Didactic

Didactic

dictation exercise

notebook

Arthur P. Stone

Charles Dickens

deciphered shorthand

Rome

Catholicism

An exercise in shorthand critiquing Catholicism

Stone, Arthur P.

Dickens, Charles

Free Library of Philadelphia [cdc5890009_14]

1859-1860

Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Please seek further permission from the Free Library to reuse this image.

image/tif

English

Brachygraphy shorthand

cdc5890009_14

Working transcription: Although the forms of religious belief in the world are almost innumerable it is probable that their grounds and foundations are very few. One constantly recognises the same idea reappearing under diverse terms from the time of the old heathen mythology even to the present day. This is always observable in the superstitions of mankind. It is, or it would seem to be, so extremely difficult to separate the old notions altogether from new. […] artful taking advantage of the ignorance of the […] this tendency in mankind. Thus no one can visit Rome, the headquarters of all degrading superstition and fail to see incorporated into the pure[ity and] beauty of Christianity the […] pagan ceremonies of ages ago. Just as many of the Christian churches in Rome are built upon ruins of the old temples, so many of the practices retained in them and made articles of religious faith ought to have perished and forever vanished from sight in the light of the Christian dispensation, but still encumber them, the mere dust and ashes of a rotten and dead […].