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(January 1889)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. III, no. 10, January 1889, pp. 301-307
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DATA
Title for references: Keightley J - How the Christ-Child was Born
Short description:
Signed "J. Campbell Ver Planck," Julia Keightley's pre-1891-marriage name. A Christmas allegory: a small boy, Carlo, torn between his atheist father and devout, dying mother, is answered by the Christ-child of his Christmas tree, who teaches him that Christ is the inner Spirit and Voice present in all hearts and all things, not a being apart from the world.
301
How the Christ-Child was Born.
Carlo stood by the window making pictures. He made them by breathing upon the pane and drawing upon it with his fingers. His Papa was shut up in his study with all the nasty bottles and jars and things. His Mamma was where she always was now,—upstairs in bed, looking so white and tired. The servants were in the kitchen laughing over the very biggest turkey you ever saw, and Carlo was just here in the parlor, alone and cross and tired. He was tired of his play things; tired of the Christmas tree; tired of having a good time with his little cousins who had just gone home. He felt just like being a torment to somebody; that was what nurse called him when he began to fidget and ask questions.
When you are a little boy a great many questions come popping into your head, and you think grown people are put there to answer them.
302 Carlo supposed God put them there; He seemed to do all that was done; at least the grown people said so. But Carlo wondered why God did not make them tell things right; some of their answers were certainly wrong because Carlo could not understand them. They made the world out to be quite another place from what Carlo saw. He had eyes; he could see very well; and he didn't see anywhere some of the things that grown people said were there. They were silly to suppose that he, a big boy of five years, would believe such stuff about babies, for instance. He never, never found one under the cabbages, though he had looked every day since his new little cousin had come to the world. Why should the grown people find all the babies? They didn't get up so early as the children. And when people died; that was another thing. They were put in holes in the ground. No grown person—fond as they were of puzzling children—had ever said they weren't. Except, indeed, Uncle Dick, who said sometimes they were burnt and sometimes they were roasted and eaten. That was in foreign countries, however, and Carlo didn't believe in foreign countries. He believed in what he saw, and his Papa, who was a very wise Professor, said that was the only wise way. But the sharp eyes of Carlo saw that his Mamma always looked sad at such words; looked sad, indeed, at much that his Papa told him; "just like she looks when she wishes I wouldn't," thought Carlo. And he had heard nurse say to cook that his Papa was "a worse hay then than all thim Protestants." He was sure this must be some dreadful thing, because nurse said it with the same voice in which she told Carlo what became of bad, bad boys when they died.
Altogether there were many questions Carlo wanted answered, if only the grown-ups would tell him the same things. They didn't; they never did. When he asked his Papa what Christmas was, for instance, he said it was "a fool's day,"—whatever that was. He said he wouldn't have a Christmas in his house if Carlo's Mamma were not so sentimental and so ill. And Santa Claus. His nurse had told him about Santa Claus, and had even shown him the real picture of the saint. But when he had said, "Papa! what is Santa Claus?", Papa had answered in his very gruffest voice, "A lie!" Only think! But how could there be a picture of him if he wasn't alive somewhere? Carlo asked his Mamma next, and she said, "Santa Claus is a real spirit of love and kindness, who comes every Christmas to children whose parents love them." As for nurse, she just held up her hands and exclaimed, "Master Carlo! Where do ye expect to go to whin ye die, if ye don't belave Santa Claus is a little, fat, rale, live gintleman, what will lave yees a bunch av sticks an' ye're a bad bye, Sor!" It was so about everything. The grown-ups all told you different stories, and frowned at you if you didn't believe them all at once.
If they only knew how tired a child gets sometimes with all their mixed-up tales, and how many new questions come popping into his head then!
