The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-05 00:00:00

CHARLES DICKENS AND THE BIBLE

Mr. David Macrae, in his newly-published work;
" Home and Abroad," gives the following :—" In 1861,,
I unexpectedly received from Mr. Dickens a letter of
thanks for a paper published at the time, in which I
endeavoured t) point out the service his books had
done to Christian morality. This led to a correspon-
dence, in the course of which Mr. Dickens made some
statements of his views in regard. to Christ and His
teaching, which have peculiar interest now. In the
article referred to, I had taken occasion to criticise his
treatment of professing. Christiar.s—expressing the opinion
that, while he lid 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 shew
that Christian profession may be marked and yet sincere ;
and that, so far, his representations of Christianity were
gravely defective. In reference to this point, Mr. Dickens
wrote :—" I have so strong an objection to mere pro-
fessions of religion, and to the audacious interposition
of vain and ignorant men between the sublime shnpli-
city 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 pro-
test." In reference to Ills treatment of true Chris-
tianity, he said :—" With a deep sense of my great
responsibility always upon use when I exercise my art,
one of my most constant and most earnest endeavours
has been to exhibit in all my good people some faint
recollections of the teachings of our great Master,
and unostentatiously to lead the reader up to those teach-
ings as the great source of all moral goodness. All my •
strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testa-
ment ; all my social abuses are shewn as departures from
its spirit ; all my good people a"e humble, charitable,
faithful, and forgiving. Over and over again, I claim
them in express words as disciples of the Founder
of our religion ; but I must admit that to a
man (or woman) they all rise and wash their
faces, and do not appear unto men to fast.
Furthermore, I devised a new kind of book fur Christ-
mas, years ago (which has since been imitated all
over England, France, and America) absolutely impos-
sible, I think, to be separated from the exemplification of
the Christian virtues and the incubation of Christian pre-
cepts. In every one of these books there is an express text
preached on,-and that text is always taken from the lips
of Christ.' In a subsequent letter he said—' Your exposi-
tion 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 in-
fluence. While I ask no man bow 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 anyone, how that
default was to be reconciled with the precepts of
Christianity." In the same letter he says :—" hly
reverence for the Divine Preacher of the Sermon on
the Mount is 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 an inseparable part of their earliest remem-
brance.' With loving hand, now that he is gone, I bring
back this garland of his own to lay upon his tomb." •