Encore Presentation: Dickens, Christianity & the Timeless Message of A Christmas Carol
PG here. Why play a video on Scrooge on Christmas and New Years Day? To save the World. We are all Scrooge and we need to repent especial businesses, governments, employers. We do not pay our employees nor our friends nor are neighbors anything. Only use gold and silver coins. Fiat paper is counterfeit money it is the essence of "scrooge". Worse. Never paying for anything and people are enslaved around the world never paid gold and silver coins: "Real money" that is worth something. It is inhumane, treason, slavery of others to not pay men with gold and silver coins. It means people see each other as worthless. See themselves as worthless people act the way they are treated by others. When you are paid with gold and silver coins you are then being RESPECTED. Treated fairly, justly and not like a dog or a piece of crap. You'll respect yourself and others. Finally.
John Locke a physician, and jurist wrote the two treaties of government. Of Property
God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And though
Of the State of Nature
To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction, is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. . . .
Alex Jones The Committee of 300. Get rid of the 10th Amendment. States Rights: God led me to say Ohio is my country. It is sovereign. We Get all our laws from God. 39:44 https://www.bitchute.com/video/s4FhmQXW0m6R/ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/#:~:text=The%20powers%20not%20delegated%20to,respectively%2C%20or%20to%20the%20people.
"Dickens, Christianity & the Timeless Message of A Christmas Carol" Christmas Carole was written has a Christmas song. Fred is actually an evangelist and Scrooges name means God is my stone of help. Encore premiere of our show on Christmas. What is Ebenezer in the Bible? Hebrew ebhen hā-ʽezer stone of help; from the application of this name by Samuel to the stone which he set up in commemoration of God's help to the Israelites in their victory over the Philistines at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7:12)Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/0gl6iuDJzfBb/
Charles Dickens, Christianity, & the Timeless Message of A Christmas Carol
There is something about Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol that cuts deep to the hardest of hearts. Indeed, there are common themes throughout all of Dickens' novels that move people to make changes in their own lives after encountering the characters in these timeless tales. What is it about these fictional stories that have moved people to tears over and over?
The answer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Charles Dickens had a hard life growing up. As a child his father was put into debters prison and he worked sometimes 14 hrs a day in a shoe blacking factory. He knew first hand what hardship was like and he should have become a bitter old man just like his rascally character, Ebenezer Scrooge. What changed the coarse of Dickens' life? The teachings of Jesus. He truly believed that the central themes of the Gospel, to love God and love your neighbor were the most powerful and righteous forces in the universe. He lived these principles out, taught them to his children, and taught them to us through parables and stories even a child could understand.
Join us for a brief history of Dickens' life that I hope inspires you to be a better person. To love more, to forgive more, and to seek justice more.
God Bless and Merry Christmas
God And Scrooge- How Charles Dickens Pursued 'Real Christianity' CBN
God And Scrooge- How Charles Dickens Pursued 'Real Christianity' CBN
Letter from Dickens to one of his critics:
"'All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament. All my social abuses are shown as departures from its Spirit. All my good people are humble, charitable, faithful, forgiving, over and over again. I claim them in expressed words as disciples of the Founder of our religion.'"
For example, in A Christmas Carol, Colledge says Marley's warning to Scrooge about what it means to truly live life reflects the importance of imitating Christ.
"The taking care of humanity, the thinking about my fellow man, doing unto others as I'd have them do unto me," Colledge explained. "For Dickens, the Golden Rule was absolutely crucial."
American Magazine- No Scrooge-He, The Christianity of Charles Dickens
Although he wanted to be popular and become wealthy through his writing, Charles Dickens, the author of A Christmas Carol, always had really only one goal as a novelist: He wanted his novels to be “parables,” stories that would emphasize the teachings of Christ.
The one aspect of his life that best reveals Dickens’s deep Christian faith is his fiction. He believed firmly that he had a responsibility as an artist to make clear to his readers how to lead a moral life; and he wanted to show, through his novels, that Christianity was important to their own beliefs and actions. A note he wrote to his friend the Rev. D. Macrae expressed exactly how he felt:
With a deep sense of my great responsibility always upon me when I exercise my art, one of my most constant and most earnest endeavours has been to exhibit in all my good people some faint reflections of the teachings of our great Master, and unostentatiously to lead the reader up to those teachings as the great source of moral goodness. All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament; all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit; all my good people are humble, charitable, faithful, and forgiving. Over and over again, I claim them in express words as disciples of the Founder of our religion.
