grievously wanted, from childhood upwards, to know that; and
gleaned diligently every word written by people who said they had
seen angels: but none of them ever tell me what their eyes are like,
or hair, or even what dress they have on. We dress them, in pictures,
conjecturally, in long robes, falling gracefully; but we only continue
to think that kind of dress angelic, because religious young girls,
in their modesty, and wish to look only human, give their dresses
flounces. When I was a child, I used to be satisfied by hearing
that angels had always two wings, and sometimes six; but now nothing
dissatisfies me so much as hearing that; for my business compels me
continually into close drawing of wings; and now they never give me
the notion of anything but a swift or a gannet. And, worse still, when
I see a picture of an angel, I know positively where he got his wings
from--not at all from any heavenly vision, but from the worshipped
hawk and ibis, down through Assyrian flying bulls, and Greek flying
horses, and Byzantine flying evangelists, till we get a brass eagle,
(of all creatures in the world, to choose!) to have the gospel of
peace read from the back of it.
Therefore, do the best I can, no idea of an angel is possible to
me. And when I ask my religious friends, they tell me not to wish
to be wise above that which is written. My religious friends, let
me write a few words of this letter, not to my poor puzzled workmen,
but to you, who will all be going serenely to church to-morrow. This
messenger, formed as we know not, stood above the shepherds, and the
glory of the Lord lightened round them.
You would have liked to have seen it, you think! Brighter than the
sun; perhaps twenty-one coloured, instead of seven-coloured, and as
bright as the lime-light: doubtless you would have liked to see it,
at midnight, in Judæa.
You tell me not to be wise above that which is written; why, therefore,
should you be desirous, above that which is given? You cannot see the
glory of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see
it as bright as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You
might, at least, forty Christmases since: but not now.
You know I must antedate my letters for special days. I am actually
writing this sentence on the second December, at ten in the morning,
with the feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the
last three weeks the days have been one long drift of ragged gloom,
with only sometimes five minutes' gleam of the glory of God, between
the gusts, which no one regarded.
I am taking the name of God in vain, you think? No, my religious
friends, not I. For completed forty years, I have been striving to
consider the blue heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon
and the stars which He hath ordained: but you have left me nothing
now to consider here at Denmark Hill, but these black heavens, the
work of your fingers, and the blotting of moon and stars which you
have ordained; you,--taking the name of God in vain every Sunday,
and His work and His mercy in vain all the week through.
"You have nothing to do with it--you are very sorry for it--and Baron
Liebig says that the power of England is coal?"
You have everything to do with it. Were you not told to come out and
be separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the
evil work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share
with, to be damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin
by putting them out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of
them with you there. But return to your night vision, and explain to
me, if not what the angel was like, at least what you understand him
to have said,--he, and those with him. With his own lips he told the
shepherds there was born a Saviour for them; but more was to be told:
"And suddenly there was with him a multitude of the heavenly host."
People generally think that this verse means only that after one angel
had spoken, there came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but
it means far another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you
find creation summed thus:--"So the heavens and earth were finished,
and all the host of them." Whatever living powers of any order, great
or small, were to inhabit either, are included in the word. The host
of earth includes the ants and the worms of it; the host of heaven
includes,--we know not what;--how should we?--the creatures that are
in the stars which we cannot count,--in the space which we cannot
imagine; some of them so little and so low that they can become flying
poursuivants to this grain of sand we live on; others having missions,
doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on them.
But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the
powers of the outer world which have any concern with ours became
in some way visible now: having interest--they, in the praise,--as
all the hosts of earth in the life, of this Child, born in David's
town. And their hymn was of peace to the lowest of the two hosts--peace
on earth;--and praise in the highest of the two hosts; and, better
than peace, and sweeter than praise, Love, among men.
The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner
of the hosts of heaven, have written something which they suppose
this Song of Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves,
in state, after successful battles. But you hear it, those of
you who go to church in orthodox quarters, every Sunday; and will
understand the terms of it better by recollecting that the Lordship,
which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this, over all
creatures, or over the two Hosts. In the Apocalypse it is "Lord,
All governing"--Pantocrator--which we weakly translate "Almighty";
but the Americans still understand the original sense, and apply it so
to their god, the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their
Father which is in Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word "Sabaoth"
again means all "hosts" or creatures; and it is an important word
for workmen to recollect, because the saying of St. James is coming
true, and that fast, that the cries of the reapers whose wages have
been kept back by fraud, have entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men
at St. Catherine's Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they
live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai.
