A Christmas Carol

We rented the new computer-animated version of "A Christmas Carol" starring Jim Carrey. It was beautifully done and seemed to stay quite true to the novel. I try to read the book every year, but I know I'm not going to get to it this year. After watching the movie, I had to at least re-read my favorite part: the dialouge between Scrooge and his dead partner Marley.

Marley laments, "Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed... 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 opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''

" 'But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faultered 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!'

" '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!'

Were there ever more beautiful or more inspiring words written?