By the Christmas Fire

by Samuel McChord Crothers

"Now these inequalities do exist, and so long as they exist all sorts of helpful offices have place. The trouble is that good people are all the time doing their best to make the inequalities permanent. You have heard how divines have interpreted the text, 'The poor ye have always with you.' The good old doctrine has been that the relation between those who have not and those who have should be that of one-sided dependence. The Ignorant must depend upon the Wise, the Weak upon the Strong, the Poor upon the Rich. As for the black, yellow, and various parti-colored races, they must depend upon the White Man, who gayly walks off with their burdens without so much as saying 'By your leave.'

"Now it is against this whole theory, however beautifully or piously expressed, that the protest has come. The Spirit of Democracy is a bold iconoclast, and goes about smashing our idols. He laughs at the pretensions of the Strong and the Wise and the Rich to have created the things they possess. They are not the masters of the feast. They are only those of us who have got at the head of the line, sometimes by unmannerly pushing, and have secured a place at the first table. We are not here by their leave, and we may go directly to the source of supplies. They are not benefactors, but beneficiaries. The Spirit of Democracy insists that they shall know their place. He rebukes even the Captains of Industry, and when they answer insolently, he suggests that they be reduced to the ranks. Even toward bishops and other clergy his manner lacks that perfect reverence that belonged to an earlier time; yet he listens to them respectfully when they talk sense.

"It is this spirit that plays the mischief with many of the merry old ways of doing good. To scatter turkeys or colleges among a multitude of gratefully dependent folks is the very poetry of philanthropy. But to satisfy the curiosity of an independent citizen as to your title to these things is a different matter. The more independent people are, the harder it is to do good to them. They are apt to have their own ideas of what they want."

"It's a pity, then, to have them so independent," said Scrooge; "it spoils people to get above their proper station in life."

"Ah! there you are," I answered; "I feared it would come to that. With all your exuberant good-will you haven't altogether got beyond the theory that has come down from the time when the first cave-dweller bestowed on his neighbor the bone he himself didn't need, and established the pleasant relation of benefactor and beneficiary. It gave him such a warm feeling in his heart that he naturally wanted to make the relation permanent. First Cave-dweller felt a little disappointed next day when Second Cave-dweller, instead of coming to him for another bone, preferred to take his pointed stick and go hunting on his own account. It seemed a little ungrateful in him, and First Cave-dweller felt that it would be no more than right to arrange legislation in the cave so that this should not happen again.

"Christian Charity is a very beautiful thing, but sometimes it gets mixed up with these ideas of the cave-dwellers. Sometimes it perpetuates the very evils that it laments. Perhaps you won't mind my reading a bit from a homily of St. Augustine on this very subject. St. Augustine was a man who was a good many centuries ahead of his time. He begins his argument by saying: 'All love, dear brethren, consists in wishing well to those who are loved.' This seems like a harmless proposition. It is the sort of thing you might hear in a sermon and think no more about. But St. Augustine goes to the root of the matter, and asks what it means to wish well to the person you are trying to help. He comes to the conclusion that if you really wish him well, you must wish him to be at least as well off and as well able to take care of himself as you are. The first thing you know, you are wishing to have him reach a point where he will not look up to you at all. 'There is a certain friendliness by which we desire at one time or another to do good to those we love. But how if there be no good that we can do? We ought not to wish men to be wretched that we may be enabled to practice works of mercy. Thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it that none hungered and thou hadst none to give to. Thou clothest the naked; oh, that all men were clothed and that this need existed not! Take away the wretched, and the works of mercy will be at an end, but shall the ardor of charity be quenched? With a truer touch of love thou lovest the happy man to whom there is no good office that thou canst do; purer will that love be and more unalloyed. For if thou hast done a kindness to the wretched, perhaps thou wishest him to be subject to thee. He was in need, thou didst bestow; thou seemest to thyself greater because thou didst bestow than he upon whom it was bestowed. Wish him to be thine equal.'

"There, Scrooge, is the text for the little Christmas sermon that I should like to preach to you and to your elderly wealthy friends who feel that they are not so warmly appreciated as they once were. 'Wish him to be thine equal'—that is the test of charity. It is all right to give a poor devil a turkey. But are you anxious that he shall have as good a chance as you have to buy a turkey for himself? Are you really enthusiastic about so equalizing opportunities that by and by you shall be surrounded by happy, self-reliant people who have no need of your benefactions?

"Do you know, Scrooge, I sometimes think that it is time for some one to write a new 'Christmas Carol,' a carol that will make the world know how people are feeling and some of the best things they are doing in these days. It should be founded on Justice and not on Mercy. We should feed up Bob Cratchit and put some courage into him, and he should come to you and ask a living wage not as a favor, but as a right. And you, Scrooge, would not be offended at him, but you would sit down like a sensible man and figure it out with him. And when the talk was over, you wouldn't feel particularly generous, and he wouldn't feel particularly grateful; it would be simple business. But you would like each other better, and the business would seem more worth while.

"And then, when you went out with the Spirit of Christmas, you would ask the Spirit of Democracy to go with you and show you the new things that are most worth seeing. He wouldn't wait for the night, for the cheeriest things would be those that go on during business hours. He would show you some sights to make your heart glad. He would show you vast numbers of persons who have got tired of the worship of the Blessed Inequalities, and who are going in for the Equalities. They have a suspicion that there is not so much difference between the Great and the Small as has been supposed, and that what difference there is does not prevent a frank comradeship and a perfect understanding. They think it is better to work with people than to work for them. They think that one of the inalienable rights of man is the right to make his own mistakes and to learn the lesson from them without too much prompting. So they are a little shy of many of the more intrusive forms of philanthropy. But you should see what they are up to.

"The Spirit of Democracy will take you to visit a school that is not at all like the school you used to go to, Scrooge. The teacher has forgotten his rod and his rules and his airs of superiority. He is not teaching at all, so far as you can see. He is the centre of a group of eager learners, who are using their own wits and not depending on his. They are so busy observing, comparing, reasoning, and finding out things for themselves that he can hardly get in a word edgewise. And he seems to like it, though it is clear that if they keep on at this rate they will soon get ahead of their teacher.