we want it, with calories so densely packed that we could easily overfeed the whole world if we could distribute it all with ease. So a whole new industry is created that would have been unthinkable a century or two earlier, and unthinkable now for impoverished nations, that of diet industry. And I know many people who, just like me, have been enraptured by the promises of many of these diets. We do live in paradoxical times!

Modern medicine, too, has its own brand of promising. Eat right, exercise, follow your physician’s recommendations and you will live to a ripe old age. That is what we want.

Sometimes we have a doctor whose promises we trust more than others. There was a family doctor who told his eighty-year-old patient he needed to have an operation, a wonderful new procedure at the time, to improve his poor circulation. When the patient asked just what would happen in this procedure, the doctor began to explain in great detail. The patient interrupted the doctor and pleaded for a simple explanation, to which the doctor said: "They will stick this thing up your artery into your heart and take out twenty years worth of ice cream and rice pudding."

Now we are headed toward the first year of the 2000s with an election year. No field of endeavor seems to be more promise oriented that politics. What we want has everything to do with those whom we elect. This will be a year of promise.

Back in the first half of this century, a Massachusetts politician named Ernest Johnson said in seeking reelection to the state senate: "I have made no wild promise, except one--honest government."

I rather like the ways of the ancient senate of Athens; when one politician would orate beautifully, making eloquent proposals, another would pop up and respond, "All that he said, I’ll do." Short and sweet.

Promises come to us in the cultural memory, they are in fact the societal glue. Work hard, be honest, kind, thoughtful, generous and trustworthy, and you will have the best that life has to offer. This is what we want.

Our whole system of morals, the ethics that are the guideposts for living, are also about promise. We all want to live in a community that is free from crime, where water is pure, soil is clean, no unsightly litter mars the landscape, no houses in our neighborhoods painted vermilion with orange and purple shutters and a giant satellite dish on top. These are things we want.

What do you want? What do you want for yourself, and what do you want for others? One writer of the eighteenth century wrote, "We promise according to our hopes . . . ."

It is important to think about what we want, what we would ask for if a genie granted us three wishes today. This is the realm of religion more than any other.

Our religious leanings are absolutely about what we want. Do we want an narrow path? Do we want complete rationalism? Do we want a deity who will grant all our wishes? Do we want a loving God who encircles us with a protective cloak? Do we want commandments, rules and regulations of military precision? What do you want?

What I want, as your minister, is to help you create this environment of safety where we can seek for answers to all the questions of greatest importance to us. What we want is at the top of the list. For unless we understand what we want we may wander this way and that hoping, liking the three blind men who are trying to describe what an elephant looks like, one feeling the trunk, another a leg, another the tail. Eventually, to know what it looks like you have to examine the whole of the elephant.

We are no less challenged, for in more ways than not, promises from our families, the culture, the media, all give us only part of the answers we seek. Here we are always seeking beyond what we have, for I know, as you must too, that we each only have a bit of the answers to the deeper meaning of life. It is the sharing we do here that helps us see more.

I hope we see that in asking ourselves, "What do I want?", we become engaged in our own soul searching; a vision quest that can guide us toward a truly more contended life.

That is a promise.

December 19, 1999 Sermon

Last week in the first of my two-part sermon on promises I talked about what we want. How, promises are those stated and unstated hopes and beliefs that direct so much of our lives. I said that what we want as a people or society reside in these promises, and we can learn more about what is guiding our lives by exploring this area of hopefulness that often also leads to so much joy, but also so much disappointment for us.

I suppose, to take the rationalist’s position, the world could be said to exist without promises. There are no promises, save the repetitious cycle of nature. Yet, to live from that perspective would undoubtedly make us cynical, and very few people operate from a completely cynical point of view, simply believing there is no promise in life. I believe that few of us could live if we felt there was no purpose, no larger reason for existing, regardless of any religious beliefs in an afterlife or larger fatalism that might be directing the course of events. Most of us live in the promises of life. So we are here trying to understand the powerful motivating force in promises. In religion, politics, family; all these revolve around promises. Our goal is to examine the promises that are most directive in our lives.

My greatest hope lies in the spiritual promise of Socrates statement, "know thyself." I believe the spiritual goal of our UU religion is just this, to know ourselves, so that we are less likely to be misdirected, and more likely to make the most of whatever promise life offers. Promise of the ability to grow, to change, to care, to give and have love.

