A CHRISTMAS SERMON

by

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

New York

1900



By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve
months;[1] and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and
seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings
have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and
sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity,
an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king--remembered and embodied all
his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the
famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying."

[Footnote 1: i.e. In the pages of _Scribner's Magazine_ (1888).]




I


An unconscionable time a-dying--there is the picture ("I am afraid,
gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours
are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of
these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very
length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured;
and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to
have served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in
the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to go
home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn
exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. _Sunt lacrymae
rerum_: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a
man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have
never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he
shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.

The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble
character. It never seems to them that they have served enough; they
have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to
be singly thankful that we are no worse.

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