A Christmas Sermon | Page 3

very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade
against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I
venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion of
a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing
denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic--envy, malice,
the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the
petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life--their standard is quite
different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong;
there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto
warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they
reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally disclaim
all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old lady
of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And yet in each of
us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasure in which we
cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. It may
be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we
dislike noise and romping--being so refined, 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 neighbour'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 propensity that
cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among
moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person
I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much
more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy--if I
may.

III

Happiness and goodness, according to canting 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; we inherit our
constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so
built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, 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--I had almost said--the
unamiable. 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 avoid the
penalties of the law, and the minor capitis diminutio of social ostracism,
is an affair of wisdom--of cunning, if 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 is,
he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what
will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there
comes in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his
neighbour happy? 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 keeper 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 teaching would seem to be this: in
our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to
pardon all; it is our cheek we are to turn, r coat that we are to give
away to the man who has taken our cloak. But when another's face is
buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are to
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 neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is
as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one

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