you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

It is presumably this verse which Oliver Cromwell had in mind when he uttered his famous plea to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

Dickens would have been familiar with all these uses of the term and plenty of others, including Thersites in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida contemptuously calling Ajax a "thing of no bowels," perhaps the closest well-known usage to the one here. Dickens, unlike his sources, makes a paradox of the observation. Marley has finally acquired some metaphorical bowels of compassion now that he is a ghost and has no physical bowels. His mission in visiting Scrooge is to ensure that his former partner acquires bowels of compassion before he too becomes physically transparent.

In this passage, Scrooge has become aware that the ghost of his old friend and partner, Jacob Marley, is standing before him. The ghost has not yet spoken: Scrooge is simply staring at it in astonishment as it materializes behind him.

When the narrator states Scrooge's thought that he had often heard that Marley had "no bowels," he is playing on both the literal and figurative meaning of the term "no bowels." It therefore is a double entendre. First, the ghost standing before Scrooge is shimmery and see through, and Scrooge does sees all the way through his body to his back: there literally are no bowels or intestines in this spectral version of Marley. At the same time, when people said that Marley had no bowels, they used a figure of speech meaning he had no compassion. Normally, people either feel a sense of heart pain or a "gut punch" when they witness suffering: Marley was credited with none of that real human feeling, Scrooge recalls. This suggests that Scrooge and Marley are very much alike. But the double entendre is a joke, adding to the mix of dark humor (also expressed through hyperbole), harshness, and terror that adds layers of complexity to this work.

As Scrooge will discover, Marley has in the afterlife developed compassion, as well as regrets for how he once lived his life, so much so that he earnestly desires to help his old friend change his ways and avoid the path to doom.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now. (A Christmas Carol, stave 1, "Marley's Ghost")

This is, at first glance, a simple observation on Scrooge's part. When Marley first appears to him, Scrooge notices that Marley's body "was transparent" "so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind."

Apparently, Marley wasn't entirely transparent, because Scrooge could see that Marley's face was "the very same" as the face he remembered and could see the "pig-tail" in Marley's hair. He could also see the horrid expression on Marley's face when Marley untied the bandage from around his head and his lower jaw dropped to his chest, which is likely where Scrooge's jaw dropped, too.

Nevertheless, Scrooge could see through Marley's mostly transparent body to "the two buttons on his coat behind."

Scrooge is not a person who's inclined to make jokes, so even though Dickens, and possibly Scrooge, makes an allusion to the bowels being the emotional center of compassion in the body, as other Educators have noted, the fact that Marley lacked any sense of compassion was a fairly straightforward and nonjudgmental remark. Scrooge might even have considered it a compliment to note that Marley had no bowels, and wished the same could be said of himself.

Dickens is perhaps also alluding to the fact that in ancient Egypt, bodies were disemboweled before embalming for burial or mummification. The organs were embalmed separately from the body, and stored in canopic jars—each organ in a separate jar—and the jars were placed in the tomb or buried with the body.

Marley had quite enough to carry around with him—the heavy chain, as well as " cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel"—so even if his body was prepared for burial in the Egyptian manner, it's unlikely that he would carry the jars of his internal organs around with him as well, just in case Scrooge or anyone else might be inclined to remark on their absence from his body.

There's another, somewhat more practical consideration. Marley seemed to be every inch the same "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" that Scrooge is, and that sentiment would seem to be supported by a short passage in Stave 1.

In stave 1, two "portly gentlemen" enter Scrooge's workplace to solicit funds for the "poor and destitute" of London.

“Scrooge and Marley's, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?”

“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.”

“We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. (stave 1, emphasis added)

If Marley was the same "tight-fisted hand at the grindstone" that Scrooge is—and every indication seems to imply that he was—Marley might never have taken time from his work to relieve himself, and would never have had occasion to use his bowels, even if he had them.

Perhaps Marley never took time from his work to eat or drink, either, which would reasonably preclude any reason for Marley to relieve himself, or to have bowels to do so.

This quote appears in Stave One when the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge, and it has a couple of different meanings.

First of all, this quote is an allusion to a phrase from the first book of John in the Bible: the "bowels of compassion." To have bowels of compassion means that you are so concerned with a person's situation that you are moved to do something. In other words, you are a caring and compassionate person.

By saying that Marley does not have any bowels, Scrooge is basically saying that he was not a compassionate person when he was alive. Moreover, the fact that he does not have bowels as a ghost shows that he is still not compassionate, even in the afterlife.

Secondly, by saying that Marley has no bowels, we see that Scrooge is trying to be rational. As he looks at the ghost of Jacob Marley, he works out whether Marley's apparition is real, based on what he observes.

By making rational observations, we see that Scrooge is a man who does not rely on his emotions. He really is cold and clinical, even in the presence of a ghost.

When Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol saying someone had no bowels was similar to saying today that someone has no heart. They meant the the person did not show caring or compassion to others. The exact quote from the book is;

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

When the passage appears in the book, Scrooge has just seen Marley's ghost. Although he can see that the figure is Jacob Marley, Scrooge can also see through him to the walls behind. Dickens is trying to show a small measure of humor on the part of Scrooge. His partner, Marley, had had it said of him while he was alive that he had no bowels . He was apparently just as mean and miserly as Scrooge. When Scrooge sees the ghost the saying of "no bowels" is literal rather than just figurative as it was when Marley was alive.