Dedication

To His Grace
The Most Reverend Charles Eyre, D.D.,
Archbishop of Glasgow.

My Lord Archbishop,

For years I have sought to prove myself grateful to one who has a claim to a large measure of gratitude at my hands.

The publication of this book—however unworthy of notice it may be found—affords me a much desired opportunity.

My presenting it for your Grace’s acceptance is meant to be a token that I have still a vivid and grateful remembrance of your kindness in years gone by—kindness which was shown not merely by valued counsel in regard to writings in which I was engaged, but in a large variety of other ways.

Should it seem out of place to make a book, which deals chiefly with matters of controversy, serve the purpose I have indicated, my plea is the following:—

In the years during which it was my privilege to visit and converse frequently with your Grace, I had exceptional opportunities of noting the deep interest you took in everything which tended to the welfare of the Church and the multiplication of her members; of noting also your warm solicitude that those whose errors were the traditions of their fathers should be disillusioned, see the light and find their way into the One Fold; of noting, moreover, the joy you evinced at the news of each recent conversion, and the anxious desire you so often expressed that a branch of the Catholic Truth Society should be established and prosper within your jurisdiction—a desire now happily realised to the full.

Possessing an intimate knowledge of all this, I thought I might suitably, at least not unfittingly, make the work a memorial of acknowledgment of a debt I owe you for the many and great favours of which you graciously made me the recipient through an unusually laborious period of my life.

May the Benign and Loving Providence, which has blest your administration of your great Archdiocese so signally in the past, bless it even yet more abundantly in the years (I hope many) that may still be allotted to you, and make it fruitful in those works of zeal which have the largest place in your thoughts and which are nearest to your heart, is,

My Lord Archbishop,
The earnest prayer of
Your obedient and obliged servant in Christ,
John MacLaughlin.

7 CUMBERLAND ROAD, ACTON, LONDON, W.
Octave of the Epiphany, 1901.