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