Now there was one, this very minute. It was a question that was an old friend of Carlo's. He had been asking it ever since he could remember, every once in a while. He wondered what "God" was, and why He let grown-up people be naughty, and not children. Nurse was always talking about Him, and how angry He would be for every fault. "The badder a boy is, the more God keeps coming around!," poor Carlo cried out. "I should think He'd hate to be so near, always getting children scolded. Why don't he never come when I'm good? Perhaps because being good is so dreadful stupid," thought poor Carlo. Down deep in his little heart was a thought he was afraid of; a thought which he knew would draw down upon him the frowns and anger of all his little world. It was a thought only to be whispered to a bird in a tree; or to the moon on bright nights; or perhaps to some trusted companion when you were both naughty and in punishment, two stubborn little rebels together. This was the thought,—if only you please won't be shocked at it. "Perhaps there isn't any God at all! Perhaps He's just an ogre made up by the big people, like the one in Jack-the-Giant-Killer, on purpose to make boys behave!" Some days Carlo felt sure this was true; and he knew, he knew his Papa would not scold him for saying so. What he feared was the sad, sad look in the eyes of his pretty Mamma. But he could think, and think he did, that if a boy was to behave like this God of theirs did; spying, meddling, killing people in Bible stories, and being different to everybody; always on the side of the grown-ups and always hard on the children; Carlo was sure such a boy would be put into dark closets for life. "It just makes me mad," thought Carlo, "to have them say He loves me. He's nasty; I don't want Him to love me. He made His little boy grow up so unhappy and be killed for me. I'm glad I ain't God's little boy and I won't be, either." By this it may be seen that Carlo's Papa was partly right when he said the boy would get no good from Sunday School. But like Carlo himself, his Father dreaded the mournful look in the eyes of his dying young wife. "There are times in life," he groaned, "when a man has to choose between being a brute or a liar." Uncle Dick had suggested that there was a third way, a golden mean between the atheism of the Father and the strict theology of the Mother, but while she lay there dying, trying with her last breath, as it were, to bias the fresh young soul of her son, for whom she feared perdition if she could not set his mind in a fixed direction before leaving him;—while she so lay, it was impossible to wound her. Uncle Dick resigned himself and trusted to Carlo himself; to something that he was sure was in Carlo, and would some day speak to the boy. Meanwhile,303 how sad to see the awful waste of energies directed to the thwarting of nature, to the attempts to alter the immutable Laws!
Carlo's last thought made him fling himself impatiently on the rug by the fire, the better to gaze up at the Christ-child on the Christmas tree. It had wings, and a star on its forehead. It was all gold and pink and white, like pretty Mamma, and Carlo loved it. He hated to think that such a lovely being had been nailed on an awful cross, had grown up to be a man, just like Papa's friends, only better, he supposed, and had been so good that people hated him and killed him. "It is stupid to be good, and people hate men for it out in the big world," mused Carlo. His little brain ached with all the contradictions about him. Unknown to himself, the child felt the strain of the contest which was killing his Mother; which was rending the world all about him; the contest between Science and Theology, and, still more, between Matter and Spirit.
He looked up at the shining figure on the tree, and said in his clear young voice, "Christ-child, I do wish you would tell me the real, true Truth."
It was so still that Carlo heard all the clocks ticking. There was a pause. The child lay so still, with the fire shining on his curls, that you would have thought him asleep.
Then the Christ-child spoke in a voice like the chime of bells, and said: "I will, Carlo! What do you want to know?"
You may be surprised, you big people. Carlo was not. He had always known that there are fairies, and that things can speak. He once talked with a squirrel in a tree, though neither of them made a sound. Children know well that all that you can think is possible. So he simply answered in a pleased little tone, "Then tell me, Christ-child, how you can be God if you were a man, and if you're up there on my Christmas-tree."
"I am not up on your tree," said the Christ-child.
"Oh! Christ-child! Do you tell stories too? I hear you speaking up there."
"That is not myself," said the Christ-child. "That is my picture. You have known before now, Carlo, that pictures could speak."
"Yes; all the pictures talk to children," the boy assented. "I hope I shan't forget it when I grow up. But where are you really, then?"
"I am everywhere, Carlo. Everything is my picture, and all try to speak of me. I am in the stars and in the glowworms; I am in the winds and in the mosses; I am in the fruits, in the oceans, in the storms, and in the heart. I am All. I am God."
"But how can you be so big, if you are just the Christ-child?"
304 "They call me that when I am young," the voice said. "But I am not in one little body, like yours, Carlo. I am in all bodies, but they are not me. Listen! You will feel me in yours!"
