The Gospel Message at the Heart of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

- -

"He took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, "Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me." - Mark 9:36-37

0:00 The quiet Cratchit house
0:30 Reference to the Gospels
1:09 Scrooge's desire to hear more
2:19 Why are Christ's words about children so important?
3:14 Divine encounter

- -

"We move to the Cratchit house, and it's quiet, very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner and sat looking up at Peter. This is the brother, the older brother who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sowing, but surely they were very quiet and he took a child and set him in the midst of them. That's all we get. It's one line from, well, it could be actually any of the synoptic gospels, for example. It could be Mark 9:36, A little fragment of a biblical verse where it's Christ who takes a child and puts him in the middle of them, of his apostles. Well, on the one hand that makes an intuitive sense in this novel, this is the house where tiny Tim lived, and he, as we will shortly find, is dead.

There's something, there's a kind of melodramatic pathos about referencing Christ, putting him there amidst them. That all makes sense. But listen to the way that it continues. Where had Scrooge heard those words we're hearing his very thoughts. All of a sudden he had not dreamed them. The boy must to have read them out as he and the spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on? So Scrooge actually has this desire to hear the rest of the passage, and that cues us readers also to think about the