DICKENS' FAITH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20402, 2 November 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

DICKENS' FAITH.

AN OLD JUDGMENT REVISED.

BT JJATAXGA.

Devoting an evening lately to " the faith of Dickens," the Auckland branch of the world-wide Fellowship ventured on ground traversed with much care since Forster first set deliberate foot ou it. ihat was long ago, more than half a century. He said so many thing with certainty, and he was so well entitled to be heard because of his intimacy with Dickens, that for a long time nothing more was said by anybody else. Still his book remains a mine of biographical wealth; yet tho recent issuo of an annotated edition of it, following the appearance of a significantly large number of books and magazine articles critically appreciative of Dickens, encourages a review of something Forster said about the novelist's faith. It was to the effect that he depended more than must men on what outer things provided for him. " Thero was for him," says this privileged biographer, " no ' city of the mind ' against outward ills for- inner consolation and shelter." There was, that is, no deep and settled conviction about the scheme of things, nothing of quiet certitude that behind all moved "an increasing purpose" of a divine and beneficent Lord of Life. In one respect Forster was incontestablv right. " Boz " had not it in him fo be quiet. His was a nature mercurially responsive to every movement of circumstance. He was temperamentally excitable. He lived habitually outside himself. Yet this is only half the truth, and not the better half. Foister himself, in the latest chapters ot his book, told enough to show that his earlier dictum was illfounded ; and recent years have modified that judgment very greatly. Dickens had a faith. His" work sprang from inspiring beliefs. Never did writer put more of his heart into his pen. The man himself is in his books. They aro bone of his bone aud flesh of his flesh. A purpose—one purpose with many facets —breathes aud moves in them, and that purpose was firmly rooted in his taith. Definitely Religious. That faith was definitely religious. It was not obtruded. Often you can forget it as you read. But, ever and anon, it peeps out, sometimes with a suddenness that startles you into the conviction that it has never been far away. Even its most arresting emergence, however, seems perfectly natural—a proof that behind the magic of. the stage which he sets and peoples with so lavish a creative artistry there ever moved a dominating creed of "life. It was a creed of life —not technically theological, not philosophic, but vigorously vital and practical. He had little patience with schools of thought, and none at all with doctrinaire dabblers given to creed-spinning. But- he had, I and acknowledged, preat beliefs, as clearcut and certain, and yet as ragged in edge here and , there, and as incomplete as the real beliefs of most of us. Let us listen to him, writing as Forster | records when this admiring biographer tries to exhibit what he rails the " aspirations of a snore sole nn import that were not less part of (Dickens } nature. Forster adds, with much obvious truth, that " it was depih of sentiment rather than clearness of faith which kept safe the belief ot: which they (these aspirations' rested against all doubt or question of its sacredness, but every year seemed to strengthen it in him. But we turn, as Forster would ever have us, from the feller of Dickens' life-story to tiie storv itself. 11l a letter to Forster there is "narrated by Dickens a dream he had, a dream he analyses with some care. In the dream, be put to the spirit: of Jlarv Hogarth the question— What is the true religion?" and in haste offered an impulsive answer, before the spirit could reply. " Ycu think, as 1 do, that the form of religion does not so creatly matter, if we try to do good. Ihat is very revealing. "As I do.' "Yes, the form counted for less with him than the essentia] practical element in all religion worth the name. firm Basis of a Purpose. On that most interesting page Forster adds also this; "It was perhaps natural that he should omit, from his own considerations awakened by the dream, the verv first that wouid have risen in any mind to which his was intimately known—that it strengthens other evidences, of which there aro many in his life, of- his not having escaped those trying regions of reflection which most men of. thought, and all men of genius, have at some time to pass through. In such disturbing fancies during the next year or two 1 may add that the book which helped him most was the ' Life of Arnold.' ' I respect and reverence his memory, he wrote to me in the middle of October in reply to my mention of what, had most attracted invsejf in it, beyond all expression. I must have that book. E\eiy sentence that you quote from it. is the text-book of my faith.' " N>. on his own showing. Dickons had a faith. and tho faith was clear enough, though perhaps nut always clear, and complete enough, though never quite complete, to give a firm basis for a lifelong purpose. Look at the end of his will: _ 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 teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in anv mail's narrow construction of tts letter hero or there." That was no strange thing for him to write H marches with Ilia general regard for Christian things. Into the box of a son going to seek a career in Australia no out a New Testament, and wrote a letter urging the reverent study of that book. He" rewrote it in simple language for his children, wrote prayers too for their use. He was amazed and shocked when ho found thai he was being accused of irippaiit treatment ot religion. Breathing in His Books. His books breathe his faith, faith m "an ultimate decency of things, ui a basic goodness innatu in men and women, faith in 'the unseen and ageless influence of a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness, h is clear beyond denial that, writing so much with a philanthropic purpose, he trusted to ie edition of this beneficent influence oil his rC Gale on the procession of the redeemed among his characters. What of Scrooge, Dombev, Bella Wilfer, Pip, Abel Magwitch. Sydney Carton ? Their names may not be legion, bat they aro a g.orious company 'of the apostles of Dickens deathless hope in humanity a rising on stepping stones of its dead selves to hiJher W- «' l "' ?' ' he , mm* «' 8"" 1 " 111 ' " Ci,os f '™ .I" , them '■ Whence, too. comes the Ainrt c" "hope " that almost ceaselessly moves through his pa^ p - s .J . a , , AJany of his villains are flecked with touches of a better, though necessarily (for bis purpose) a baffled, motive and desire. As for his fools, they are often to be "lad'lv suffered, to be loved, even to be' honoured. Their creator was surely conduced that even the least promising •of souls had a patent of " ob . lht >; m His faith —in his own task, in- humanit. , in a regenerated earth and a compensating heaven—can be read without any strainingci the eyes. It was a wind of childlike trust and manful SriW .nd and most isndunne in his worK«