In Remembrance

“Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig alive again!” – from A Christmas Carol

I’ve now become old enough (how did it happen?) to bore my children with “when I was young” or “when I was your age” stories. So let me proceed with a “when I was young” story.

When I was young there was a television show called Tombstone Territory. The Theme song (most Westerns had to have a theme song) went something like this:

Whistle me back a memory
Whistle me back where I wanna be,
Whistle a tune that will carry me
To Tombstone Territory.

When your past has gone afoul of the law
It’s a handy place to be
Because your future’s just as good as your draw
In Tombstone Territory.

It’s been 45 years since the show aired, so I might be a bit sketchy about the words, but I think I’ve captured the sentiment. As the theme song indicated, Tombstone Territory was not yet part of the United States; bad men went there to escape from their crimes. The show featured a different good guy every week that would go into Tombstone in order to put “paid” to the account of a bad guy, who found out, too late, that he couldn’t escape from the knights without armor who dealt out justice without regard to legalistic technicalities.

After that mini-introduction you would be entitled to anticipate an article about Westerns. Well, even though I’m due for another article on Westerns, this article is not going to be about Westerns. It’s going to be about whistling back a memory, a memory of Dickens’ London.

Do you recall old Fezziwig, who employed Ebenezer Scrooge when he was a young man? If you do then you will know that Fezziwig was a wonderful employer and a man who kept Christmas as it should be kept. But there is another aspect of the Fezziwig story that should be told.

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A young orphan boy, about the same age as Oliver Twist when he roamed the streets of London, found himself alone and homeless and desperately trying to avoid the Fagins of the world who prey on the innocent. When hope seemed nearly gone the young orphan was rescued from the streets by the self-same Fezziwig of the Christmas Carol. Fezziwig, who was about 35 at the time, took the young orphan into his family home and he and his wife raised him as their own. He taught Johnathan, for so he was named, that God was love, and he made Johnathan feel loved by God by loving him in the name of God. And when the time came for Jonathan to enter the world, Fezziwig started him in a business of his own. Such men are rare indeed.

A few years after Fezziwig’s Christmas party, depicted in A Christmas Carol, Fezziwig was put on trial for fraud, embezzlement, counterfeiting, and numerous other charges including that of sorcery. In point of fact all the charges were false. They were put forward by a cabal of sophisters, economists, and calculators who sought to ruin Fezziwig. Some sought his ruin because they hoped to profit financially by his demise, and others sought his ruin because they hated any man who refused to descend to their level of inhumanity. The fiendish cabal succeeded! Fezziwig was ruined and sent to prison, where he died in the first month of a 20-year sentence.

During the trial only Johnathan Fezziwig spoke in defense of Fezziwig. But he had no hard evidence of Fezziwig’s innocence to speak of. All he could speak of was Fezziwig’s kindness to a poor orphan boy, and of his kindness to the poor and to his employees.

Johnathan also told the court that Fezziwig’s voice always trembled with emotion when he read certain passages from the Bible, especially those passages which described Christ’s miracles of charity, such as the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

“Objection. Such anecdotes are hardly relevant,” the prosecuting attorney asserted.

“Objection sustained,” the judge replied. “You will confine your remarks to hard evidence.”

But Johnathan had no “hard evidence,” only a deep and abiding love for a man he knew, with a certainty deeper and more profound than mathematical certainty, to be the finest, noblest man that ever lived.

The trial and the subsequent death of Fezziwig did not change Johnathan’s desire to restore Fezziwig’s reputation and to reclaim Fezziwig’s business from the sophisters, economists, and calculators. Johnathan wanted to restore Fezziwig’s reputation because he loved him, and regarding the business: Johnathan didn’t want to reclaim it because he needed money; he wanted to reclaim Fezziwig’s business because he knew the new owners (the sophisters, economists, and calculators) had not charity. Under their reign, the beast in man would rule instead of the divinity in man.

What happened to all of Fezziwig’s friends? Johnathan went to them after Fezziwig’s death and asked them to help him restore Fezziwig’s reputation and reclaim his business. Joseph Gage, an Alderman, told him, “I liked old Fezziwig; I never thought the serious charges against him were true. But he was a man who had 'a taste'. At some of those Christmas parties he gave I’m sure he was intoxicated. Yes, he had his faults, old Fezziwig did, and you’d best forget about trying to restore his reputation and reclaim his business. Things will get along nicely without him.”

William Taylor, city clerk: “Fezziwig seemed to be a good man, but obviously he wasn’t since the courts found him guilty of so many terrible crimes. It just goes to show you that you really can’t know a man properly until he goes to court or dies. That way you have access to all his secret papers.”

Richard Allen, neighbor: “Nothing surprises me about that man. He was enamored of works. He thought all of the charity work he did would be pleasing to God. But our works are rags; we are saved by grace. I’m sorry for you, Johnathan, but you should not have made a whited sepulcher of Fezziwig.”

Johnathan: “He never sought to buy his way into heaven, Mr. Allen. He gave because he felt sorry for people; it was that simple.”

Allen (with an insufferable, more-pious-than-thou look on his face): “I think you see Fezziwig with rose-tinted glasses. I see him for what he was: a sinner who thought he could get to heaven through works alone.”

