Character of Cooke
Cooke's habits of work would have been impossible without the aid of an iron constitution: he rose at four, needed little sleep, and traveled, spoke, and wrote with incessant energy. In public a dangerous and unsparing (some said an unscrupulous) foe, his private disposition was that of warm-hearted kindness. Relations of personal friendliness between him and his old antagonist, Montgomery, sprang up in their later years. Stern Protestant as he was, none was more prompt to render assistance to a Roman Catholic neighbour in time of need. A strict disciplinarian, he leaned always to the side of mercy when the courts of his church had to deal with delinquents.
Cooke's biographer—his son-in-law, Josias Ledlie Porter, D.D-- quotes from Lord Cairns the saying that for half a century his life 'was a large portion of the religious and public history of Ireland'. Orangemen carry his likeness on their banners (though he was not a orangeman), and his statue in Belfast (erected in September 1875) is still a symbol of the Protestantism of Northern Ireland.
Read more about this topic: Henry Cooke (minister)
Famous quotes containing the words character of, character and/or cooke:
“In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic and trivial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we advance. How is it that we are impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when we obtain new ones?”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a mans character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.”
—Sarah Fielding (17101768)
“It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilisation that is in store for all of us.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)