Back to: Dickens A Christmas Carol and the Bible
‘You see this toothpick?’ said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.
‘I do,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You are not looking at it,’ said Scrooge.
‘But I see it,’ said the Ghost, ‘notwithstanding.’
‘Well!’ returned Scrooge, ‘I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!’
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
‘Mercy!’ he said. ‘Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?’
‘Man of the worldly mind!’ replied the Ghost, ‘do you believe in me or not?’
‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?’
‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
‘You are fettered,’ said Scrooge, trembling. ‘Tell me why?’
‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?’
1. Marleys Ghost
Like most ghosts, Marley’s appears to have a purpose and behaves reasonably; he even moves to sit down in a chair as if there were nothing odd about the scene.
Finally Scrooge is forced to come to terms with the supernatural event unfolding in his living room and ask his second question: “ . . . why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” With that question, Scrooge begins his spiritual journey; he will soon be dealing with mysteries far more complex than the formulas found in his accounting books.
The ghost of Marley comes with a single revelation and a single task.
First, he announces that life continues after death for each individual, and the quality of that life is determined by the sum total of earthly purposes and preoccupations.
He explains that he has been condemned to undertake his unearthly sojourn for seven years. His aimless wandering in heavy chains is his custom-made punishment for not having sojourned properly while alive, for not having made his way among his fellow mortals spreading “charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence.” That mode of existence, he has learned in death, is the real “business” of life—not the professional pursuits he devoted himself to in life, with Scrooge as his partner, both narrowly focused on making and hoarding their money. This “business” the ghost speaks of is, of course, the personal pursuit Scrooge had just claimed to be the only worthy of his devotion.
Mark 16:15-16
“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness
What Marley describes is very close to the Great Commission of Mark 16:15,16 “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
“I wear the chain I forged in life . I made it link by link, yard by yard. I girded it on my own free will, and on my own free will I wore it.
Scrooge trembled more and more.
‘Or would you know,’ pursued the Ghost, ‘the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!’
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.
‘Jacob,’ he said, imploringly. ‘Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!’
‘I have none to give,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It comes from other regions
2. I cannot rest, I cannot stay
By “other regions,” Marley means heaven, and by “other ministers,” he means the heavenly host. Marley speaks in veiled language because, according to a Christian tradition that Dickens follows here, Christ is not known and cannot be named in hell
“I cannot rest, I cannot stay”
The spirit, unlike the living, has no choice but is directed by a higher power
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
‘You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,’ Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
‘Slow!’ the Ghost repeated.
‘Seven years dead,’ mused Scrooge. ‘And travelling all the time!’
3. Marleys Prophecy
Marley’s prophecy to Scrooge is one of regret and of lost opportunities and chances to be useful in the lives of human kind. Listen to Marley’s regretful prophecy of his lost opportunities.
“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
In the middle of Marley’s grief of sin, Scrooge tries to legitimize his partner’s sin. Scrooge tries to comfort Marley by telling him that he was always a good businessman but Marley rebukes him by telling him that, “Human kind was my business.”
‘The whole time,’ said the Ghost. ‘No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.’
‘You travel fast?’ said Scrooge.
‘On the wings of the wind,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,’ said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,’ cried the phantom, ‘not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. 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 one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!’
‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’
4. Carol Philosophy
Just as Dickens believed in the good news of the “Carol Philosophy,” he also believed in the bad news (which reinforces the good news), as he wrote about in The Life of Our Lord, his retelling of the gospel for his children: “those who are too busy with their own profits and pleasures to think of God and of doing good, will not find such favour with Him as the sick and miserable [who do as God wants].”
By allowing the god of convenience to dictate our forms of communication we have locked ourselves into our own worlds as surely as Scrooge has taken refuge behind his locked doors of his dwelling. We can deceive ourselves and start to believe behaviors and actions take place in a vacuum, when in reality we are thread in the human community and everything we do has consequences to others in the tapestry of our human lives.
