THE RELIGION OF DICKENS.

Evening Star, Issue 3116, 13 February 1873, Page 2

THE RELIGION OF DICKENS.

A contributor to the Rev. G. Sutherland’s piper, The Australian Witness and Presbyterian, Herald , recently wrote of Dickens, that " there is nothing in any one of his works that Christians can speak well of. Loose in morals, and still looser in his «aidisant religion, Charles Dickens has gone to bis place to reap the reward of his deeds done in the flesh, end it cannot but be a source of regret that Mr Clark, or any other minister of the Gospel, should stand np to eulogise him. ” Now, the Mr Clark referred to is the popular Melbourne preacher, who in a recent lecture ou the great novelist, referred to the attack of this Colonial rev. Chadband in these terms He (Mr Clark) submitted he had a perfect right to form an independent judgment, and to express it too ; and, what was more, the power and the will to express it. He passed over the cruel and indecent insinuation, which he thought none but a monster could be guilty of, that i >ickens had gone to tbe place appointed for evildoers. J n the book which told us of the fate of the ungodly, we were also told, by our owu hopes of forgiveness, never to judge, and that with what measure we meted to others it shov(l4 be measured to us again/ And this, moreover, that all Hark shoidd have their portion in the lake that burned with fire and brimstone. The writer said that it was matter of regret that he should eulogise Dickens, because there was nothing in any one of his works which Christians could speak well of. Professor Jowett had quite as good a right to speak in the name of the Christian public as the critic, and he affirmed, in his sermon lu Ab *

boy—“ We can hardly exaggerate the debt o’fg latitude which is due tq a writep wbohajj led u* to sympathise with those good, sincere, honest, English characters of ordinary life, and to laugh at the egotism, the hypocrisy, the false respectability of religous professors and others,” That, doub less, was the he id and front of his offending. Dickens had brilliantly satirised two classes of religious busybodies under the names of Mrs Pardiagle and Mrs Jellyby. The first was the type of those hard, cold creatures, who thought that to take notice of the poor was an immeasurable condescension, and that to arm themselves with a tract and to undertake the spiritual policemansbip of a district, gave them a right to invade the Houses of the poor at any season, to interfere in their affairs, and to criticise their situation and habits in what fashion they pleased—people who would dragon their fellows into being religions, and whose manners and behaviour were a gross libel upon that religion of charity and courtesy whose disciples and teachers they professed to be. Mrs Jellyby devoted her life to the interests of her foreign mission. Her gaze was fixed so intently on her favorite African stat : .on that she had not eyes'nor heart for any other thjqg. Her home was the scene of every domestic misery, and her children grew «p without a mother’s care. Though Dickens painted such evils, he did not invent them, nor was he the only man that had recognised and rebuked them, More than once had he heard ministers criticise sharply our methods of carrying on home mission work, demanding their reformation, and affirming that sympathy, not lecturing, would touch the heart of the outcast and win him to the path of goodness. Was it not matter of notoriety that while the energies of the Church were zealously directed to the amelioration of Mack savages, the needs and wants of white ones, in their unsavoury homes, among the slums of our cities, were almost entirely overlooked ! He called'it flagrant’injustice to any map as a scoffer, because he had hit the blot of modern Christian efforts, and had suggested a more excellent way, To reverence truth and goodness while heartily castigating hypo crites, was the property of courageous, clear-seeing, righteous hearts. If he had had time, he might have cited many passages which went to show how Dickens turned to the sacred volume for illustrations of bis most touching incidents, and how reverent: and loving was the spirit in which every snqh illustration was employed. Nor could be find the shadow of an instance in which simple godliness, faith, and prayer, and humble, peaceful piety, were not introduced with most obvious feeling on the part of the writer,-that those emotions and qualities constituted the sweetness, strength, and beauty of human life. What was religion ? Was it under a thin veneer of sanctimonious ' looks ‘and solemn phrases, to hide the meanness and deformity of a nature corrupted and distorted by hatred, avarice, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness? Or, was religion purity, honor, generosity, manliness, love to the Divine and to His creatures, for His sake. If religion laynot in empty mouthiugs, but in the sweetness and manliness of life, then did he say that Chadband he had known, Stiggins he had known, and Pecksniff, that colossal moralist, he had known Main and again, and be kissed right loyally the hand which had • gibbeted those intolerable impostors, and bung them up on high as perpetual targets for the shafts of genuine contempt and scorn. He wished that his sermons, mid the sermons of his toothew were half as good as those words in which Dickens had taught us te fear-not power but wrong, to reverence—not wealth but goodness, and in daily life to cultivate those broad sympathies and gemal characteristics which found their crowning .exhibition m tpe Man of )W|

who refused to endorse the words of Dean Stanley—“ In the writings of Dickens it is clearly shown that it is possible to move both old and young to laughter, without the use of a single expression which wou’d defi e the purest or shock the most sensitive.” If he was to choose his place, he deliberately selected condemnation with Dean Stanley, the Bishop of Manchester, and Professor Jowett, rather than the warmest approval of all the Cbadbands in the Colonies. It was not for such men to measure the work which God in his manifold wisdom gave Charles Dickens to do. The last page of Pickwick struck the keynote of his writings. “ There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger from the contrast. Some men, like bats and owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We have no such optical powers.” He (Mr Clark) had read with profound and pathetic interest an extract from the will of Dickens, which Dean Stanley quoted :—“ I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man’s narrow construction of its letter.”