Charles Dickens' classic tale, A Christmas Carol, and particularly the main character in this production, Ebenezer Scrooge, has received this year yet another makeover. And now in cinemas right across the country, we have this particular 3D production in motion, A Christmas Carol. It's been remade by Disney, and we have American actor Jim Carrey voicing the lead role. Few people realize, though, whenever they come across any version of the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, arguably the best English novel writer in all of history, they really don't seem to realize that this old, unpleasant, sourpuss, Ebenezer Scrooge, who greets all of the Christmas joy around him with these dismissive words, bah, humbug, didn't just arise out of that novelist's imagination. Interesting evidence suggests that Dickens based this particular book and this character within the book upon a real character. And the real character turns out to be a very eccentric 18th century politician named John Elwes, whose penny-pinching did not only rival that of Ebenezer Scrooge, but probably he could have taught Ebenezer Scrooge a lesson or two in saving money. He inherited a vast fortune of 33 million pounds from his uncle. But John hated spending a single penny of it and he lived almost all of his days like a tramp, squatting in uninhabited homes and eating rotten food rather than see that food go to waste. Even his capacity as an MP for the wealthy county of Berkshire He refused to scorn the indulgent lifestyle of his fellow Members of Parliament. His election expenses, a very topical point of conversation at this moment in time, were just 18 pence. How much of a shining example is that to today's MPs? He was so notoriously thrifting that he would ride to London from his constituency on an old nag and sustained himself on the way there with little more than a boiled egg and he'd have bedded down under the hedgerows. en route to London. He was so eccentric in his habits that he became the butt of jokes and he became a favourite person of the cartoonists, a real character that they could get to work on. Cartoonists therefore depicted him as a thin and a pinch figure holding tight to a money bag. And though Elwes died 35 years before Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, his story would definitely have been very well known to the author. In his novels, Charles Dickens often based his characters upon people whom he knew well. Mr. Macawber, for example, He was a character always waiting for something to come up. He was based upon his own father, who for a significant period of time was in a debtor's prison. In The Christmas Carol, we have Dickens in producing a character called Tiny Tim. He was the little crippled boy who received Christmas cheer and joy after all. That actually, The Christmas Carol, would have been the first and the best of Charles Dickens' five Christmas books. When Scrooge, in this particular novel, is visited by the ghost of Christmas past, he's shown just how ill Tim really is. He's shown that Tim, he will die unless he receives vital treatment. And when he's visited by the ghost of Christmas yet to come, all he sees of Tim is his little crutch because Tim has died. Through this and several other visions, Scrooge is led to reform his ways. And at the end of the story, Dickens makes it explicit that Tiny Tim did not actually die, and so Scrooge became a second father to him. Tiny Tim was based upon Charles Dickens' own nephew. That nephew's mother Charles Dickens' elder sister, Frances Elizabeth Dickens, known in the family as Fanny, and outside of the family as well, I dare say, she would have been Charles' constant companion in those happy years of their childhood as they were living around London. Together, we're told, they used to wander at night about a churchyard near their house that was near St. Mary's Place at Chatham. They were looking up at the stars together. Together, Charles and Elizabeth, her friends, entertained their father's companions at the Mitre Inn in Chatham because the two of them turned up and they sang a comic duet about a sailor and his sweetheart. Many years later, Charles Dickens penned A Child's Dream of a Star, and it was harking back to his enjoyable childhood that he had spent with Frances Elizabeth. There was once a child in this child's dream of a star, he writes, and he strolled about a good deal and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wander all day long. They wandered at the beauty of the flowers. They wandered at the height and the blueness of the sky. They wandered at the depth of the bright water. They wandered at the goodness and power of God who made the lovely world. though the Dickens family fell on hard times. Charles, as a 12-year-old boy, was sent to the Blacking factory. Fanny was sent in a different direction, as a pupil of piano and a boarder to the newly opened Royal Academy of Music And as she went there, her parents were being charged a rather hefty fee of 36 guineas a