The Argosy — page 363: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Tendency of Dickens’s Works. 291 lessons by which any human creature, who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty, can possibly be guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by this book, putting aside the interpretations and inventions of men. You will remember that at home you have never been harrassed about religious observances or mere formalities. I have always been anxious not to weary my children with such things before they are old enough to form opinions respecting them. You will, therefore, understand the better that I now most solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion as it came from Christ Himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong 1f you humbly and heartily respect it. “Only one thing more on this head. “The more we are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are dis- posed to hold forth about it. Never abandon the wholesome practice of saying your own private prayers, night and morning. I have never abandoned it myself, and I know the comfort of it.” They who most intimately knew Dickens say that every word there is written from his heart, and is radiant with the truth of his nature. Again, in answer to a letter from a clergyman, he says: “I beg to thank you for your letter. There cannot be many men, I believe, who have a more humble veneration for the New Testament, or a more profound conviction of its all-sufficiency, than I have. If Iam ever (as you tell me I am) mistaken on this subject, it is because I discountenance all obtrusive professions of, and tradings in, religion, as one of the main causes why real Christianity has been retarded in — this world, and because my observation of life induces me to hold in unspeakable dread and horror those unseemly squabbles about the deter which drive the spirit out of hundreds of thousands.” Then again, when a reader of ‘‘ Edwin Drood” had accused him of irreverently quoting a line of Scripture, he says, denying the charge: ‘I am truly shocked that any reader could make the mistake. I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour, because I feel it. But I have never made proclamation of this from the housetops.” At the end of his last will and testament he says : ‘‘ I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man’s narrow construction of its letter here and there.” Now all this, though it may not have proved Dickens to have thought as the majority here may think, must prove him to be actuated by good and pure motives. In conclusion I will give the words of Dean Stanley, spoken after Dickens’s death, in Westminster Abbey. ‘ He whom we mourn was the friend of mankind, a philanthropist in the true sense, the friend of youth, the friend of the poor, the enem yo CORnICclooo SS oCO mn —— |