DOES NOT LIKE KINGS.

Northern Advocate, 12 August 1913, Page 6

DOES NOT LIKE KINGS.

WHY DR. AXED HAS BECOME AN

AMERICAN CITIZEN

THE 12,000 DOLLAR PARSON

LONDON, June 22. Dr. C. F. Aked, the preacher who went from the Pembroke Baptist Church in Liverpool to the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in New six years ago, has become an American citizen. Dr. Aked, who began his career as an auctioneer, received a salary of £2500 a year in New x ork, where the papers called him " The Twelve-Thousand-Dollar Parson." His congregation of wealthy people once subscribed £ 65,000 at a single service. He quarrelled with the trustees in connection with the building of a great new church, and afterwards accepted a call to, San Francisco at a salary of £2000 a year. The New York. trustees said hard things oi him before his departure for the West, one of them, Mr. Elder, declaring that nothing but "a vast auditorium filled with rambling religious rubbernecks " would satisfy Dr. Aked's desires. " Why I became an American " is the subject of a long explanation published in the American newspapers by Dr. Aked. " I am sure my friends in England," he says, " will never understand why I have done this, but the reason is briefly this: I have always been a Republican. I seem to have been born into the world with a hatred of monarchy and everything that goes with it. All the homage paid to kings and queens and all the trappings of courts, the very language employed has been from my earliest boyhood intolerable to me. The fact that one is a subject of King Edward or King George is unpleasant to me and King worship in all countries and ages disgusts me." Dr. Aked declares that the hero-worshipper is opposed with all his soul to King-worship. j