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Up for sale a RARE! "English Theologian" Henry Liddon Signed 2X3 Card.
ES-3991
Henry
Parry Liddon (1829–1890), also
known as H. P. Liddon, was an English theologian. From 1870 to
1882, he was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at
the University of Oxford. The
son of a naval captain, Liddon was born on 20 August 1829 at North Stoneham, near Eastleigh, Hampshire. He was educated at King's College School, and
at Christ Church, Oxford,
where he graduated, taking a second class, in 1850. As vice principal of
the theological college at Cuddesdon (1854–1859) he wielded considerable influence,
and, on returning to Oxford as vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, became a
force among the undergraduates, exercising his influence in opposition to the
liberal reaction against Tractarianism, which had set in after John Henry Newman's conversion to Catholicism in 1845. In
1864 Walter Kerr Hamilton,
the Bishop of Salisbury, whose
examining chaplain Liddon had been, appointed him prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral. In
1866 he delivered his Bampton Lectures on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ,
published as The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1867).
From that time his fame as a preacher was established. In 1870 he was made canon
of St Paul's Cathedral,
London. He had before this published Some Words for God against
the scepticism of the day. His preaching at St Paul's soon attracted vast
crowds. The afternoon sermon, which fell to the canon in residence, had usually
been delivered in the choir, but soon after Liddon's appointment it became
necessary to preach the sermon under the dome, where from 3000 to 4000 persons
used to gather to hear him. Liddon was praised for grasp of his subject,
clarity and lucidity, use of illustration, vividness of imagination, elegance
of diction, and sympathy with the intellectual position of those whom he
addressed. In the arrangement of his material, he is thought to have imitated
the French preachers of the age of Louis XIV. In 1870 Liddon
had also been made Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford. The combination of
the two appointments gave him extensive influence over the Church of England. With Dean Church he restored the influence of the Tractarian
school, and he succeeded in popularising the opinions which, in the hands
of Edward Bouverie Pusey and John Keble, had appealed to thinkers and scholars. His Act of 1874, and denounced the Bulgarian atrocities
of 1876. In 1882 he resigned his professorship and travelled in Palestine and Egypt;
and showed his interest in the Old Catholic movement by visiting Döllinger at Munich. In 1886, he became chancellor of St Paul's, and
declined more than one offer of a bishopric. Liddon was a friend of Lewis Carroll, who accompanied him on a trip to Moscow where
Liddon made approaches to leading Russian Orthodox clergy, seeking closer links between
them and the Church of England. He
died on 9 September 1890 at the height of his reputation, having nearly completed
a biography of Pusey, whom he admired; this work was completed after his death
by John Octavius Johnston and Robert Wilson. Liddon's
influence during his life was due to his personal fascination and his pulpit
oratory rather than to his intellect. As a theologian his outlook was
old-fashioned; to the last he maintained the narrow standpoint of Pusey and
Keble, in defiance of modern thought and modern scholarship. The publication in
1889 of Lux Mundi edited
by Charles Gore, a series of
essays attempting to harmonise Anglican Catholic doctrine with modern thought, showed
that even at Pusey House, established
as the citadel of Puseyism at Oxford, the principles of Pusey were being
departed from. He was the last of the classical pulpit orators of the English
Church, the last great popular exponent of the traditional Anglican orthodoxy,
with the exception of John Charles Ryle (1816-1900),
the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool (1880-1900).