The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-07-23
Beecher's Tribute to Dickens.

At q recent Friday evening meeting at Ply
mouth Church, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher paid
the following eloquent tribute to the deceased
novelist = -f
The death of Charles Dickens has been alluded
to. l suppose it will produce more nearly the
feeling of personal loss than that of any one that
has died since Walter Scott. He was a house
hold man. lie was a man of the most genial
sympathies, the most humane feelings almost of
any man that is writing in our day. He took
hold of what we may call the great middle class
OF feelings In the human mind. Whether he
Was personally and eXperimentally, in one sense
of that term, a Christian man, God knows-I do
not. L know indeed very little about his per-
sonal, private life. L think it, however, ALWAYS
a very difficult matter to measure men who are
brought up under different Institutions, placed in
different circumstances from our own, and whose
way of looking at things is SO much modified by
their surroundings as scarcely to be recognized
by us. Now you may say of men anywhere, in
any nation In any circumstances, that there is
one class of them which we believe to be Chris
tians. They are producers of spiritual influence
in the world, positively, and we do not doubt
about them. Then there is another class of
which we say that we are positive they produce
malign influences, selfish influences. Then there
is a great class of men between these, of whom
1t Is very difficult to say whether they are a little
nearer this side or a little nearer that side, and
that they may not be truly Christian, although
very much unlike ourselves. recollect hearing
my father say once of Bishop Heber that he had
been reading his life and journeys, and he
expressed the greatest doubt whether he was a
Christian or not. He thought him to be a very
moral man, and of a very poetic nature and
that he had some of the " ~natooral virtoos.,' as
they are called-had them in great strength but
he shook his head mournfully on the question of
his actual conversion but | suppose there are
none OF us who participate in that doubt. AS |
look back upon it l see that my father applied a
very rigid, and indeed technical, measure to a
man that was brought up in such a way that he
(my father) was not able to understand his sur
roundlngs. Contrast Mr.. Dickens and his life
work with the life-work of any man that has filed
literature with an eminently, distinctiyely
bias, made it rich in distinctive Christian
truths, and you feel at once that he is not of that
class. That Is not the work given to him. On the
other hand, compare him with such writers as
and Byron, men of that standing. and
you feel just as much that he was not on that
He was not a producer of morbid feeling.
de did not generate sel6shness or pride. and
not tendencies toward license and dissi-
patton. All his writings brace up manhood in
ruth, and honor, and purity, and virtue. and
throughout they are noble. There NAV be exag-
OF caricatures, but the generic influence
'f his writing is to make manhood purer and
ruer. 1t is TO make the intercourse of men
With their tellow-men more genial and more
humane 1t Is to make the household purer and
and sweeter. There can be no Question
hat this is the general tendency of all his writ
ngs. l do not believe that there is a line to be
ound which, either by design or in fact, will
end to produce RIGHTEOUSNESS or laxity. On the
ingle question of drink / should make an excep-
ion. Neither by preaching nor by practice did
e stand on the advanced ground on that subject
f many advanced men of the world. He repre- Z
ents the old school--and 1 hope the school is
assing away-of moral men in England on that
lbject, who have treated it contemptuously and
lade it ridiculous by caricature. :
But in respect to the other good things ]. have
lentioned, there can be no question that he has
cen a benefaetor of his race. And though he s
not worked in the highest sphere in the spir- T
ual elements of the race. God had gifted him
18th DO mean talent and given him a success that o
as been seldom youchsafed to any not in my =
emory to any as to Charles Dickens. 1 doubt IL
bis works that he has Left behind him will be
much read in another generation as they are
wv but there can be no question that where
deliberations in the procedure of society are =
aeed back to their sources, it will be found that f.