A Tale of Conversion
Arguably the most beloved novelist of all time, Dickens is best known for A Christmas Carol. In his tale of Scrooge’s “conversion” from selfishness to selflessness, Dickens succeeded in calling attention to what are regarded as common Christian themes, centering on redemption and charity. What makes Scrooge such a wonderful character, in spite of his reputation as greedy and uncaring, is that he is really a Dickensian Everyman; he is the representation of all human beings who are seeking to find the secret of what makes life meaningful. Scrooge asks the same questions all human beings ask: How does one find salvation?
Dickens’s own view of Scrooge’s “redemption” becomes evident at the end of the novel. Unlike the unredeemed Scrooge of the beginning of the story, described as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” the redeemed Scrooge is a changed person:
He went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.
In his writings and speeches he portrays the life of Jesus as the best example one could have for leading a truly religious life. He was so adamant in this belief that in his will he left instructions to his children “to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man’s narrow construction of its letter here or there.”
Robert C. Hanna has recently written two books about Dickens’s Christian teachings.
The first, The Dickens Family Gospel, focuses on the ways that Dickens, as a “Christian parent and teacher,” attempted to give his own children a sound religious education, one based chiefly on the New Testament. Dickens himself wrote to one of his own children: “I most strongly and affectionately impress upon you the priceless value of the New Testament, and the study of that Book as the one unfailing guide in life.” The famous novelist also wrote many prayers for his children. Hanna cites one: “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ taught to His disciples and to us, and what we should remember every day of our lives, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our soul, and with all our strength; to love our neighbors as ourselves, to do unto other people as we would have them do unto us, and to be charitable and gentle to all. There is no other commandment, our Lord Jesus Christ said, greater than these.”
In his second book, The Dickens Christian Reader, Hanna again shows the novelist’s firm Christian convictions based on both the Old and New Testaments. Most readers will know the passage from Deuterono-my (15:7) on which A Christmas Carol rests, but there are many other passages in the Bible that are reflected in Dickens’s novels. In David Copperfield, for instance, the forgiveness of Steerforth, Emily’s seducer, by Mr. Peggotty, Emily’s uncle, illustrates clearly the words of Mt 7:1 (“Judge not, that you be not judged.”) and Mt 18:21-22 (“How often must I forgive him? Seven times?” “No,” Jesus replied, “not seven times, I say, but seventy times seven times.”) More familiar, perhaps, is the allusion to Jn 15:13 (“There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”) in A Tale of Two Cities, in which Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine in place of Charles Darnay.
These Christian themes are scattered throughout all of Dickens’s novels, but they are perhaps most prominent in The Life of Our Lord, a book that Dickens called an “easy version” of the Gospels. This work, written in 1846 for reading aloud to his children, was not published until 1934. (Dickens’s own title was The Children’s New Testament.) More than any other of his writings, it reflects the spirit of what he called “real Christianity,” by which he meant the Christian virtues of trust, kindness and forgiveness. It illustrates clearly his view of Jesus Christ and his views of Christian commitment.
The Life of Our Lord illustrates precisely what Dickens wanted his children to believe in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. First, Dickens depicts Jesus as kind and loving. He tells his children that he is anxious that they know something about the history of Jesus Christ because, he tells them, no one ever lived “who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in anyway ill or miserable, as he was.” He describes Jesus as a child who will grow up to be “so good that God will love him as his own son; and he will teach men to love one another, and not to quarrel with one another.”
Another section of the Life treats the miracles of Christ. Jesus performed miracles here on earth, and these miracles were done because, Dickens tells his children, “God had given Jesus Christ the power to do such wonders; and he did them that people might know he was not a common man, and might believe what he taught them, and also believe that God had sent him.” Throughout the book Dickens emphasizes those qualities we associate with a loving God: kindness, charity, forgiveness and mercy. At the end of the book he summarizes these Christian virtues:
Remember!—it is christianity [sic] TO DO GOOD always—even to
those who do evil to us. It is christianity to love our neighbour as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them Do to us. It is christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts.
Throughout this work, then, Dickens reinforces his values and ideas: the belief in a loving God, not a God of stern judgment; the rejection of theological controversy; the acceptance of an inclusive rather than an exclusive religion; and the emphasis on doing good works.