Carlo started. Down in his heart he felt a stir, a strange sweet feeling that filled him so full of joy.
"Here I am," said the voice in his heart. "When you do wrong, it is I who speak to you and make you sorry."
"I thought that was Carlo's own self," cried the boy.
"It is yourself, but I am yourself, Carlo. I am the inner Voice in your heart. I live in the hearts of all men and all things. I am the within of all creatures and all beings. Long, long ago I slept in the Heavens. Then I woke, and I came into the world. I came because even God wants to feel and to know the great world which is himself. When I came I was a child, because I had not grown up in that world. You know what growing pains are, Carlo! When I entered into all these bodies, when I tried to make them speak of me, and tried to make them so pure and good that they should become myself, and when they would not, then they crucified me. The nails and the thorns are their evil deeds. And when men are entirely wicked, then they kill the voice in their hearts."
"But you are alive all the same, and I don't understand that."
"I am alive because I am the Christ-spirit."
"What's a spirit?", Carlo interrupted.
305 "I cannot tell you. But you may feel it. When you gave your lunch to the lame beggar yesterday, you felt a spirit in your heart. When you said you had been good, and mamma kissed you, but you knew you had told a story, you felt a spirit inside that reproached you and would not let you rest. When the storm howls outside and you lie listening to music stealing through the darkness and over the uproar of the storm, and you feel safe and happy without knowing why, then you feel a spirit. When you look up at the bright stars and one shines and shines till you can't look away, but you love it and something goes out of you to the star, and something comes from the star to your heart, then you feel your spirit and the star-spirit meeting."
"Then what I feel is a spirit?"
"No, Carlo. But that which causes all these things; that which is behind everything; that which you cannot see or hear, but only feel when you are very still; that is Spirit and in it I am. I ride in that feeling as your heart rides in you."
"And why do you take so much trouble for everything, Christ-child?"
"Ah, Carlo! My Carlo! I love men. They may be mine. They may grow up to be me. I cannot tell you how to-day. It is a long, long story. But I will tell it every day, if you will only listen. I will teach you better than any one can if you will only ask me in your heart."
306 "And what will you teach me first, Christ-child?"
"To love all beings, for all are mine, and I am speaking in the heart of all. Even the stones grow through the wonderful music of my Voice. If you kill the bird, you kill my picture, and you drive me out of that pretty form I loved. If you strike a child, you strike my image. No one can hurt me, or pain me, or kill me. For I am God. But these creatures which I came to help, to raise up to great Beings, they can be destroyed and scattered for a time. Even a little child can interrupt my work for a while. If you do not listen to me, Carlo; if you do not obey me when I speak in your heart, and believe my voice above all others, then I cannot join you to myself; then we cannot grow up to be one great, wise Being; then I cannot take you home to God where we are one, you and I. And thus you can prevent my work."
"When I want to be bad, is it you who speak to me then?," said Carlo, puzzled.
"No. It is yourself, that thinks it does not know me. It is because you do not know that I am really Carlo; I am what Carlo may grow up to be, but what he is not yet."
"How shall I know which Voice is you, then, Christ-child?"
"You may know by this. I shall never tell you to treat any person, or anything, any differently than you would me myself. I will only speak to you in gentle, quiet hours. And often you will make mistakes, for that is just what you are put into the world for, Carlo; you are put there to learn to know my Voice from all the rest. If you try, you will know. When people have puzzled you so much, it was I said down in your heart, 'Never mind! Let us go play.' For it was not time for you to think of those things. Often I whispered to you, 'Carlo! it is not true.' I am always speaking from your heart and from the hearts of all things. Listen for me. Try to know me when I speak from the lips of other people. For I love you! I am yourself. And you, little Carlo, you may grow to be everywhere in the great world. Wait, try, and you will understand."
307 "I will try, Christ-child! I will try!" cried Carlo, springing to his feet. The room was quite still. The shining figure hung upon the tree. Everything seemed as usual. Yet down in his heart Carlo felt a strange warm feeling, a something bigger than himself. When he tried to tell his mamma, he could not make it real, and she said it was a dream; but whether or not, on that Christmas Day the Christ-child was born again.
J. Campbell Ver Planck.
Footnotes