year. Obviously, the parents, John and Elizabeth Dickens, felt that there was potential in their daughter here. that it was worth their while investing money in Fanny's education, and they really had nothing left over to spare there for anything to do with Charles, but they felt that Fanny's talent as a pianist and her possession of a good soprano voice were deemed to be a surer guarantee of potential earning power, and so into the one basket went all of their financial eggs, and they felt if we want someone to look after us, provide for the family, then the greater amount of potential is here with Francis Elizabeth. It turned out, however, that both Fanny and Charles made it, and they made it pretty big. Charles became an ace young political reporter on the Morning Chronicle. He wrote a series, they were widely known as being brilliant little pieces, written by him, sketches of London life, and it drew the attention of that paper to a massive audience. And as for Fanny, Charles must have been delighted on one occasion to read in his paper on the 30th of May, 1835, an article where his sister was being highly praised for her performances at the Academy's rooms on the previous evening. It read, Miss Dickens sang Hayden's unrivalled ballad My mother bids me bind my hair. And the paper went on to say we have no hesitation in saying we never before heard it sung in so pure and simple a style or with a more true and touching expression. It was encoded with expressions of the warmest delight. Within two and a half years, both brother and sister were married. Charles to Catherine Hogarth, eldest daughter of the Chronicle's music critic, and Fanny to Henry Burnett, who was a fellow student of hers at the Academy, who had begun to carve out by that stage a career as an opera singer. But we move away from that kind of societal background to consider three terms about Francis Elizabeth Dickens. One is evangelicalism. And that's a word dropped into the story and it pretty much dropped into her life. The fact of the matter was Francis Dickens loved gospel preaching. Burnett, her husband, grew up as a very religious man. Soon after he had married Fanny, he became uneasy with the morality of earning his living on the stage. and uneasy about he and Fanny's London lifestyle in general. Much of what was going on. He just couldn't bring his heart to approval. And eventually he decided, I'll leave the stage, and he did, and he and Fanny moved to Manchester. There they became teachers of music, members of a congregational, dissenting, non-conformist church. basically a slingshot from the old Trafford ground of Manchester United today. They had come from an Anglican background. They were growing up in the Church of England. The people in high society that they were rubbing shoulders with down in London would have felt that this was expected. and they all looked down their noses on the dissenting, non-conformist church and these congregational churches they really would have had no time for at all. The first minister of this church, the Rush Holm Road Chapel in Manchester, would have been a man by the name of Reverend James Griffin. There was, a number of years before, The Burnetts came up there, a number were told of pious individuals who wanted to extend the Redeemer's kingdom in their own vicinity and the issue was circulated in 1825 to the inhabitants of their area to erect a place of worship and form a church after the independent model. Some people did respond. This building was duly erected and opened for worship on Thursday, the 31st of August, 1826. Then one year later, Friday the 22nd of June, 1827, in the vestry of the new chapel, this Rushome Road Chapel, 28 people gathered together. They agreed that they would form themselves into a congregational church. Why would they do it? Well, they said, with a view to the Redeemer's glory and the extension of his kingdom and for their own mutual comfort and edification. Reverend James Griffin, A student from Highbury College began his duties as the first minister of this particular church on Sunday the 10th of May, 1829. When James Griffin came along and opened the Bible for the first time, preached his morning service at Lord's Dame, it was from Psalm 118, verse 25, See of nigh, I beseech thee, O Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee, send nigh prosperity. And it was a good note on which to begin his ministry, and it began on a clearly evangelical theme. That evening, he turned the attention of the congregation to the word of Isaiah, chapter 28, verse 16, a passage we read tonight. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God. Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste. Words that point exclusively to the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so he was getting his messages off on the right foot. And he was striking very clear and dominant evangelical notes. Later that year, his own father, James Griffin's father, John Griffin, came along and he was a minister as well and he addressed a solemn charge to his son and he preached from that text, be thy faithful unto death. Griffin stayed there for 15 years. It was untiring, unremitting labor. It took down his health. And he was obliged to rest from June to December of 1843, but by 1852 the state of this minister's health meant that he needed assistance. They sent out a call for somebody to come along, step into the breach, help out for a while, just on a temporary basis. But to the great grief of that church, they couldn't get anyone to come and help them, and so the minister resigned at the end of September 1854 and be moved down to Hastings, where within due time he began to preach again there. James Griffin has written a book memories of the past. And in that book, he quotes a letter that he received from Frances Elizabeth Dickens, soon after their arrival in Manchester, a letter that showed here that she was completely in sympathy with her husband. She writes, and I find the letter interesting, even amazing, given her background. I was brought up in the established church. But I regret to say, without any serious ideas of religion, I attended divine worship as a duty, not as a high privilege. I was thrown very much into society and seemed to live as if this world were to be my home forever, entirely forgetting that I was merely a pilgrim, wending my way to eternity. I seem gradually, she says, to lose my relish for the pleasures of the world, but I was still wholly ignorant of gospel truth. She goes on to refer to having been brought to a sense of her sinfulness under Griffin's preaching, of my utter worthlessness in the sight of God. Then she goes on in the letter and she expresses her joy that God's grace was now beginning to work within her. I feel great pleasure in mixing with God's people I feel anxious to be spiritually minded and to devote myself entirely to the service of Christ." Her pastor, James Griffin, looked back on those days and said, you know, Sundays never seemed long enough for her. She would say at the close of the evening service, may we go home with you and stop with you a little? Our house, the pastor said, was more than a mile from the chapel, and hers a considerable distance on its opposite side, but all that was nothing in her account, if she could have but a little more savour of Sabbath enjoyments. So after supper and family prayer, she would say, can't we have a hymn? What would Charles Dickens, her brother, who was so close to her, with whom she had spent a huge portion of her early life, what would he have thought of Fanny's religious convictions and conversion? We don't have in any of his writings any clear reference to what he thought about his sister's newfound religion, but we can only surmise that he being the creator of such vicious caricatures of dissenters as the red-nosed Mr. Stiggin in Pickwick, or the Reverend Melchisedec Howler in Dunby, he was very unlikely to be in sympathy with this change in Fanny's life. It was only a few years before that Charles Dickens had caused old Tony Weller in Pickwick to complain to his son about Mrs. Weller having become methodistical and uncommon pious. She's got hold of some invention He wrote, for growing up people, being born again, Sammy, the new birth, I think they calls it. Well, the newborn, Fanny Dickens, it was said of her, when visiting or receiving at her house, Her former friends whose sentiments and feelings with regard to religious matters she knew differed widely from her own, and well aware how her supposed fanaticism might be the object of their pitting or contempt, unequivocally persisted in all she would have thought it right to do if they had not been present. She didn't change any habit. didn't curb her devotion to God. Whenever her high society friends came up to stay with her, were told she refused to suspend the custom of morning or evening family prayers, when her parents came up to Manchester to stay with them for a while, they appeared to be much interested in the new character and new associations of their daughter, and presumably, Whenever her brother Charles himself made a more brief stay there, in 1843 it would have been the same. With Frances Elizabeth, she made no difference. She continued visibly with her loyalty to God. I think with some very clear applications here. Love the gospel. She did. From a background of not knowing it. off in her own words being still ignorant, wholly ignorant of gospel truths, under the preaching of this faithful man of God who was faithful unto death, preaching and exalted Christ. She came to love that message with all of her heart. Another application, not only love the gospel, attend a place where it is faithfully and plainly preached. Obviously in the circles of high Anglicanism and all of that, she wasn't hearing the gospel. That's what she said. She had grown up with a religious background. It was only a form. She didn't know the impact of sins forgiven upon a life. Didn't know about the sacrifice of Christ for poor and guilty sinners in all of their