Most people operate under the sense of promise, and this season especially talks to our sense of promise. From the solstice through Christmas and Twelfth Night or Epiphany. Each of these events, these holidays uplifts our larger understanding of promise.

For instance, the winter solstice, the longest period of darkness of the year, which for us in the northern hemisphere, occurs on Dec.21 or 22 each year. We with our advanced science are much farther from the sense of promise this held for our ancient ancestors who hoped for the sun to return, but were not as certain as we are that they days would in fact get longer bringing back the greening and burgeoning of springtime. The historical sciences of archeology and anthropology, as well as the writings of history, tell us that the practice of sacrifice, the acts done to appease or extract various things from unseen deities, were based in the sense of promise. We give you this sacrifice of something valuable and pure, say a child, a virgin, precious oils, and you, the god, give us safety, food, water, warmth, children, land, and so forth. Actually, much of religion, even today, is based on this idea of sacrifice. A quid pro quo relationship with God, that says I give my belief, actions, penance, for your protection and promise of eternal life--sometimes also the promise of the good life here and now. Which is part of why so many evangelical or fundamentalists can be rather in-your-face and rigid in their interactions with other people. After all, they have a deal going with the big man upstairs. And they want him to see that they are paying out, doing their part to fulfill the deal. Otherwise, it’s the cement shoes to the underworld. Kind of like the movie The Godfather.

The idea of sacrifice is certainly a part of our tradition, a part of the promise of ancient Israel and the Judeo-Christian heritage of the West. In the book of Jeremiah , we get a glimpse of the changes taking place as the people of Israel try to establish the one God in a land where other gods and goddesses long held sway. In one episode, the patriarchs have forbidden any sacrifices except to the one God, but times are difficult, food has been scarce, and the women rebel stating plainly that they have to protect their children, and they intend to make a sacrifice by putting cakes for the Queen of Heaven on the altar of Asherah, the most worshipped Goddess of the time and area. For Israel there also came a later promise of a Messiah, which the Christians of later days proclaimed to be Jesus, a savior; and, for Christians, Jesus represents in his death on the cross the promise that by believing in him, believing in this sacrifice, that God promises forgiveness and an eternal home in heaven.

Our Principles and Mission Statement are a part of our promise for those who join our Mill Creek congregation. We too have a promise of a particular way that we can be in relationship with one another, and celebrate our own spiritual beliefs. Ultimately, I think all religions have the promises that reflect what we as people want. We want family, safety, community, hope, trust, love, and other things that are not always so clear to us.

Last week I talked about children, the promises that we grew up with, the promises that we as parents give. The promises that the culture and the nation holds.

Why do we have children? The biological imperative is one answer, but in an age where we can act on that biological imperative without bringing children into the world, why do we continue to have children, especially when there are over six billion of us on the planet now, and we are assured that more are to come, very soon? I believe we have children

in part because of the promise children hold. I think most of us are less clear about the promises we hold for them.

In general, reproduction is/has been perceived as good in all cultures, including ours. This is the biological imperative, but it is also more, and can become important for reasons that have to do with power and domination. For instance, some groups spread their beliefs by sheer numbers.

The most important promise of children is that we will be loved and have someone to love. Often, too, we have unstated hopes that the child will live a life greater or worthier than our own, thereby elevating our worth in life. Very few, if any, would say I am giving birth to a child that I fully expect to amount to a hill of beans; the kid will probably be a waste of time and money for the society. We all hope for a child who will be healthy, productive, worthy of accolades and honors.

One of the most tragic stories I ever heard from a parent, was when former Minnesota Governor and Senator George McGovern talked about his daughter who died from her alcoholism; she froze to death on a snow bank where she had passed out. He talked with such honesty about the sadness of a lost life, and how he and his wife had such hopes for her in her childhood, then time and time again with each period of rehab, yet her life ended so meaninglessly. No parent would bring a child into the world with such expectations. The promise of every child is something more than that, even if we know that some of the children won’t live out their promise.

Last week, someone mentioned that the media is one of the most notorious promise makers, hollow promises for the most part, yet we have to admit that the world of advertising promises according to what they know what we think we want. Madison Avenue spends millions of dollars learning what we think we want. I have a good story about what we think we want, and how the promises of the world of advertising work in all of us, even children.

Six-year-old Gilbert, who watched a lot of television, and therefore a lot of TV ads was asked by his pediatrician, just to make conversation,

"Gil, if you found a couple of dollars and had to spend them, what would you buy?"