Loving Others
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens’s last completed novel, treats his favorite themes: class, education and mercenary attitudes. In this novel Dickens condemns mercenary marriages and class prejudice and emphasizes the value of education. He depicts the positive characteristics of his own Christian beliefs in Bleak House, demonstrating through the character of Esther Summerson the way that a selfless life, one based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, can help others. At the end of the novel Esther, now married to a doctor, muses on her life:
We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we have quite enough.... I never lie down at night, but I know that in the course of the day he has alleviated pain, and soothed some fellow-creature in a time of need. I know that from the beds of those
who were past recovery, thanks have often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is this not to be rich?
For the Christian Dickens, it is clear that Esther provides, as one critic has put it, “a moral lens on characters and events and shows us how to live with Christian responsibility in an imperfect world.”
In Great Expectations, Dickens illustrates the words of Mt 6:1-4 by having Pip anonymously help his friend Herbert Pockets. “I begged Wemmick,” Pip says, “to understand that my help must always be rendered without Herbert’s knowledge or suspicion.” Clearly this echoes Matthew: “Be on guard against performing religious acts for people to see.... Keep your deeds of mercy secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”
The Public Square Christmas in American 1844 Part 1
Time stamps 14:45-15:25 Who was Dickens
Dickens not only used his works to convey Christian morals he also outlived his Christian life as an example. He practiced Christianity by devoting his time and energy for charity. Through his speeches, public readings and writing he fetched support for adult education, health and sanitary organizations, prison reforms, and recreational societies. He worked to get funds to provide relief and pension for disabled writers and artists. Dickens involved himself in supporting the projects of Miss Angela Burdett- Coutts, a wealthiest woman in Victorian England. ‘The Ragged Schools’- Instructions to the outcasts in London and ‘Urania Cottage’- the home for homeless women are two of her philanthropic project. Dickens wrote series of letter to the national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom titled Daily News and an article for Household Words, a weekly magazine encouraging support for the project. Urania Cottage is setup by Dickens himself and managed behalf of Angela Burdett Coutts to rescue fallen women from the life of prostitution or crime. He also insisted the need for Christian moral education in the home. In one of the opening of public libraries, Dickens has said that the underlying purpose of education is to bring people closer to an understanding of Christ. Dickens wrote to David Dickinson as a response to his criticism of reference to the doctrine of the new birth in The Pickwick Papers (266-67) as “That every man who seeks heaven must be born again, in good thoughts of his maker”. The Victorians followed Sabbatarianism and denied to help the needy on Sabbath day. This was hated by Dickens and he followed the Christ teaching “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Thus he worked even on the Sabbath day to raise funds for the needy. Dickens saw the Old Testament as the set of rigid rules and he hated it as it was reflected in the attitude of the Victorians. He valued the New Testament more as Christ not only preached but lived and demonstrated his teachings. As the teachings of the New Testament have parables and simple language so as to reach the layman Dickens followed the same simple language in his writing of novels. He stood for the poor and for the fallen people. He believed in forgiveness, acceptance and redemption from sin as The New Testament teaches in Ephesians 1.7- “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”.
https://ejmcm.com/article_7454_efd321fc7c0f1319c2affced4e313cb5.pdf
Dickens’ Disgust with American Slavery