What kept Scrooge so closed up, barricaded in his office and bedroom and separated from humanity? Perhaps it was fear of rejection or abandonment. He clearly needed a healing touch in his broken and hurting past. But whatever the cause, Scrooge’s isolation made him a poorer man, who lacked the basic human compassion that is taught by Christianity.
For a Christian to follow Christ means that we can not be self sufficient and completely dependant on ourselves for our success and happiness. The gift of the dependence on God, rather than ourselves, is the realization that our resources’ are not our own, they belong to God. We are not the sole responsible party for our survival; God is ultimately responsible for our care. When we realize this tmth it is easier to open up our hands and let go of the resources that God has give us and share them with others. Christmas cannot just be about rewarding our loved ones and ourselves ones with presents. Christ came to create a greater purpose and we must live for a greater purpose. As Scrooge, we cannot truly join or minister to others until we feel safe to do so by having Christ touch our hurting past
It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said ‘I suffer most. Why did I walk through 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 no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!’
5. Marley makes his sin known Marley makes his sin plain: he failed to follow Christ, and more specifically, he failed to follow Christ’s example by serving the poor
6. The Plan
Having imparted his revelation, Marley’s ghost delivers the shocking purpose of his return. He has appeared before Scrooge to warn him that a similar fate awaits him unless he takes the second chance being offered by the ghost’s visit to change his ways. This is an interesting proposition. Does Dickens intend to imply here what he seems to be implying, namely, that the universe must be governed by benevolent purpose if a single earthly life can be given a second chance to save its soul by changing its ways?
Marley’s ghost announces the plan. Three spirits will visit Scrooge—according to their own timetable. Scrooge, anticipating the spiritual and psychological pain he is in for, makes a plea for delay . . . or, if not delay, for one visit from all three at the same time “to have it over [with].”
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
‘Hear me!’ cried the Ghost. ‘My time is nearly gone.’
‘I will,’ said Scrooge. ‘But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!’ ‘How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.’
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
‘That is no light part of my penance,’ pursued the Ghost. ‘I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.’
‘You were always a good friend to me,’ said Scrooge. ‘Thank ‘ee!’
7. The Trinity
‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by Three Spirits.’
[This is the trinity]
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.
‘Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?’ he demanded, in a faltering voice.
‘It is.’
‘I — I think I’d rather not,’ said Scrooge.
‘Without their visits,’ said the Ghost, ‘you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One.’
‘Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?’ hinted Scrooge.
‘Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!’
8. The Journey over Three Days
Dickens sets Scrooge’s journey over three days— three being a biblically significant number, representing not only the Holy Trinity but the three days of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, which Scrooge’s experience echoes. In addition, the miser’s journey ends on a holy day, Christmas, the day that marks the birth of Christ—and the rebirth of Scrooge.
No one knows for sure how familiar Dickens was with the writings of Dante Alighieri before the English novelist wrote A Christmas Carol, but a Dantean influence is clearly at work in the arresting panorama Scrooge faces outside his window after Marley’s ghost slips out. One thinks of Dante’s comment upon entering the circles of hell: “I had not thought death had undone so many.” What Scrooge sees in the space outside his window are countless phantoms—ephemeral remnants of people once alive, now condemned by their choices on Earth to wander endlessly, moaning lamentations:
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
9. 1 Peter 3:19,
1 Peter 3:19,
19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison,
Dickens’s notion of guilty governments chained together by their cruel or unenlightened policies might be another instance of the author’s dark humor. He provides an otherwise grim vision of the phantoms looking down on vignettes of earthly life—random and ordinary human situations where they could have given comfort but chose not to see or not to
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say ‘Humbug!’ but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
10. Things are beginning to change
Things are beginning to change – he can indulge in old behavior – humbug
In Scrooge’s case, to prepare himself for Christ’s coming, he must get rid of his old gods of stinginess by his constant grasp that he has on his wealth. This may mean that Scrooge will have to face his fear of poverty and abandonment.
By worshipping the Christ child bom in a manager, allows us to look differently at the children bom in low estate in our world