Ronald Knox (1888 – 1957)
English theologian, priest and crime writer.
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He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.
Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny.
It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.
There once was a man who said: "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God.
When suave politeness, temp'ring bigot zeal
Corrected I believe to One does feel.
Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat.
The prevailing attitude of the speakers was one of heavy disagreement with a number of things which the reader had not said.
I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.
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