CHARLES DICKENS'S RELIGION.
TT may be said at once by some that the religion of a man, even though he be dead, is a matter sacred to himself and to those yet surviving to whom he was most near and dear; and it may be said by others that there is no reason why any words about Charles Dickens's religious views should be of any use to- day. It seems to one person, however—and the same thought may be shared by others—that at a time when much is being said about education and religion, and the meaning of the words "religious education," it may be of some service to set forth what religion meant to so unbiassed, unprejudiced a mind as that of Dickens. He is not here and now being con- sidered as a writer, a humourist, a plot-maker, but merely as a man who won in his day great popularity (by no unworthy means), had many friends while he was living and has many admirers now that he is dead, and who will be allowed by all, even by those who do not love his pathos, to have promoted kindly feeling among people and to have left the world in some ways better than he found it. If cleanliness of word and thought is one of the signs of "pure and undefiled religion," as some think, it must be granted that this sign appears in all his books. Thackeray was giving utterance to what many other parents must have felt before and since he spoke when he thanked Charles Dickens for the "unsullied page" of "David Copperfield."
Dickens, possibly, was not what would be called a decidedly "religious" man. He may not have had a passion for Church services and sermons, he may have had no great liking for the Athanasian Creed as a thing to be said by simple yokels or chanted by little boys in surplices, but religion was for him a very real thing. He had a creed that might be called a useful and a " working " creed, a handy thing for a man of so busy and so strenuous a life. It is not the intention of the writer of these Lusa to criticise the lovers of what max be called minute points of ritual and complicated creeds, but it is intended to put in a plea for the usefulness and beauty of a religion which is simple. Educationists, whether interested in Church schools or in others, cannot in their hearts be very proud of the results of education during the past thirty years, whether those results are judged by the deeds of many youths or by what may be called the general conversation of the streets that assaults the ears of passers-by. It is not the talk of "loafers" that is here spoken of, but the talk of many who are known as "working men." The talk is often blasphemous or filthy, or it may be both; the words, probably, are " idle " words, the speakers not caring or realising what they say. This page is not a pulpit, and the fact, for fact it is, is here brought forward to suggest that such conversation is not, either from an intellectual or moral point of view, a satisfactory result of the education, religious and otherwise, that has been talked of and been practised for the last thirty years.
Ideas as to the nature of Charles Dickens's religious views may be gathered doubtless from his books, but his own state- ments in letters to his friends may be more certain guides. Writing in 1841 to a Dissenting minister, he says, with the liberality of view which would be natural to him : "There are more roads to heaven, I am inclined to think, than any sect believes ; but there can be none which have not these flowers [detestation of cruelty, &c.] garnishing the way." Writing in the same year to a bereaved man, he observes: "You have already all the comfort that I could lay before you ; all, I hope, that the affectionate spirit of your brother, now in happiness, can shed into your soul." "Try, do try," he says in the same year to another mourner, "to think that they have but prec,ded you to happiness, and will meet you with joy in heaven." If Dickens was not devoted to the English Church, he did not for that reason love Nonconformists merely because they did not love the Church. One letter gives an account of a meeting at a funeral with a minister who may have sat unconsciously for a photograph of Mr. Chadband. This preacher said of a certain statement : "It is false, incorrect, unchristian, in a manner blasphemous, and in all respects contemptible. Let us pray." Such remarks might have been made by Mr. Chadband.
On the other hand, in a letter to Mr. Macvey Napier written in 1843, Dickens showed no fondness for what may be called Church schools :—" Would it meet the purposes of the Review [the Edinburgh] to come out strongly against any system of education based exclusively on the principles of the Established Church ? If it would, I should like to show why such a thing as the Church Catechism is wholly inapplicable to the state of ignorance that now prevails ; and why no system but one, so general in great religious principles as to include all creeds, can meet the wants and understandings of the dangerous classes of society." After some remarks about the "ragged schools," he adds :—" I could show these people in a state so miserable and so neglected, that their very nature rebels against the simplest religion, and that to convey to them the faintest outlines of any system of distinction between right and wrong is in itself a giant's task, before which mysteries and squabbles for forms must give way. Would this be too much for the Review ? "
Turning back for a moment to his views about the other world, we find him in 1855, after referring to "A Journey from this World to the Next," comforting a mother with these words :—" With no effort of the fancy, with nothing to undo, you will always be able to think of the pretty creature you have lost, as a child in heaven." Certain Blue-books of great interest have lately brought before the notice of all England the principles and practice of education in America ; from Baltimore Charles Dickens wrote in 1842 :—" I am dis- appointed. Thrs is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of ray imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy—even with its sickening accompaniments of court circulars—to such a government as this In every- thing of which it has made a boast—excepting its education of the people and its care for poor children [the italics are not in the original]—it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon."
That Dickens was not very fond of missionary societies is a fact that might be gathered from his placing " Jo " upon the steps of s. building tenanted by such a society, whose dicers
had no work for Jo and such as Jo; but his ideas are clearly stated in a letter written in the course of 1852: "I am decidedly of opinion that the two works, the home and the foreign, are not conducted with an equal hand, and that the home taim is by far the stronger and the more pressing of the two." After insisting that education of all kinds should begin at home, and "on the utter removal of neglected and untaught childhood from its [i.e , England's] streets," he adds; "If it steadily persist in this work, working downward to the lowest, the travellers of all grades whom it sends abroad will be good, exemplary, practical missionaries, instead of undoers of what the best professed missionaries can do." Experience taught him that information was not always imparted in a seductive form, even when both the teacher and the taught were adults. Writing in 1854, he tells Frank Stone about a cer- tain man" who has read every book that ever was written, and is a perfect gulf of information. Before exploding a mine of knowledge he has a habit of closing one eye and wrinkling up his nose, so that he seems perpetually to be taking aim at you and knocking you over with a terrific charge. Then he looks again, and takes another aim. So you are always on your back, with your legs in the air." That learned man has spiritual descendants in these days! It has been seen what was Dickens's theory about mission work : namely, that every Englishman going out into the world—especially to other countries—should carry Christianity with him, or, rather, in him.
It is interesting to see, then, what was the sort of equipment that he provided for his own children, so far as it is set forth in these letters. Writing in 1868 to one son who was about to start his undergraduate life at Cambridge, after giving ex- cellent advice about the management of money, candour, debt, and reminding the son of the father's own hard work, Charles Dickens adds:—" As your brothers have gone away one by one I have written to each of them what I am now going to write to you. You know that you have never been hampered with religious forms of restraint, and that with mere unmeaning forms I have no sympathy. But I most strongly and affec- tionately impress upon you the priceless value of the New Testament, and the study of that book as the one unfailing guide in life. Deeply respecting it, and bowing down before the character of our Saviour, as separated from the vain con- structions and inventions of men, you cannot go very wrong, and will always preserve at heart a true spirit of veneration, and humility. Similarly I impress upon you the habit of saying a Christian prayer every night and morning. These things have stood by me all though my life, and remember that I tried to render the New Testament intelligible to you and lovable by you when you were a mere baby."
The present writer has had the privilege, the great privilege, of reading that essence of the New Testament, so to call it, in its original MS.,—it never has been published, and it never will be so long as the wishes of its compiler are respected. A letter of the same tenor was written to a son who went abroad in 1868, and unless our memory is playing tricks, Charles Dickens made in his last will and testament a like statement as to creed. It is possible that this collection of his views on education and religion may be of some interest and some use to-day.
Previous page