worthlessness. In all of their sin. But she came to a place. Despite the catcalls of other people around her who would have looked down their noses at her, she came to a place where the gospel was being proclaimed and she sought out this plea and powerful preaching and she held to it. I'm sure you'll remember we've talked about James Cargan, Reverend James Cargan before. Used to preach over on the city walls, First Derry Presbyterian Church, over 100 years ago. In 1890, he warned against attendance at services in the Anglican cathedrals and columns and he said, with this red light before your eyes, it now remains for you to decide your future course of action. I can well believe some of you may have gone to the cathedral services not knowing the true character of the doctrines held and taught there, and thinking you and yours were safe in a so-called Protestant church. I have shown you this is very far from being the case, as these Anglicans do not hold Protestant or Evangelical truth on any of the essential doctrines mentioned above, and they are quietly moving on the incline Romeward. I hold no priestly authority and desire to exercise none over any of you. But having made clear to the average intellect and conscience the dangerous errors held by these men, should you or yours continue to patronize these services, the responsibility must be all your own. Stay away, he was saying, from that place where the gospel is not clearly proclaimed. He'd say it about his own church today if he were back, and about many others in this city. The emphasis being, you need to attend, please, where the gospel is faithfully and plainly preached. Another value we can take from the life of Francis, Elizabeth Dickens, or Burnett, is never be ashamed of the gospel. No matter the circumstances, Doesn't matter who's in the home, doesn't matter who's in the vicinity, doesn't matter what pressure they would bring to bear upon you. Stand for the principles of the doctrine of the grace of God. And so over this woman's life, we can put the stamp of evangelicalism. Let's not give in to gimmickry. Let's not give in to little devices just to boost attendance, just to propel ourselves onto a big stage. Let's stay true to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But not only evangelicalism, a couple of other points. Endurance is one of the Francis Dickens' endured afflictions. She had them within the family. She had two children. The eldest, Harry, was born in 1839. He was deformed and sickly. His mother nursed him with tender devotion and she noted with joy what she described as a precocious spirituality in that young lad. She was obviously teaching him well. When Harry was seven years old, Dickens began creating a figure of the little Paul, the son of Dombey and Son, and their crippled son inspired Paul Dombey and also inspired, in the Christmas Carol, the character Tiny Tim. In Paul, Dickens fused together his own rough upbringing and the tough lot of his little nephew, We had, like Paul, been taken to Brighton for the sake of his health, and had there for hours, lying on the beach with his books, given utterance to thoughts quite as remarkable for a child as those which are put into the lips of Paul Dumbay. But little Harry loved his Bible, and evidently loved Jesus. The child seemed never tired of reading his Bible and his hymns and other good books suited to his age. Affliction in the family, in her own body. The close and affectionate relationship that existed between Charles and Fanny made their respective families always join together on big occasions. And it comes through in one of the letters to her dearest fan, written from America, January 1842, by Charles Dickens' wife. The previous year they'd holidayed together at Broadstairs in Kent. Fanny was very sweet and amiable, but also, at the time, in delicate health. Five years later, after she had collapsed while singing at a private party, Dickens was deeply, deeply grieved, he wrote in this letter, to learn that his sister had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, TB. She was consumptive. He did his utmost to get the best medical advice that he could for her, but two years later, when she was down visiting her sister in London, she became ill again. This time, it was fatal. Application. The righteous are not immune from trials. There's no shrouding the fact that it isn't an easy road that we're traveling to heaven. There's no getting away from the truth that our Lord Jesus annunciated himself when he said, in the world ye shall have tribulation. There is trial. Job talked about the trial as the sparks fly upward. That's how infrequent it was coming into his life. We have troubles, we have temptations, and even as the righteous people on this earth, we endure afflictions. But the righteous hold on their way through afflictions, and they show fortitude in the feasts of the greatest of all trials, death itself. And we see that very clearly in the life of Francis, Elizabeth, Burnett, Dickens, and her little boy. Final