Denmark Hill,
23rd December, 1871.
My Friends,
You will scarcely care to read anything I have to say to you this evening—having much to think of, wholly pleasant, as I hope; and prospect of delightful days to come, next week. At least, however, you will be glad to know that I have really made you the Christmas gift I promised—£7,000 Consols, in all, clear; a fair tithe of what I had: and to as much perpetuity as the law will allow me. It will not allow the dead to have their own way, long, whatever licence it grants the living in their humours: and this seems to me unkind to those helpless ones;—very certainly it is inexpedient for the survivors. For the wisest men are wise to the full in death; and if you would give them, instead of stately tombs, only so much honour as to do their will, when they themselves can no more contend for it, you would find it good memorial of them, such as the best of them would desire, and full of blessing to all men for all time.
English law needs mending in many respects; in none more than in this. As it stands, I can only vest my gift in trustees, desiring them, in the case of my death, immediately to appoint their own successors, and in such continued succession, to apply the proceeds of the St. George’s Fund to the purchase of land in England and Scotland, which shall be cultivated to the utmost attainable fruitfulness and beauty by the labour of man and beast thereon, such men and beasts receiving at the same time the best education attainable by the trustees for labouring creatures, according to the terms stated in this book, Fors Clavigera.
These terms, and the arrangement of the whole matter, will become clearer to you as you read on with me, and cannot be clear at all, till you do;—here is the money, at any rate, to help you, one day, to make merry with, only, if you care to give me any thanks, will you pause now for a moment from your merrymaking, to tell me,—to whom, as Fortune has ordered it, no merrymaking is possible at this time, (nor, indeed, much at any time;)—to me, therefore, standing as it were astonished in the midst of this gaiety of yours, will you tell—what it is all about?
Your little children would answer, doubtless, fearlessly, “Because the Child Christ was born to-day:” but you, wiser than your children, it may be,—at least, it should be,—are you also sure that He was?
And if He was, what is that to you?
I repeat, are you indeed sure He was? I mean, with real happening of the strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened near Him, showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood still over His head? You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and wish it were so with me; but I have been so puzzled lately by many matters that once seemed clear to me, that I seldom now feel sure of anything. Still seldomer, however, do I feel sure of the contrary of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove that it was visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible: and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the weakest grounds, than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I envy not at all are those who imagine they believe it, and do not.
For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and without any manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange spiritual cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical period of their existence;—an impression which has produced, in past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an intellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determination of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come.
Will you give some little time therefore, to think of it with me to-day, being, as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then, let me ask you, is its truth to you? The Child for whose birth you are rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their sins; but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious of any sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you with any one in particular—lying, or thieving, or the like—my belief is you would say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind.