CHARLES DICKERS ON CHRISTIANITY AND ITS TEACHING.

Southland Times, Issue 1318, 7 October 1870, Page 3

CHARLES DICKERS ON CHRISTIANITY AND ITS TEACHING.

The following notes, in reference to Mr Dickens's religious views, as expressed in personal but not private letters, have been published by Mr David Macrae : — In 18G1, when Mr Dickens was in Scotland, on one of his reading tours, I received from him, very unexpectedly, a note of thanks for a paper published at the time in which I had endeavoured to point out the service his books had done to Christian morality. This led to further | correspondence, in the course of which Mr Dickens made some statements of his views in regard to Christ and His teaching, which have peculiar interest at the present moment. In the article referred to, I had occasion to criticise Mr Dickens's treatment of professing Christians — expressing the' opinion that while he had dealt with hypocrites as they deserved, he had not, on the other side, given us, amongst his good people, any specimens of earnest Christianity to show that Christian profession may be strong and yet sincere ; and that, so far, his representations of Christianity were gravely defective. In reference to this point, Mr Dickens said : — " I have so strong an objection to mere professions of religion, and to the audacious interposition of vain and ignorant men between the sublime simplicity of the New Testament and the | general human mind to which our Saviour addressed it, that I urge that objection as strongly and as positively as I can. In my experience, true practical Christianity has been very much obstructed by the conceit against which I protest." With reference to his treatment of true Christianity, he went on to say : — " With a deep sense of my great responsibility always upon me when I exercise my art, one of my constant and most earnest endeavours has been to exhibit in all my good people some faint reflections of the teachings of our great Master, and unostentatiously to lead the reader up to those teachings as the great source of all moral goodness. All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament ; all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit ; all my good people are humble, charitable, faithful, and forgiving. Over and over again, I claim them in express -words as disciples of the Pounder of our religion; but I must admit that to a man (or woman) they all arise and wash their faces, and do not appear unto men to fast. Furthermore I devised a new kind of book for Christmas years ago (which has since been imitated all over England, France, and America), absolutely impossible, I think, to be separated from the exemplification of the Christian virtues and the incalcation of the Christian precepts. In every one of those books there is an express text preached on, and that text is always taken from the lips of Christ." In a subsequent letter (December 7, 1861), he said: — "Your exposition of my feeling on the subject of our correspondence is correct, but it requires this addition : I hold our Saviour to be the model of all goodness, and I assume that, in a Christian country, where the New Testament is accessible to all men, all goodness must be referred back to its influence. While I ask no man how he settles for himself questions of theology (on which it is easy for any number of men to say they are agreed, but very difficult for any two men to be really agreed), I should most certainly ask myself, if I wronged any one, or ask any one who wronged me, how that default was to be reconciled with the precepts of Christianity." In the same letter he says : — "My reverence for the Divine Preacher of the Sermon on the Mounts not a feeling of to-day. I married very young, and had a large family of children. All of them, from the first to the last, have had a little version of the New Testament that I wrote for them read to them long before they could read, and no young people can. have had an earlier knowledge of, or interest in, that book. It is au inseparable part of their earliest remembrances."