Dickens’ travels to America in 1843 inspired him to write A Christmas Carol. While in America, he was impressed with some Christian abolitionists. He admired the American Church’s advocacy for child education and prison reform, but was appalled and amazed at the open Christian religiosity in the face of the sinful oppression of slavery; but he was appalled at some openly Christian, pious slave owners. He could not reconcile the Christian ethic with the oppression of slavery. 6 Introduction He wrote that slavery created an atmosphere of “decay and gloom.”4 He even soured on abolitionists whom he found hypocritical by their arrogant attitude. He later illustrates this view of American in Abolitionists who patronizingly viewed the African race as “an absurd and inferior part of creation,”5 in his book Martin Chuzzelwit. In a letter to his friend, John Foster, Charles Dickens rebutted the American idea that slavery was sanctioned by Scripture. He found it ridiculously naive for anyone to believe ; he felt God could and would protect slaves if their masters were benevolent and obedient to the Scriptures. When a Christian defended the belief system of the day by citing Ephesians 6:5-9, Dickens’ rebuke was, “All human beings knew that there were bad masters, cruel masters and masters who disgraced the form they bore, (these) were matters of history, whose existence were undisputed as slaves themselves.”6 His clear point was that not all masters would behave toward their slaves as though they were answerable to God, so it was cruel and absurd to expect slaves to obey their masters "as they would to Christ" while claiming Scripture to defend that stand. Dickens believed that oppression of the weak was the great sin of Christian society. Christians "disgraced the form they bore," the image of God who is full of grace and love, when they exploited and oppressed people who were created in the image of God. Dickens’ convictions are found in Scripture. Jesus himself told us: “What you've done to the least of these, you've done unto me.” Matthew 25:45 We dishonor God’s image when we dishonor people created in His image. The simple instinct of kindness that God gives us tells us that exploiting people is wrong. It enraged Charles Dickens that Christians could be involved in the calloused materialism of slavery. This is reflected in his book Martin Chuzzlewith, but few have taken notice that it was at this time, he wrote the moral tale A Christmas Carol that encouraged the miserly Scrooge to look outside his locked bedroom door to care for the needs of others. The title A Christmas Carol was intentional. Carols have a rich history of using imagery and metaphor to communicate God’s redemptive work in Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” 7
Dickens Travels to America and Wants to Meet John Quincy Adams
Traveling to America Timestamp Time stamp 18:35-26:00
A Christmas Carol Begins…
The Name… Ebenezer
Charles Dickens uses the name Ebenezer with a purpose as well. In the Old Testament, when biblical prophets and the patriarchs passed through a trial, they would set up an altar or a stone of remembrance, to remind themselves how God had led and sustained them through their trials. These stones were called Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12) which Scripture define as “the Lord is my help”. These stones were a witness of God’s sustaining 8 Introduction power in a believer’s past and His promise in how He would lead them in the future. They were used as a tangible sign of intangible truth that these believers had learned about God’s leading, providence and care.
Charles Dickens uses the name Ebenezer with a purpose as well. In the Old Testament, when biblical prophets and the patriarchs passed through a trial, they would set up an altar or a stone of remembrance, to remind themselves how God had led and sustained them through their trials. These stones were called Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12) which Scripture define as “the Lord is my help”. These stones were a witness of God’s sustaining 8 Introduction power in a believer’s past and His promise in how He would lead them in the future. They were used as a tangible sign of intangible truth that these believers had learned about God’s leading, providence and care.
Lighting Candles for Advent
The early Church began celebrating Advent around the fourth century. Advent means "coming," and the fourth-century church took a more a holistic and Biblical approach to celebrating Christ's coming than we do. The early church's intention was to set aside a season for quiet reflection— a season that did not merely meditate on Christ's birth in history. This church celebrated something called the Paraousia, which means “coming.” It focused on how Christ came in the past through through the predictions and cries of the prophets; how He comes in the present in the heart of the believer; and how He will come in the future for His final reign. This sentiment of Christ transcending time in His coming is reflected in Revelations 4:8, which teaches us that Christ's coming is eternal. He is the Christ who was, the Christ who is, and the Christ who is to come.
“We light this candle to remember all the prophets of old that God sent us to tell us of Christ’s coming. We light this candle to remind ourselves that many people are still waiting for the coming of Christ in their lives. We light this candle to remind ourselves that as Christ was foretold to come in the past so He is foretold to come in the future and, we, the church await His Second Coming.” “
Dickens Describes the Misery Scrooge….