"A box Tampax,’ he replied without hesitation.

"Tampax?" said the shocked doctor. "What on earth would you do with that?"

"Well," said the guileless child, "I don’t know exactly, but it’s sure worth two dollars! Why is says on TV, you can go swimming, go horseback riding, and even go skating any time you want to."

We have a sense of promise in ourselves, too. The promises of education, the promises of our own careers and our relationships. The promise of a neat, orderly life if we do all the right things. Yet even here in New Castle County many people who did all the right things, obeyed their parents, did well in school, went on to college, got a good job, yet in the world of downsizing and profit-margins, found themselves holding pink slips. We can feel very betrayed when things do not happen the way we thought they would. The promises are not always reliable.

You have all heard about the so-called "mid-life crisis." Most of us have some version of this mid-life crisis when we realize that all we hoped for, expected of ourselves, has not been realized. We can feel anger, resentment, distrust, and hopelessness. The sad part of this that I see way too often is that we can misdirect all these emotions and hold others responsible for our sense of failure. Yet, if we see that the promise in life is not about specific things, but more about possibility, we can divert all that emotional energy into new directions.

I believe strongly that if you have a strong sense of yourself, a good sense of your own worth, you will be able to deal with those frustrations and inconsistencies better .

The promise that all our children, to quote Garrison Keillor, will "be above average," is unstated, and misguided. I learned years ago when I taught gifted children that promises around intelligence and education are often misplaced. We think that if a child has a high I.Q. that success is guaranteed. We all think we want to give birth to such a child, but the studies of such children indicate that roughly only about10% of them achieve anything near the promise of their high intelligence. We forget that a high I.Q. is only a measure of potential. If these children have poor social skills, as they often do, they will have difficulty in a world that values charm more than great thinking ability.

What we want lies in these unstated promises, but what we get can be far different that we could have ever expected, which is a good reason to have our hopes and wishes fall in line with more general, and more reasonable, and perhaps nobler goals.

Tom Hartline told me last week that he had heard that you shouldn’t let your education get in the way of your success. Sometimes the promises do get in the way of our success.

What we want and what we get are often so out of joint that we wind up blaming others because we see that they were the source of the promise. This is one reason parents take such a lot of heat from their teen and adult children.

Politicians too get the brunt of anger, because we feel that they made promises that were/are important to us.

Politics is by its very nature promise oriented. Here’s a story to illustrate: Several political hacks were discussing the merits of their respective candidates. The leader of the group finally said,

"Let’s not kid ourselves about these guys. Not one of them is much good, and every one of them would sell his mother if he got a good enough price."

"Yeah," said one of them, "but my guy would deliver!"

We invest our hopes, indeed our futures, on the promises of our political candidates. We vote according to what we want, both for ourselves, and sometimes for others. And we are terribly conflicted about these decisions at the same time.

Clarence Darrow of the famous Scopes monkey trials said: "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it."

This coming year, I hope we all look closely at the promises of the political candidates, and which promises mean the most to us.

Family, family traditions, which are elevated particularly during this holiday season, often hold the most potent sense of promise. Those we grew up with, those we are seeking to live out today. Family, friends, traditions all speak to the things we want most. Community, acknowledgement, acceptance, safety, love.

We know that families are far from perfect, but they remain the most important social unit. Those of us with little family or no family feel that dramatically, which is one reason why this congregational family is so important to many of us.

Of course, some families have more promise and some more problems than others.

"Jim," pleaded the dying wife, "my last wish is that you promise me my mother will ride in the same car with you at my funeral. Surely you cannot deny me this."

"Oh, all right," said the husband. " But its going to ruin my whole day."

Promises are mostly about what we want, good and otherwise. What we get from the promises that become the motive forces in our lives can be anything from dismal failure to the greatest success, and everything in between. I am always the most hopeful for children who say they want to do something good with their lives, maybe they will say they want to be teachers or scientists or work for some cause, for that is something they can always do. I am saddened when I read, as I did recently, that the majority of high school juniors polled recently, when asked what they expected their future to hold, responded that they intended to be millionaires. What will happen if they don’t? Indeed, what will happen if they do?

Last week I quoted the first half of a statement by the French philosopher, Le Rochfoucalt "We promise according to our hopes . . . " The whole phrase is: "We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears."

