Robert Aitken (preacher)

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Robert Aitken (22 January 1800 – 11 July 1873) was a Scottish popular preacher from Crailing, near Jedburgh.

Biography

While still very young, Aitken became a school-master in Sunderland, and, whilst living in the village of Whitburn near that town, was ordained as deacon in 1823 by Bishop William Van Mildert. He was for some time resident in the Isle of Man, and married there; but his preaching caused him to clash with the Bishop of Chester, and he withdrew from the Church of England.^[1]

Aitken was never received into the Wesleyan Connexion and ministry, but he was permitted to occupy Methodist pulpits, by the Wesleyan Methodist Association, a splinter group.^[2] He remained in sympathy with them until the Warren controversy arose. He created his own "Christian Society"; it proved to be a source of Latter Day Saints converts.^[1][2]

Subsequently Aitken preached in Liverpool and elsewhere. in chapels of his own. He finally, on 20 December 1840, took leave of his congregation at Zion Chapel, Waterloo Road, Liverpool, and returned to the Church of England.^[1]

Aitken officiated from 1842 to 1844 as curate of the small parish of Perranuthnoe, near Marazion, in Cornwall, and then became the first incumbent of the new parish of Pendeen in the same county. In this remote district, on the borders of the Atlantic, there was erected, from his own designs and under his own personal supervision, a cruciform church on the model of the ancient cathedral of Iona, the labour being supplied entirely by the people of the neighbourhood, and chiefly in their own leisure hours. He never held any other preferment. He died suddenly on the Great Western Railway platform at Paddington on 11 July 1873.^[1]

Preacher

Aitken's services were often sought by the incumbents of other churches in large towns, and he was well known throughout England as a fervent preacher. A fine presence and a commanding voice, combined with untiring zeal and sympathy for others, concealed rashness of judgment. His religious creed was taken partly from the teachings of the Methodist church, and partly from the views of the Tractarians: he wished the one class to undergo the process of ‘conversion,’ the other to be imbued with sacramental beliefs. Whether his opinions were in accord with the principles of the established church or not, was fiercely disputed both before and after his death. His sermons and pamphlets, as well as the replies which they provoked, are described at length in the first and third volumes of Bibliotheca Cornubiensis.^[1]

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Aitken, Robert". Dictionary of National Biography. 1. London: Smith, Elder & Co.