Middletown transcript., 1888-12-06
The Inspiration OF the Christmas
Literature OF To- Day.

direct inspiration of the new Christmas
literature, as it was of the old, but in
a far wider, higher, and more luminous
sense, with implications infinitely more
significant. This literature does not
mock at gifts and aims for the holiday
season or any other, but it warns rs
that they are provisional merely, ex-
pediantial. temporary and that the
practice of charity In this form is not
inconsistent with the hardest selfish
ness. 1t appeals to no sentimental i'm
pulse, but confronts its readers with
themselves, and with the problem
which it grows less and less easy to
shirk. Turkeys to the turkeyless, with
celery and cranberries galore, and
nourishing wines to the sick-yes,
these are well, and very we'll /; but in
effably better it is to take thought
somehow in our social, our political,
system to prevent some future year,
decade, century, the destitution which
we now relieve. This is what the new
Christmas literature says to US, begin
ming with Lyof Tolstoi, that voice of
one crying in the wilderness. The
whole of his testimony is against the
system by which few men win wealth
and miserably waste it in idleness and
luxury, and the vast mass of men are
over-worked and underfed. From the
volume called What to DO, dealing
with the poor Of Moscow, to the latest
utterance from his seclusion-which
he calls Life, and in which he rises to
the question Of how man shall save
his soul-he bears perpetual witness
against the life that Christendom is
now living-the life that seeks the
phantom Of personal happiness, and ig-
nores the fact that there is and can be
no happiness but in the sacrifice of self
for others. Whatever we may say of
his example, we cannot deny that his
influence is increasingly vast, and that
hear him who will never
follow him to the work of the fields.
His audience is, rather oddly, made up
as yet chiefly Of cultivated people, who
have been surprised into the attitude
of listening by the spectacle of man,
noble, rich, brilliant, like Tolstoi, re-
nouncing their world as of no worth.
They hear with hesrtache and trouble
Of mind, and many think it is new
prophet come to rebuke them; but
Tolstoi himself constantly reminds
them that it is Christ who has spoken
the truth he tells, and bids them hear
Him.
Christ and the life Of Christ is at
this moment inspiring the literature of
the world as never before, and raising
it up witness against waste and want
and war. It may confess Him, as in
Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny
Him, but it cannot exclude Him and
in the degree that it ignores His spirit,
modern literature isartistically inferior.
In other words, all good literature is
now Christmas literature. The old
heathenish axiom of art for arts sake
Is dead as great Pan himself, and the
best art now tends to be art for hu-
manity's sake. It does this some-
times unconsciously, and would be de- |
FAINT of the supposition that it was
working with an ethical purpose but |
there is nothing so sanative as truth,
and the literature that shows human |
nature as human wilfulness and error
have made it is fulfilling "missionn
TO mems souls, in spits Of all theories
and professions to the contrary. Yet
,he interesting and consoling fact
about so many masters of our time is
hat they are conscious of a duty to
man in their work, and they do it with
sense that it does not begin and end
n themselves; that even art does not
compass it all, and that to amuse or
thrill their readers is no longer enough.
W. D. HowELLs, in Harper's Mag
azine for December.