You see, farther, I have written above, not "good will towards men,"
but "love among men." It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy
to translate at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best
from its use at Christ's baptism--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well-pleased." For, in precisely the same words, the angels say,
there is to be "well-pleasing in men."
Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for
God's glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present,
think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps,
dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, even
when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press,
are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of heaven to
praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you; but you
hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:--that He expected,
then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have even great
satisfaction--well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The
sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose
about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden;
some of them will think it well laid out,--others ill. You are not
solicitous about their opinions; but you like them to love each
other; to build their nests without stealing each other's sticks,
and to trust you to take care of them.
Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world you would leave
off telling its Master your opinions of Him, and, much more, your
quarrelling about your opinions of Him; but would simply trust Him,
and mind your own business modestly, He might have more satisfaction
in you than He has had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one
years, or than He seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and
seventy-second. For first, instead of behaving like sparrows and
robins, you want to behave like those birds you read the Gospel from
the backs of,--eagles. Now the Lord of the garden made the claws of
eagles for them, and your fingers for you; and if you would do the
work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would, without doubt,
have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to have
claws--not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto's Injustice
has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so you set to
work to make yourselves manifold claws,--far-scratching;--and this
smoke, which hides the sun and chokes the sky--this Egyptian darkness
that may be felt--manufactured by you, singular modern children of
Israel, that you may have no light in your dwellings, is none the
fairer, because cast forth by the furnaces, in which you forge your
weapons of war.
A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed,
once saw the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace;
but not with envy of the country.
Your English power is coal? Well; also the power of the Vale of Siddim
was in slime,--petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities
fell there; and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men.
Emmanuel! God with us!--how often, you tenderly-minded Christians, have
you desired to see this great sight,--this Babe lying in a manger? Yet,
you have so contrived it, once more, this year, for many a farm in
France, that if He were born again, in that neighbourhood, there would
be found no manger for Him to lie in; only ashes of mangers. Our clergy
and lawyers dispute, indeed, whether He may not be yet among us; if not
in mangers, in the straw of them, or the corn. An English lawyer spoke
twenty-six hours but the other day--the other four days, I mean--before
the Lords of her Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, to prove
that an English clergyman had used a proper quantity of equivocation
in his statement that Christ was in Bread. Yet there is no harm in
anybody thinking that He is in Bread,--or even in Flour! The harm is,
in their expectation of His Presence in gunpowder.
Present, however, you believe He was, that night, in flesh, to any
one who might be warned to go and see Him. The inn was quite full;
but we do not hear that any traveller chanced to look into the
cow-house; and most likely, even if they had, none of them would have
been much interested in the workman's young wife, lying there. They
probably would have thought of the Madonna, with Mr. John Stuart Mill,
('Principles of Political Economy,' 8vo, Parker, 1848, vol. ii., page
321,) that there was scarcely "any means open to her of gaining a
livelihood, except as a wife and mother;" and that "women who prefer
that occupation might justifiably adopt it--but, that there should
be no option, no other carrière possible, for the great majority of
women, except in the humbler departments of life, is one of those
social injustices which call loudest for remedy."
The poor girl of Nazareth had less option than most; and with her
weak "be it unto me as Thou wilt," fell so far below the modern
type of independent womanhood, that one cannot wonder at any degree
of contempt felt for her by British Protestants. Some few people,
nevertheless, were meant, at the time, to think otherwise of her. And
now, my working friends, I would ask you to read with me, carefully,
for however often you may have read this before, I know there are
points in the story which you have not thought of.
The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born to them
"in David's village." We are apt to think that this was told, as of
special interest to them, because David was a King.
Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a King;
but a Shepherd like themselves. "To you, shepherds, is born this
day a Saviour in the shepherd's town;" that would be the deep sound
of the message in their ears. For the great interest to them in the
story of David himself must have been always, not that he had saved
the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or written Psalms, but that he had
kept sheep in those very fields they were watching in; and that his
grandmother [36] Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by.
And they said hastily, "Let us go and see."
Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not of
worshipping? Even when they do see the Child, it is not said that
they worshipped. They were simple people, and had not much faculty of
worship; even though the heavens had opened for them, and the hosts of
heaven had sung. They had been at first only frightened; then curious,
and communicative to the bystanders: they do not think even of making
any offering, which would have been a natural thought enough, as it
was to the first of shepherds: but they brought no firstlings of their
flock--(it is only in pictures, and those chiefly painted for the
sake of the picturesque, that the shepherds are seen bringing lambs,
and baskets of eggs). It is not said here that they brought anything,
but they looked, and talked, and went away praising God, as simple
people,--yet taking nothing to heart; only the mother did that.
