A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson
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A Christmas Sermon
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Title: A Christmas Sermon
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: December 30, 2004 [eBook #14535]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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A CHRISTMAS SERMON
by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
New York
1900
A CHRISTMAS SERMON
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 le