Oh he was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office during the dog days and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.8 ” Our first glimpse of Scrooge finds him white knuckling his way through life. He is alone in the world and self-reliant. How hard it is for a solitary being to huddle in the cold. Scrooge trusts no one, neither God nor man. Because Scrooge does not trust the gentle hand of God’s providence, his hands are clinched tightly around, for survival’s sake, his own resources. He thinks that he is his only provider. Because he has to grasp so tightly, he can not open his hand in fellowship to God or man. However, as we follow Scrooge to his home, we discover that Scrooge is not just a greedy, selfish man; he is a lost soul who is hiding from his world: Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” 13 “He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help but fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.”9
A Christmas Carol 1951 Version
The Miserly Scrooge
3 mins- Scrooge is asked to help charity…of course he denies them
Back to the Public Square- Scrooge’s Nephew Scrooge Comes to Invites Scrooge to Christmas
Enter the First Evangelist- nephew Fred- Min 32
Part 2
Unveiling The Christian Side Of Charles Dickens By Dr.T.Sridevi1 , Dr.G.Immanuel
The Religious Nature of Victorian Literature
The Victorian Era was considered to be religious and strong in Christian faith. Religion had
its influence in literature as the writers used literature a medium to kindle the faith of the Victorians.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution shook the world. Paul B. Badey, a Ph.D scholar from Nigeria
in his article ‘The Christian Implications of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution’ states,
No matter how rational and scientific this theory may appear, it shocked the church and other liberal
thinkers. Darwin believed that human beings developed from an earlier species of apes that changed
millions of years ago. This is at variance with the traditional theory, that each species was created by
God. (Badey, 1,2))
It altered the Christian belief that God created man and denied the existence of God. Thus Charles
Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 created a crisis of faith among the believers. This created a sense
of responsibility among the writers of Victorian Era to use their piece of work to draw the people
back to Christian faith. Many writers used Biblical allusions and themes in their works to
communicate the significance of religion and to bring the people closer to God. Writers like
Christina Rossetti, William Golding, Ernest Hemmingway etc, used religious motifs in their works to
share their beliefs and install faith among the readers. Christina Rossetti who is known for her
popular sonnets and ballads is committed to High Anglicanism and thus her works like The World,
Goblin Market and Other Poems reflects the disastrous consequences of forgetting God and running
behind worldly pleasures. In A Better Resurrection she portrays the lack of spiritual sustainability in
European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine
ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 07, Issue 11, 2020
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the life of the people. Another popular writer of that era William Golding takes the people back to
the first sin of man through his novel Lord of the Flies. The island that is corrupted by the arrival of
humans in the novel symbolises the Garden of Eden. The character Piggy represents human
intelligence, civilization and arrogance. Similarly Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
has major figures of the New Testament from the Bible. Santiago represents God like figure whose
struggle to catch the fish Marlin and the injury in his palm symbolises Christ’s suffering on the cross.
Santiago’s teaching on fishing to Manolin represents Christ’s teaching to his disciples. Thus the
novel is rich with Christian imagery. God’s Grandeur one of the famous religious poems by G M
Hopkins condemns modern man for his thirst on profit and separation from God’s voice. The lines
read:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell (II. 5-7).
The repetitions of ‘have trod’ shows the disgust of the poet over the man’s long-failing ignorance
and selfishness. The words ‘seared’, ‘bleared’, ‘smeared’ represents man’s monotonous daily chores
of modern life that keeps them busy and separates them from serving their creator. Hopkins believed
that reconnection with nature (God’s creation) would invigorate a relationship with God. Robert
Browning one of the late Victorian poets used literature to preach about God, immortality in his
works. The Ring and the Book uses many biblical references to illustrate the character of each of his
diverse matters. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam mourns for the loss of Tennyson’s friend.
Though the poet begins the poem with the tone of despair he ends it with hope of life after death.
Thus through literature the writers conveyed the message of hope of Heaven, the existence of God
and the necessity of dependence on God.
Our Second Video Illustration - A Christmas Carol 1984 Version
Enter Marley as a Prophet
“Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in which was now his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.” “It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night: He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth for such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchants long ago, and paved all around with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on cloud like feather beds, Abrahams, Belshazars, Apostles putting off to sea in boats, hundreds of figures to 14 Chapter One attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet’s rod, and swallowed the whole.”10
Notice the biblical imagery that Charles Dickens uses to assist in describing Scrooge’s fireplace. The painted figures are telling of the Scriptures and the faith journeys of those within the Scriptures. It is in this setting that Marley’s face appears to Scrooge through the prophet’s rod. Who are these prophets? These are the people who….. “Those wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented — They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.” Hebrews 11:37-38
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-4438-2957-1-sample.pdf
“Oh captive, bound and double ironed,” cried the phantom, “Not to know that any Christian Spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I.” “Why did I walk through the crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there not poor homes to which its light would have conducted me.”11
Ah, here is the “Nativity Story” in A Christmas Carol!
1984
min 34- Fezzwig, the Kind Benevolent Boss
min 48:45 Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchet’s Home
1951-
min 54 if he is to die let him die
min 100- 32
min 111 :35
The redeemed Scrooge is now fully aware of the true meaning of the Christmas season: remembering the birth of Christ and unselfishly helping others. Our final view of Scrooge reinforces the sentiment that all things are possible at this magical time of year. “It was always said of him,” Dickens tells us, “that he knew how to keep Christmas well.... May that truly be said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one!” With the conversion of Scrooge, Dickens illustrates that his readers, too, can also be converted from a harsh, complacent, selfish worldview to one in which love, hope and charity are possible.
Scrooge's Excitment at Giving Back
min 117
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