And, so far as they came to teach, they came as teachers of one virtue only: Obedience. For of this Child, at once Prince and Servant, Shepherd and Lamb, it was written: “See, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. He shall not strive, nor cry, till he shall bring forth Judgment unto Victory.”
My friends, of the black country, you may have wondered at my telling you so often,—I tell you nevertheless, once more, in bidding you farewell this year,—that one main purpose of the education I want you to seek is, that you may see the sky, with the stars of it again; and be enabled, in their material light—“riveder le stelle.”
But, much more, out of this blackness of the smoke of the Pit, the blindness of heart, in which the children of Disobedience blaspheme God and each other, heaven grant to you the vision of that sacred light, at pause over the place where the young Child was laid; and ordain that more and more in each coming Christmas it may be said of you, “When they saw the Star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”
Believe me your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
[1] Great;—father’s father’s mother. [↑]
[2] The papers had it that several gentlemen concurred in this piece of business; but they put the Nativity at five-and-twenty thousand, and the Agincourt, or whatever the explosive protector was called, at five hundred thousand. [↑]
[3] This last clause does not, you are however to observe, refer in the great Temporal Mind, merely to the merciful Dispensation of beer and tobacco, but to the general state of things, afterwards thus summed with exultation: “We doubt if there is a household in the kingdom which would now be contented with the conditions of living cheerfully accepted in 1825.” [↑]