And so it went. Johnathan soon gave up trying to enlist the support of Fezziwig’s “friends.” He had one last hope; he sought out the man who had been Fezziwig’s pastor for the last thirty years of his life, the Rev. George Grey.

Johnathan: “Do you believe the charges against him?”

Rev. Grey: “I don’t know what to believe. I didn’t attend the trial, and they wouldn’t let me see him in prison.”

Johnathan: “But you worked with him on so many charitable projects. You were a guest at his house. Surely you must have known the man?”

Grey: “He seemed to be a good man, but what am I to think about all the testimony against him?”

Johnathan: “But Reverend, look at the men who testified against him. They are the scum of the earth not fit to tie his shoelaces, let alone supplant him in his business. What will happen to all your charitable enterprises without Fezziwig? He was the heart and soul of the charitable outreach in this church for the past 45 years.”

Grey: “I see no reason why Fezziwig’s successors can’t carry on the same charitable activities that Fezziwig maintained. In fact their business should do better because they have brought in Chinese and African labor.”

Johnathan: “Are they maintaining the charities?”

Grey: “Well, no, not at present, but I have every hope that they will in the future.”

Johnathan: “It’s always in the future, isn’t it, Reverend?”

Grey: “I think we all must look to the future, Johnathan. And I must say, at the risk of giving offence, that you have an overly romanticized view of Fezziwig. He is in the past; you should look to the future.”

Johnathan: “I don’t think I’ll take your advice, Reverend. I’ll stay with Fezziwig and Fezziwig’s God."

Grey: “You’re taking a very narrow view of things.”

Johnathan: “Yes, I am. Didn’t someone once say something about a narrow gate?”

Grey: “I fear…”

Johnathan: “That I’m going to wrong those honorable men? I’m not going to wrong them. I’m going to see justice done. You won’t see me at church anymore, but when you read about the untimely deaths of a few sophisters, economists, and calculators, you’ll know that a narrow-minded, overly romantical, Fezziwig-partisan is still in the vicinity.”

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There is a moral gulf between the pre-20^th century European and the modern European that makes one believe the pre-modern European is a different species from the modern European. An even wider moral gulf exists between the colored peoples and the pre-modern European. The contrast seems to be the greatest between the pre-modern white and the black, but the moral gulf is an infinity of cubits wide between the pre-modern European and all the colored races, Asians, brown, etc.

The reason for the moral gulf is Jesus Christ. The pre-modern Europeans took Him into their hearts and hearths and became the Christ-bearers to the heathen nations. In contrast the modern Europeans of the 20^th and 21^st centuries rejected Christ and became the vanguard of Satan, destroying everything European and Christian in order to create a kingdom of Satan on earth.

In the satanic phase of his history the European sought out the colored tribes, not to convert them as he attempted to do during the Christian stage of his history, but to mix his blood with theirs in order to eradicate the European from the face of the earth. Modern anti-Christian Christians who mix their blood with the colored in order to “Christianize” them must answer the question, “Why, when Christianity was the faith of the European people, didn’t the Europeans mix their blood with that of the colored people?” It seemed clear to the antique Europeans that in order to convert the heathen it was necessary to stay European. A mixed colored and European race soon becomes a thoroughly colored monster race. The New Age Christian, who wants Christianity and race-mixing, is always forced by the logic of his new Christ-less faith to deny the European Christianity of his ancestors and replace it with a propositional faith that can be all things to all people. In the new Babylonian Christianity, Christ is part Buddha, part witch doctor, and part guru, but he is not the Son of God whom the Europeans of old worshipped in spirit and in truth.

That the antique European’s vision of Christ is the true vision we should not question for one moment. There will always be the Twains, the Shaws, and the Voltaires who want to treat the European miracle as a debatable hypothesis or even as an outright falsehood. Such creatures are not seeking the truth. They, like Satan, their mentor, cannot stand to look upon a God who loves according to what is in the heart, not the head. Nor can they abide a people who prefer to be ruled by the Man of Sorrows rather than by satanic theories from the pygmy brains of the anti-European intellectuals. It is the task of the remnant Europeans – there will always be a remnant – to stay bound in spirit and blood to their ancestors and their God so that the prodigals can return to the fold and the heathen can see The Light of the nations.

In England radical “educators” are trying to ban the use of white paper in the schools because they feel the use of white paper gives black children the idea that white is good and black is bad. There is a demonic wisdom in the educators’ new gambit. They have comprehended there is a mystical element to race, but because they are satanic liberals they have inverted the racial hierarchy. In reality, the white represents the extreme good and the black the extreme evil with the other races in between. Farfetched? No, it is not. Good and evil exist in every race, but the potentialities for evil and good are not the same in every race. We are more appalled at the evil white men do because of what we know they can be, and we are less appalled – or should we say less surprised – at the evil colored people do because we don’t expect as much from them as we do from the white man. Such sentiments stem from prejudice, a prejudice derived from looking through the eye at the differences between modern Europeans, the colored peoples, and the antique Europeans. The liberals have an opposing view; they see a black race of people who should be worshipped above all other people by a supporting cast of Asians, Indians, and liberals. It falls to us, the remnant Europeans, to defend Europe against the modern Babylonians, not to debate with them, for if we debate with the liberals we concede that the absolute necessity of the survival of the Christ-bearing race is a debatable point. Such a concession is blasphemy. Better to be against the world than against our God. +