p. 199 | Anecdotes of Carlyle

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 6, 1871

Anecdotes of Carlyle.

The curious and “troublesome” style of Carlyle is said to be quite in contrast with his simple, straightforward way of talking. Hatred of shame is one of his notable characteristics. One evening, at a small literary gathering, a lady, famous for her “muslin theology,” was bewailing the wickedness of the Jews in not receiving our Saviour, and ended her diatribe by expressing regret that he had not appeared in our own time. “How delighted,” said she, “we should all be to throw our doors open to him, and listen to his divine precepts! Don’t you think so, Mr. Carlyle?”

The sturdy philosopher, thus appealed to, said, in his broad Scotch: “No, madam, I don’t. I think that, had he come very fashionably dressed, with plenty of money, and preaching doctrines palatable to the higher orders, I might have had the honor of receiving from you a card of invitation, on the back of which would be written ‘TO MEET OUR SAVIOUR;’ but if he had come uttering his sublime precepts, and denouncing the Pharisees, and associating with the publicans and lower orders, as he did, you would have treated him much as the Jews did, and have cried out: ‘Take him to Newgate and hang him!’”

On another occasion, when Ernest Jones, a well-known Chartist leader, was haranguing, in his violent manner, against the established authorities, Carlyle shook his head, and told him that, “had the Chartist leaders been living in the days of Christ, he would have sent the unclean spirits into them, instead of into the swine of the Gergesenes, and so we should have happily got rid of them.” This delicate allusion to the suicide of the pigs so astonished the respectable representative of the numerous family of the Joneses that he said nothing more about Chartism that night.—Harper’s Magazine.