The sanctity of that duty is the moral of Christmas, and of the “Christmas Carol.” That such a book should find an enduring place in the affectionate admiration of mankind is an inevitable result of the highest moral and mental excellence. As you turn its magical pages, you hear the midnight moaning of the winter wind, the soft rustel of the falling snow, the rattle of the hail on naked branch and window-pane and the far-off tumult of tempest-smitten seas but also there comes a vision of snug and cosey rooms, close-curtained from night and storm, wherein the lights burn brightly, and the sound of merry music mingles with the sound of merrier laughter, and all is warmth and kindness and happy content, and, looking on these pictures, you feel the full reality of cold and want and sorrow as contrasted with warmth and comfort, and recognize anew the sacred duty of striving, by all possible means, to give to every human being a cheerful home and a happy fireside.
Read at the season of the Christian festival, its pure, ennobling influence is felt to be stronger and sweeter than ever. Read at any season of the year, this genial story never fails to quicken the impulses of tender and thoughtful charity. To follow old Scrooge through the ordeal of loving discipline whereby the ghosts arouse his heart is to be warmed in every fibre of mind and body with the gentle, bountiful, ardent, affectionate Christmas glow. There is not, in all literature, a book more thoroughly saturated with the spirit of its subject than Dickens’s “Christmas Carol,” and there is no book about Christmas that can be counted its peer.
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