They went away:--"returned," it is said,--to their business, and never
seem to have left it again. Which is strange, if you think of it. It
is a good business truly, and one much to be commended, not only in
itself, but as having great chances of "advancement"--as in the case
of Jethro the Midianite's Jew shepherd and the herdsman of Tekoa;
besides that keeper of the few sheep in the wilderness, when his
brethren were under arms afield. But why are they not seeking for some
advancement now, after opening of the heavens to them? or, at least,
why not called to it afterwards, being, one would have thought, as
fit for ministry under a shepherd king, as fishermen, or custom-takers?
Can it be that the work is itself the best that can be done by simple
men; that the shepherd Lord Clifford, or Michael of the Green-head
ghyll, are ministering better in the wilderness than any lords or
commoners are likely to do in Parliament, or other apostleship; so
that even the professed Fishers of Men are wise in calling themselves
Pastors rather than Piscators? Yet it seems not less strange that
one never hears of any of these shepherds any more. The boy who made
the pictures in this book for you could only fancy the Nativity,
yet left his sheep, that he might preach of it, in his way, all his
life. But they, who saw it, went back to their sheep.
Some days later, another kind of persons came. On that first day,
the simplest people of his own land;--twelve days after, the wisest
people of other lands, far away: persons who had received, what you
are all so exceedingly desirous to receive, a good education; the
result of which, to you,--according to Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the
page of the chapter on the probable future of the labouring classes,
opposite to that from which I have just quoted his opinions about the
Madonna's line of life--will be as follows:--"From this increase of
intelligence, several effects may be confidently anticipated. First:
that they will become even less willing than at present to be led,
and governed, and directed into the way they should go, by the mere
authority and prestige of superiors. If they have not now, still less
will they have hereafter, any deferential awe, or religious principle
of obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them."
It is curious that, in this old story of the Nativity, the greater
wisdom of these educated persons appears to have produced upon them
an effect exactly contrary to that which you hear Mr. Stuart Mill
would have "confidently anticipated." The uneducated people came
only to see, but these highly trained ones to worship; and they have
allowed themselves to be led, and governed, and directed into the way
which they should go, (and that a long one,) by the mere authority
and prestige of a superior person, whom they clearly recognize as a
born king, though not of their people. "Tell us, where is he that is
born King of the Jews, for we have come to worship him."
You may perhaps, however, think that these Magi had received a
different kind of education from that which Mr. Mill would recommend,
or even the book which I observe is the favourite of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer--'Cassell's Educator.' It is possible; for they were
looked on in their own country as themselves the best sort of Educators
which the Cassell of their day could provide, even for Kings. And
as you are so much interested in education, you will, perhaps, have
patience with me while I translate for you a wise Greek's account of
the education of the princes of Persia; account given three hundred
years, and more, before these Magi came to Bethlehem.
"When the boy is seven years old he has to go and learn all about
horses, and is taught by the masters of horsemanship, and begins to
go against wild beasts; and when he is fourteen years old, they give
him the masters whom they call the Kingly Child-Guiders: and these are
four, chosen the best out of all the Persians who are then in the prime
of life--to wit, the most wise man they can find, and the most just,
and the most temperate, and the most brave; of whom the first, the
wisest, teaches the prince the magic of Zoroaster; and that magic is
the service of the Gods: also, he teaches him the duties that belong
to a king. Then the second, the justest, teaches him to speak truth
all his life through. Then the third, the most temperate, teaches him
not to be conquered by even so much as a single one of the pleasures,
that he may be exercised in freedom, and verily a king, master of all
things within himself, not slave to them. And the fourth, the bravest,
teaches him to be dreadless of all things, as knowing that whenever
he fears, he is a slave."
