A Christmas Sermon | Page 4

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 to go to glory;
and neither knows what he does.
The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant
mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful,
though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of
duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious
disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more
patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be
found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine
heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's
vices, might yet have been 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 temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all
day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;--it may seem a
paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation
resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity. He goes upon
his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and all the time
like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it is--so that to see
the day break 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 through, health fails,
weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly
varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of
detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few
illusions left about himself. _Here lies one who meant well, tried a little,
failed much_:--surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be
ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which calls a defeated
soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paul or Marcus
Aurelius!--but if there is still one inch of fight in his old spirit,
undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his life-long blindness
and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required in this last

formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his old
bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day and
the dust and the ecstasy--there goes another Faithful Failure!
From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such
beautiful and 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.]

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