'An offering of thanks'

Algis Valiunas has an excellent article in the new issue of First Things titled "The Gospel According to Dickens" (not related to my book of a similar title!). A sample: 

Man plans, God laughs; it is often rather a disagreeable arrangement, from our point of view. So we are accustomed to regarding him with ceremonious solemnity, always on our best behavior when we approach. Dickens breaks with decorum and thereby proclaims a new dispensation. He establishes laughter as an essential duty for the pious.

And Dickens is ever devoutly observant. The comic genius no doubt feels God’s pleasure when he ­creates the tubby little gent with a warrior’s spiritedness, Mr. Pickwick, or the tippling gabby midwife with her own system of English pronunciation, Mrs. Gamp; the perennially bankrupt but endlessly charming sponger, Mr. Micawber, or the addled philanthropist hell-bent on civilizing Borrioboola-Gha, Mrs. Jellyby; the gay dog with a bounder’s eye for the main chance, Major Bagstock, or the intrepid one-armed mariner with a deathly fear of his landlady, Captain Cuttle. Every human oddity Dickens creates should be seen as an offering of thanks to the God who created him. Humor is Dickens’s most formidable weapon against the world’s evil, putting the unbearable to rout under a hail of laughter. In the face of heartless life and hard death there exists in Dickens’s soul an inexhaustible store of amusement, as comforting as prayer.

Thanks to Tai French for the tip.