CARACTERISTICAS DEL LIQUIDO

In Dickens’s conception and portrayal of the person and character of God the Father in TLOL, there is much assumed. What we find profiled in TLOL and developed in his other writings seems to be a rather typical early nineteenth-century understanding of God. That is, God is understood to be the Creator of the universe and providential orchestrator of history. The early-Victorian layperson embraced a concept of God that was understood to have emerged from the Scriptures and that was largely taken for granted, but one which was

61 _{Genre lock is a technique that attempts to triangulate multiple attestation across genre distinctions in the} Dickens corpus. Particularly when using quotations from novels, I have attempted, in most cases, to corrobo- rate the point of view of the quote with material from TLOL and from another source of correspondence, speech, or journalism. I will employ this technique in this chapter as well as chapters 4, 5, and 6.

The Eternal Majesty of the Heavens • 95 very seldom precisely articulated by anyone other than theologians. In particular, God’s power, providence, and justice comprised some of the more obviously familiar attributes of God, but John Howard Hinton’s62_{Theology: An Attempt Towards a Consistent View of the} Whole Counsel of God, for instance, includes chapters on God’s benevolence and wisdom as well, two more attributes that would have been readily familiar to the popular mind. We will return to some of these attributes below, but for now it is enough simply to identify what the popular mind connected with the study of the person and character of God.

Turning to Dickens, we find the same familiar concept of God: all-powerful, all- wise, the righteous judge, the supreme benevolence, and inscrutable providence. In TLOL, however, God the Father operates, for the most part, behind the scenes. He is seldom center stage—God the Son occupies that space. But, Dickens’s approach here is consistent with both the Scriptures and the popularly received teaching on God. Hinton noted in his Theol- ogy concerning the Scriptural teaching on God: “It may strike an attentive reader of the holy scriptures, however, that the existence of God, though every where implied, is not among the truths formally asserted in them. They copiously declare what he is, but no where ex- pressly announce the fact of his being” (36). Dickens’s course in TLOL is, not unexpectedly, quite the same. Nevertheless, his basic understanding of God as revealed in TLOL presents important, foundational and essential aspects of the person and character of God, which are broadened in his other work.

§3.2 BEHIND THE SEEN: GOD AT WORK IN THE LIFE OF OUR LORD

Page through any number of mid-nineteenth-century popular religious books and

62 _{Hinton, a Baptist, was a distinguished minister and theologian, and a prominent Dissenting political ac-} tivist. His Theology: An Attempt Towards a Consistent View of the Whole Counsel of God (1827) would have been directed toward and more accessible to the popular mind.

The Eternal Majesty of the Heavens • 96 commentaries and you will soon be confronted with a myriad of names and ascriptions for God the Father. Stupendous Creator, The Supreme Being, The Divine Mind, all-gracious God, God of Truth, God of Nature, the Divine Wisdom, Providence, and the wise Disposer of all things—these are just a few of the various titles that you might find. Likewise, when Dickens uses ascriptions such as the Eternal Majesty of Heaven, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Infinite Benevolence, the Great Creator of mankind, and the Supreme Benefi- cence, he identifies several attributes and marks of character which we want to consider. For Dickens and for TLOL, God exists as Eternal Good, Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and the inscrutable orchestrator of Providence. Most importantly, however, God simply is—and God acts.

As I have already pointed out, God is not at center stage in TLOL, but He seems to be at the center of the action much of the time. He is understood as the key Mover of the entire narrative. God is the One who oversees and directs the birth of Jesus and the events surrounding it. He is the One who sends an angel to the shepherds to announce the birth of the child whom He “will love as His own Son” (14). He is the One who uses a star to direct the magi to the abode of the Holy Family: “God ordered it to be so” (15). It is God who keeps the child from the harm Herod seeks to do him. Furthermore, it is God who permits and empowers the miraculous in His world (25), who has sent Jesus, and who empowers him (25-26). It is God of whose goodness Jesus speaks, and to whom he teaches us to pray (20). It is toward God that men and women must mind their duty, John taught (20-23). Je- sus teaches that men and women are to love God (34) and it is to Him they must ultimately answer (53), for it is God upon whom they must ultimately depend to “forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace” (128). God’s presence and activity, then, are unavoidable in TLOL, but never become the focus. Still, the Jesus story takes place

The Eternal Majesty of the Heavens • 97 in the context of God’s world and according to His direction. So, as we observed earlier, in typical early-Victorian fashion, basic conceptual aspects of God’s person and character are assumed but not explicitly articulated in TLOL.