thought centers on eternity, not only evangelicalism, endurance, but eternity. Francis Elizabeth Dickens Burnett was ready to die when disease came and to die in Christ. In a letter to his friend, John Forster, dated 5th of July 1848, Charles Dickens describes a visit he had made to see his 38-year-old sister who was dying of consumption. Charles Dickens writes, a change took place in poor Fanny about the middle of the day yesterday, which took me out there last night. Her cough suddenly ceased almost, and, strange to say, she immediately became aware of her hopeless state, to which she resigned herself after an hour's unrest and struggle with extraordinary sweetness and constancy. The irritability passed, and all hope faded away, though only two nights before she had been planning for after Christmas. Charles is on to write in that letter. She is greatly changed. I had a long interview with her today, alone, when she had expressed some wishes about the funeral and her being buried in unconsecrated ground. That's belonging to her dissenting church. I asked her whether she had any care or anxiety in the world. She said, no, none. It was hard to die at such a time of life. But she had no alarm whatever in the prospect of the change, felt sure we would meet again in a better world, and although they had said she might rally for a time, did not really wish it. She said, Charles Dickens continues, she was quite calm and happy, relied upon the mediation of Christ, and had no terror at all. She had worked very hard even when ill, but believed that it was in her nature. Neither regretted nor complained of it. Burnett had always been very good to her. They had never quarrelled. She was sorry to think of his going back to such a lonely home and was distressed about her children, but not painfully so. She showed me how thin and worn she was, spoke about an invention she had heard of that she would like to have tried for the deformed child's back. Call to my remembrance all our sister Alicia's patience and steadiness. And though she shed tears sometimes, clearly impressed upon me that her mind was made up and at rest. I asked her very often, If she could ever recall anything that she could leave to my doing, to put it down or mention it to someone if I was not there, and she said she would, but she firmly believed that there was nothing, nothing. Her husband being young, she said, and her children infants, she could not help thinking sometimes that it would be very long in the course of nature before they were reunited. But she knew that was a mere human fancy and could have no reality after she was dead. Such an affecting exhibition of strength and tenderness in all that early decay is quite indescribable. I need not tell you how it moved me. I cannot look round upon the dear children here without some misgiving that this sad disease will not perish out of our blood with her, but I am sure I have no selfishness in the thought, and God knows how small the world looks to one who comes out of such a sick room on a bright summer day. I don't know why I write this. Before going to bed, I only know that in the very pity and grief of my heart, I feel as if it were doing something." Charles left. A few weeks later, Fanny died, September 1848. Her son, Harry, that little deformed lad, tiny tin, followed soon after. Charles Dickens' last In a sequence of five Christmas books, was published in December of that same year, 1848, The Haunted Man was the title. Points of application, death removes us from our plans. This woman, diseased in her body, was still thinking beyond. And after Christmas, Charles Dickens says, but though she had plans, and though she had aspirations, and though she wanted some new medication as a possible cure for her deformed boy, death took her away from those plans. I think an application has to be it's important to have no regrets. She died with constancy and tenderness and patience, thinking about her family, yet not willing or wanting to hold on to life longer than she should, and knowing that she was leaving behind a family for whom she had done her best, and a husband with whom she had not argued. Thoughts of reunion emerge in what Charles Dickens says in this letter. Because she was thinking way beyond the time of her death to a reunion. Undoubtedly, in her mind, in heaven. And she also, in her patience, suffering even to death, speaks to us about how vital it is to be resting Not in ourselves, but to be resting on Christ. And I love those words that Charles Dickens feels compelled to write in the letter. She said she was quite calm and happy, relied upon the mediation of Christ and had no terror at all. Resting. and the joy of her salvation on the arm through the work of her great Redeemer. When you hear of a Christmas carol, spur a thought not just for Ebenezer Scrooge. Consider on whom the character Tiny Tim has been based. Think of Charles Dickens' favorite sister, Frances Elizabeth Dickens, noted for her evangelicalism, for her endurance, for her eternity.