Three hundred and some odd years before that carpenter, with his
tired wife, asked for room in the inn, and found none, these words
had been written, my enlightened friends; and much longer than that,
these things had been done. And the three hundred and odd years
(more than from Elizabeth's time till now) passed by, and much fine
philosophy was talked in the interval, and many fine things found out:
but it seems that when God wanted tutors for His little Prince,--at
least, persons who would have been tutors to any other little prince,
but could only worship this one,--He could find nothing better than
those quaint-minded masters of the old Persian school. And since then,
six times over, three hundred years have gone by, and we have had a
good deal of theology talked in them;--not a little popular preaching
administered; sundry Academies of studious persons assembled,--Paduan,
Parisian, Oxonian, and the like; persons of erroneous views carefully
collected and burnt; Eton, and other grammars, diligently digested; and
the most exquisite and indubitable physical science obtained,--able,
there is now no doubt, to extinguish gases of every sort, and explain
the reasons of their smell. And here we are, at last, finding it still
necessary to treat ourselves by Cassell's Educator,--patent filter of
human faculty. Pass yourselves through that, my intelligent working
friends, and see how clear you will come out on the other side.
Have a moment's patience yet with me, first, while I note for you one
or two of the ways of that older tutorship. Four masters, you see,
there were for the Persian Prince. One had no other business than to
teach him to speak truth; so difficult a matter the Persians thought
it. We know better,--we. You heard how perfectly the French gazettes
did it last year, without any tutor, by their Holy Republican
instincts. Then the second tutor had to teach the Prince to be
free. That tutor both the French and you have had for some time back;
but the Persian and Parisian dialects are not similar in their use of
the word "freedom"; of that hereafter. Then another master has to teach
the Prince to fear nothing; him, I admit, you want little teaching
from, for your modern Republicans fear even the devil little, and
God, less; but may I observe that you are occasionally still afraid
of thieves, though as I said some time since, I never can make out
what you have got to be stolen.
For instance, much as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this
Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of it, I know an English
gentleman who was offered the other day a picture of it, by a good
master,--Raphael,--for five-and-twenty pounds; and said it was too
dear: yet had paid, only a day or two before, five hundred pounds
for a pocket-pistol that shot people out of both ends, so afraid of
thieves was he. [37]
None of these three masters, however, the masters of justice,
temperance, or fortitude, were sent to the little Prince at
Bethlehem. Young as He was, He had already been in some practice
of these; but there was yet the fourth cardinal virtue, of which,
so far as we can understand, He had to learn a new manner for His
new reign: and the masters of that were sent to Him--the masters of
Obedience. For He had to become obedient unto Death.
And the most wise--says the Greek--the most wise master of all,
teaches the boy magic; and this magic is the service of the gods.
My skilled working friends, I have heard much of your magic
lately. Sleight of hand, and better than that, (you say,) sleight of
machine. Léger-de-main, improved into léger-de-mécanique. From the
West, as from the East, now, your American and Arabian magicians attend
you; vociferously crying their new lamps for the old stable lantern
of scapegoat's horn. And for the oil of the trees of Gethsemane,
your American friends have struck oil more finely inflammable. Let
Aaron look to it, how he lets any run down his beard; and the wise
virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine la Pétroleuse, with
her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster,
and completes the worship of her Christ.
Christmas, the mass of the Lord's anointed;--you will hear of devices
enough to make it merry to you this year, I doubt not. The increase
in the quantity of disposable malt liquor and tobacco is one great
fact, better than all devices. Mr. Lowe has, indeed, says the Times
of June 5th, "done the country good service, by placing before it,
in a compendious form, the statistics of its own prosperity.... The
twenty-two millions of people of 1825 drank barely nine millions
of barrels of beer in the twelve months: our thirty-two millions now
living drink all but twenty-six millions of barrels. The consumption of
spirits has increased also, though in nothing like the same proportion;
but whereas sixteen million pounds of tobacco sufficed for us in
1825, as many as forty-one million pounds are wanted now. By every
kind of measure, therefore, and on every principle of calculation,
the growth of our prosperity is established." [38]
Beer, spirits, and tobacco, are thus more than ever at your command;
and magic besides, of lantern, and harlequin's wand; nay, necromancy if
you will, the Witch of Endor at number so and so round the corner, and
raising of the dead, if you roll away the tables from off them. But of
this one sort of magic, this magic of Zoroaster, which is the service
of God, you are not likely to hear. In one sense, indeed, you have
heard enough of becoming God's servants; to wit, servants dressed
in His court livery, to stand behind His chariot, with gold-headed
sticks. Plenty of people will advise you to apply to Him for that sort
of position: and many will urge you to assist Him in carrying out His
intentions, and be what the Americans call helps, instead of servants.
Well! that may be, some day, truly enough; but before you can be
allowed to help Him, you must be quite sure that you can see Him. It is
a question now, whether you can even see any creature of His--or the
least thing that He has made,--see it,--so as to ascribe due worth,
or worship to it,--how much less to its Maker?