A Christmas Sermon

A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson written while he convalesced from a lung ailment at Lake Sarnac in the winter of 1887. In the short text he meditates on the questions of death, morality and man’s main task in life which he concludes is «To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence.» The piece was to be published in Scribner’s magazine the following December.