Aitken – Temptation and Toil

William Hay MacDowall Hunter Aitken

AITKEN, WILLIAM HAY MACDOWALL HUNTER: Church of England; b. at Liverpool Sept. 21, 1841. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford (B.A., 1865, M.A., 1867). He was presented to the curacy of St. Jude’s, Mildmay Park, London, in 1865, and was ordained a priest in the following year. From 1871 to 1875 he was incumbent of Christ Church, Liverpool, but resigned to become a mission preacher.[expand title="see more of Biography on Aitken"]

The next year he founded, in memory of his father, Rev. Robert Aitken, the Aitken Memorial Mission Fund, of which he was chosen general superintendent, and which later developed into the Church Parochial Missionary Society. He twice visited the United States on mission tours, first in 1886, when the noonday services for businessmen at Trinity Church, New York, were begun, and again in 1895-96.

Since 1900 he has been canon residentiary of Norwich Cathedral. Two years later he was a member of the Fulham Conference on auricular confession. He has been a member of the Victoria Institute since 1876. In theology, he is a liberal Evangelical but has never been closely identified with any party. He adheres strongly to the doctrines of grace, although he repudiates Calvinism. While not an opponent of higher criticism in itself, he exercises a prudent conservatism in accepting its conclusions. In his eschatology, he is an advocate of the theory of conditional immortality.

His Writings Include

• Around the cross: some of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ (1844)
• The Highway of Holiness: helps to the spiritual life (1883)
• The Divine Ordinance of Prayer (1902)
• Mission Sermons (3 vols., London, 1875-76)
• What is faith?
  The School of Grace; expository thoughts on Titus 2:11-14 (1879)
• The Doctrine of Baptism: mechanical and spiritual (1900)
• The Romance of Christian Work and Experience (1898); 
• Temptation and toil; sermons on the battle and the work of life (1895); 
• The difficulties of the soul
• Hymns for a parochial mission, with accompanying tunes
• What is your Life?: Missions addresses to young men (1879)
• The love of the father : sermons on the parable of the prodigal son and other subjects illustrative of the fatherly love of God (1887)
• The Glory of the Gospel: mission addresses (1882)
• Hymns for a parochial mission : with accompanying tunes : also short liturgies for mission services
• Eastertide: thoughts on the passion and resurrection of our Lord (1889)
• God’s Everlasting Yea (1881)
• Life, Light, and Love: Studies on the First Epistle of St. John (1905).
• The Revealer Revealed (1885)
• Newness of Life (1877)
• Girls of Yesterday and Today; The Romance of the YMCA   (1911)

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See Aitken Online Books Page, see biography of Aitken in Schaff-Herzog.

theWord Modules by Aitken

• Aitken – Temptation and Toil
• Aitken – The Revealer Revealed