Do people still make miscellanies? I mean collections of things that strike you when youre reading, and you write them down because theyre witty or striking or profound or humorous, or whatever. Today I came across this gem that I stumbled upon some years ago while looking for something else. Its from an article in the Dublin Review on the Evangelical movment in nineteenth-century England and of the Rev. Robert Aitken in particular. Thus it happened, in many instances, that a movement which seemed destined to give fresh life and vigour to the Established Church, and which has done much to infuse emotion and spirituality into the dry bones of High Church preaching, yet resulted, in the case of many of those who gave themselves up most unreservedly to the movement, in their coming into the Catholic Church; much to the grief of poor Mr. Aitken, whose lamentations and denunciations resembled the distress of a hen when she sees the ducklings, on whose hatching she had lavished a mothers care, taking naturally to the water. He had a great deal of the old anti-Catholic prejudice still strong in him, and he honestly believed that he was doing God service in striving to prevent people from submitting to the Catholic Church. Thus he concluded his farewell letter to Mrs. Leslie: You will be damned, I believe, eternally. I remain, yours affectionately, Robert Aitken.From The Dublin Review (1899) 263. Do people still make miscellanies? I mean collections of things that strike you when youre reading, and you write them down because theyre witty or striking or profound or humorous, or whatever. Today I came across this gem that I stumbled upon some years ago while looking for something else. Its from an article in the Dublin Review on the Evangelical movment in nineteenth-century England and of the Rev. Robert Aitken in particular.

Thus it happened, in many instances, that a movement which seemed destined to give fresh life and vigour to the Established Church, and which has done much to infuse emotion and spirituality into the dry bones of High Church preaching, yet resulted, in the case of many of those who gave themselves up most unreservedly to the movement, in their coming into the Catholic Church; much to the grief of poor Mr. Aitken, whose lamentations and denunciations resembled the distress of a hen when she sees the ducklings, on whose hatching she had lavished a mothers care, taking naturally to the water. He had a great deal of the old anti-Catholic prejudice still strong in him, and he honestly believed that he was doing God service in striving to prevent people from submitting to the Catholic Church. Thus he concluded his farewell letter to Mrs. Leslie: You will be damned, I believe, eternally. I remain, yours affectionately, Robert Aitken.

From The Dublin Review (1899) 263.

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

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