WHAT BOSTON CLERGYMEN THINK OF CHARLES DICKENS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 822, 15 September 1870, Page 4

WHAT BOSTON CLERGYMEN THINK OF CHARLES DICKENS.

/On the Sunday following the death of Charles Dickens, the liev. Mr Dunn, ,of Boston, of the Beach Presbyterian preached a sermon entitled, t* Vanity of Vanities," in which he attempted to show that the life of the great genius has been a failure. In the course of his sermon he said—--8I Mr Dickens may have written many noble things, in which we rejoice, but tie has written many a line which is deadly poison." Whether the sermon was due to a pardonable ignorance or an unpardonable wish for a sensation, pr a mixture of both, nobody knows and nobody cares, for Mr Dunn is a man of no mark. The true sentiments pf Boston towards Charles Dickens were well presented yesterday (19th) py the B,ev. W. R. Alger, in the Music Hall, the subject being "The Sword and the Pen ; " with a pleasing tribute to Charles Dickens. In alluding to £he power of novelists and secular writers, he said that in the pages of jthe theologians the name of Christ is constantly used, but it stood for. a character of hideous cruelty. There Was more of real Christianity and self sacrificing love in Dickens' description pf the child in the London Hospital than all the pondrous tenets written by John Calvin. A high place among those who have distinguished themgelves as the best instructors of man kind must be assigned to Charles Pickens. His moral virtue and tenderness was extraordinary, and he expelled as a teacher of piety and virtue ; a proof of piety was manifest in every aliudon he made to God, or the unknown and infinite. The happier spirit in which he contemplated all phjects was a central consideration in his whole life. His kindly pen photographed ail with a touch of beauty. Jle never dipped his pen in gall, but in tears and his heart blood. The vast number of characters with which he peopled an enchanted world of life are remarkable for their truthfulness of representation and morality of effect Such a man puts the human race in Jiis debt. He emancipates and enriches py the touches of his genius. What sunshine he shed into the homes of men; what a flood of happiness he dispensed to the four quarters of the globe! Standing beside the dead Pickens, he would say: Tread not on him. Peace ! The man is noble, and his fame folds in the orb of the earth, jf he did not believe the orthodox preeds of the Church, he had rendered a great service to Christianity by un yeiling the fallacies of the Church. He had never written one word of attack upon morality or religion, and he should not be subject to the miserable standard of the sectarian conventicle, pipkens did not write for the applause pf the world j he sacrificed for truth. Jn his writings he directly followed the examples of Christ, who took little phildren in his arms. Every touch from the genius of Dickens in reference to a child was extremely beautiful, and has borne fruits in softening the hearts of his readers. Dickens is dead, but his works will live, those passages which nobody could read without tears, will always receive ioye and honor.