When we ask of ourselves, What do we want? we find in the answers the reasons for much of our joy and our sorrow. My hope is that our soul searching, especially during this holiday time of hope and promise, will teach us more about the transcending joy that truly gives life meaning.

Charles Stephens wrote: "May we, whose needs are [sometimes] so great, know how close we are to what we seek, and how often the things we want so desperately are ours already."

It may surprise you to learn that the celebrations we find so heartening at Christmas very nearly were lost in the early days of this country. In fact, they were lost in the earliest, purely Puritan days. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock came for the express purpose of establishing their Calvinist Puritanism. They were called "Puritans" for they felt that Christianity should look more like the earliest days of the church, hence the "purer" times, and they rejected the 1500 + years of increasing ritual in the church--specifically the Catholic church. Anything that smacked of "popishness," was stringently avoided.

The very church buildings had to be plain, austere, with no statures or stained glass, and we can still see that style in the New England churches. (They would have heartily approved of our plain setting here in the CACC, but not my robe or our lovely flowers.) Further, they did not accept all the religious celebrations that had developed, believing that such celebration was a mockery to the strict interpretation of salvation that John Calvin taught. Celebrations were for all intents and purposes forbidden, even for birthdays, even Jesus’s birthday. The closest thing to a celebration would be a gathering to eat, such as the feast we were taught the Puritans and Native American Indians enjoyed that we later called Thanksgiving.

Puritan religion was hard and unyielding. I am always rather amused at people who harken back to our country’s forefathers, for there are very, very few people who would be willing to live one week in the Puritan way. It took a later time, and gentler folk to bring celebration to the new world.

John Nichols, the minister of the Unitarian Society of Wellesley Hills, MA., wrote in a sermon back in 1982, that Christmas as we know it would not have been possible without the intervention of some key Unitarians, the most notable being Charles Dickens.

"Christmas is not only the Unitarian Universalist High Holy Day," Nichols stated. "In its present form, it is also the UU gift to the world. In

fact, we rescued the celebration of Christmas from earlier extremes of

smothering sectarian piety, on the one hand, and purely secular excess on

the other. [Unitarians] gave Christmas a message which raised to public view the meaning of Jesus' life and of the social-ethical-moral strength which his life embodied."

Nichols, who had also examined the pagan and Roman origins of the December feast day, noted the rejection of all such holy days by Calvinist Protestants. He then discussed the all-important intervention of a young Unitarian writer who, in 1843, published a short story about Christmas "into which he poured not only all of his craft but some intimate experiences from his personal life." That Unitarian writer was Charles Dickens, and his story was the timeless A Christmas Carol.

Dickens' story did not initially get that much attention, but eventually A Christmas Carol became the most popular thing he had ever written, especially for Americans. At his public readings, it was the most requested selection. "Many people wept as he read this remarkable tale to them," according to Nichols. "When it was learned that Charles Dickens had died, one young boy reportedly asked his parents, "Is Mr.Dickens dead? Will Father Christmas die also?'"

Having grown up in great poverty, Dickens was a bitter critic of the aristocratic notions of wealth and power that characterized Victorian times. "Neither in the Anglican church nor in the so-called nonconforming churches could he find anything like a social conscience." Rather, "he found smug self-serving pieties and concern primarily for the salvation of the individual soul. Therefore, when he came to the Unitarian Essex Chapel in London, he found what he heard there refreshing. In time he joined the Chapel. According to his leading biographers, he became a Unitarian for the rest of his life."

Unitarianism Universalism has been long associated with social justice, and like Dickens, other Unitarians and Universalists have felt compelled to act on the compassionate urges of conscience that mere religious dogma could never satisfy. In all of his works, Dickens lets us see characters "motivated by greed and self-interest, but always lifted up against those who act from love and compassion." The side of love always speaks most truthfully to the heart of human desire.

Tonight, then, I wanted to uplift the timeless character Dicken’s gave us in A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge. A man of rare composition in some ways, but ordinary, too. For like all men, women and children, what Scrooge needed most cannot be tallied in the ledger, or worn, or eaten, or displayed on a wall. It is the gift of caring, that act of love that is more precious than any other we can give or get.

Scrooge was in himself all that we are, only more, but unlike many of those in Victorian times, he was able to come to the recognition that the best things in life come by sharing all of our lives with those we love, not just the good times, but our hopes and dreams, and difficulties, too. It is for all this we UUs celebrate Christmas.

