DICKENS' RELIGION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9138, 10 July 1906, Page 3

DICKENS' RELIGION.

An interesting letter, written by Charles Dickens on the eve of his death, has iust teen accidentally discovered (reports the Scotsman) in the pages of an old "History of England," which came into the hands of a secord-hand bookseller in Holloway. Th© letter, which has reference to a passage in "Edward Drood," is dated Bth . June, 1870. It ran* thus :— "It would be quite 1 inconceivable to me — & but for your letter— that any reasonable reader could possibly attach a Scriptural reference to a passage in a book of m^ c reproducing a much-abused fiocfel figure of speech impressed into all sorts of service on all sorts of inappropriate occasions without the faintest connection of it with its ori»s--l source. lam truly shocked >q find that any readers can make the J^ mistake. -~ "I nave always striven in my writings to repress veneration for ,tJie life and lessons of onr Saviour, because I feel it, and because I re-wrote that history for my children, every one of whom knew it from hearing it repeated to them long before i they could read, and almost as soon as l they could speak. ■ ' ' S "But I have never made a proclamation of this from the housetops." Dickens died on June 9, 1970, and therefore the letter was penned the day, before hi 3 death.