Twelve Poor Men and True
Charles Dickens explains the thinking behind Jesus Christ’s choice of friends.
1846-1849
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Charles Dickens explains the thinking behind Jesus Christ’s choice of friends.
1846-1849
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Charles Dickens’s ‘The Life of Our Lord’ was written ‘for his children during the years 1846 to 1849’. Many of the themes that animate his novels find direct and uncomplicated expression in its pages, including the importance of a loving home and inspiring role-models close at hand.
JESUS Christ chose twelve poor men to be His companions. He chose them from among poor men, in order that the poor might know that Heaven was made for them as well as for the rich, and that God makes no difference between those who wear good clothes and those who go barefoot and in rags. The most miserable, the most ugly, deformed, wretched creatures that live, will be bright Angels in Heaven if they are good here on earth.
Never be proud or unkind to any poor man, woman, or child. If they are bad, think that they would have been better if they had had kind friends, and good homes, and had been better taught. So, always try to make them better by kind persuading words; and always try to teach them and relieve them if you can. And when people speak ill of the poor and miserable, think how Jesus Christ went among them, and taught them, and thought them worthy of His care.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
According to Dickens, what led Jesus Christ to surround himself with poor men as his friends?
The desire to give poor people hope.