Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

tact. Without it, better not to speak at all. Infinitely better,

to read the New Testament well, and to let THAT speak. In this

congregation there is indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any

power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as

one.’

Page 22

Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that

the minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly say to

myself that he expressed an understanding of the general mind and

character of his audience. There was a supposititious working-man

introduced into the homily, to make supposititious objections to

our Christian religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a

very disagreeable person, but remarkably unlike life – very much

more unlike it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. The

native independence of character this artisan was supposed to

possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I

certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse

swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I

should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far

away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a model pauper

introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the most

intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in

absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. For,

how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of

humility? A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which I

myself really thought good-natured of him), ‘Ah, John? I am sorry

to see you here. I am sorry to see you so poor.’ ‘Poor, sir!’

replied that man, drawing himself up, ‘I am the son of a Prince!

MY father is the King of Kings. MY father is the Lord of Lords.

MY father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!’ &c. And

this was what all the preacher’s fellow-sinners might come to, if

they would embrace this blessed book – which I must say it did some

violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s

length at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow

lot at a sale. Now, could I help asking myself the question,

whether the mechanic before me, who must detect the preacher as

being wrong about the visible manner of himself and the like of

himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, might

not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion, doubt that

preacher’s being right about things not visible to human senses?

Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience

continually as ‘fellow-sinners’? Is it not enough to be fellowcreatures,

born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying tomorrow?

By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our

common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and

our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something

better than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in

something good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose

with some qualities that are superior to our own failings and

weaknesses as we know them in our own poor hearts – by these, Hear

me! – Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures. Surely, it

includes the other designation, and some touching meanings over and

above.

Again. There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an

absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading), who

had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a

Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel.

Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and

many a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man. But he

fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his conversion –

in words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and

would read to you from this piece of paper. I must confess that to

me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear