Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

In Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Editor's Study. Christmas Literature, December 1888, p. 158-59, as quoted in An Imperative Duty, Appendix D, 7.