People often talk about how we want to change; we make resolutions in the New Year, and in our prayers and supplications to God and to the unknown spirits we speak to in our longings. But, what would we really change in ourselves if given the opportunity; or better still, if the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future would take us on a similar journey to that of Ebenezer Scrooge. What would be the scenes of regret, lost love, bitterness and discontent we would face?

We who would be changed must be willing to face the ghosts of the past, open our eyes to the present, and consider the future if we are to know the wonder of real change that we celebrate in Scrooge.

Part 2: From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Scrooge, as you probably recall, is taken by the ghost of Jacob Marley, a miserable shade, to see the folly of his youth. How he lost his fiancée because of his misplaced values, then became colder and harder as he grew richer and more alone.

Next he is visited by the jolly-looking ghost of Christmas present, who gives him the joyful scenes of celebration in the present at the homes of his nephew and his employee, poor, but ever hopeful, Bob Cratchit. But this ghost also shows him the cruel side of the present in the view of destitute children beneath his robes. Then it gives him then the sad news that Tiny Tim may not be long for the world.

Scrooge, then, is met by the a terrifyingly gruesome, shrouded spectre that gives him the view we all would most fear, and for Scrooge that view is also most changing. From Dickens then, with Monty Taylor acting as the voice of Scrooge:

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, Scrooge bent down upon his knee, the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

``I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?'' said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

``You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,'' Scrooge pursued. ``Is that so, Spirit?''

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

``Ghost of the Future!'' he exclaimed, ``I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. "Will you not speak to me?''

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them. The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.

``No,'' said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, ``I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead.''

``When did he die?'' inquired another.

``Last night, I believe.''

``Why, what was the matter with him?'' asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. ``I thought he'd never die.''

``God knows,'' said the first, with a yawn.

``What has he done with his money?'' asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

``I haven't heard,'' said the man with the large chin, yawning again. ``Left it to his Company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I

know.''

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here. He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.

``How are you?'' said one.

``How are you?'' returned the other.

``Well!'' said the first. ``Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?''

``So I am told,'' returned the second. ``Cold, isn't it?''

``Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skaiter, I suppose?''

``No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!''

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

``Spirit!'' said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. ``I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!''

"Spirit!'' he said, ``this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!''

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

``I understand you,'' Scrooge returned, ``and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.'' Again it seemed to look upon him.

``If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death,'' said Scrooge quite agonized, ``show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!''

The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.

``Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,'' said Scrooge; ``or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever

present to me.''

``Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,'' said Scrooge, ``answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?''

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

``Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,'' said Scrooge. ``But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show

me!''

The Spirit was immovable as ever. Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the

neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

``Am I that man who lay upon the bed?'' he cried, upon his knees. The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

``No, Spirit! Oh no, no!'' The finger still was there.

``Spirit!'' he cried, tight clutching at its robe, ``hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?'' For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

``Good Spirit,'' he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: ``Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!''

The kind hand trembled.

``I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three

shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!''

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

``I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!'' Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ``The Spirits of all Three shall strive within

me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!''

``I don't know what to do!'' cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. ``I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!''

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly winded. Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

``I don't know what day of the month it is!'' said Scrooge. ``I don't know how long I've been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!''

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his stirring, cold hand, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!

``What's to-day?'' cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

``Eh? '' returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

``What's to-day, my fine fellow?'' said Scrooge.

`To-day?'' replied the boy. ``Why, Christmas Day.''

``It's Christmas Day!'' said Scrooge to himself. ``I haven 't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!''

``Hallo!'' returned the boy

``Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?'' Scrooge inquired.

``I should hope I did,'' replied the lad.

``An intelligent boy!'' said Scrooge. ``A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize Turkey; the big one?''

``What, the one as big as me?'' returned the boy.

``What a delightful boy!'' said Scrooge. ``It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!''

``It's hanging there now,'' replied the boy.

``Is it?'' said Scrooge. ``Go and buy it.''

``Walk-er!'' exclaimed the boy.

``No, no,'' said Scrooge, ``I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!''

``I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!'' whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. ``He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be!''

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.

His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for

him. He had no further intercourse with Spirits . . . and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

And so may be for all of us, who would be changed, gathered here this evening to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. The message of Jesus come down to us from over 2000 years ago: let us love others as we love ourselves. God Bless us, every one.

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