RARE \"The Proof of God\" Harold Begbie Hand Signed 3.5X4.5 Card For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "The Proof of God" Harold Begbie Hand Signed 3.5X4.5 Card. 

1929), also known as Harold Begbie, was an English journalist and

the author of nearly 50 books and poems. Besides studies of the Christian

religion, he wrote numerous other books, including political satire, comedy,

fiction, science fiction, plays and poetry. He died in London on 8 October

1929. Begbie was born in 1871, the fifth son of Mars Hamilton Begbie, rector

of Fornham St Martin,

Suffolk. Though initially a farmer, Begbie moved to London and worked for

the Daily Chronicle and

later the Globe. In addition

to children's literature, he

wrote popular works of poetry.[1] He was a close friend of journalist Arthur Mee. When Mee embarked on his Children's Encyclopædia in

its initial fortnightly serial form, he gave to Begbie the task of writing a

series on "Bible Stories". At

the outbreak of World War I Begbie

wrote a number of recruiting poems and visited America as behalf of his paper. Begbie

had a strong religious bent: he was involved in the Oxford Group (which later became Moral Re-Armament) and with the Salvation Army. His concern with social reform appeared

strongly in his book The Little that is Good (1917), where he

wrote about charitable work among the poor of London. He raised large sums of

money for East End charities. Begbie

might be described as a Broad Church Anglican, who was interested in the ways in

which modern science seemed to cast doubt on materialism by showing matter was

more complicated than previously believed. He was hostile to Anglo-Catholic

Ritualism and to Roman Catholicism; several pre-First World War novels portray Ritualists

as sinister and dishonest crypto-Catholic conspirators. His 1914 book The

Lady Next Door, however, supports Irish home rule and gives an idealised

portrayal of Catholicism in Ireland as a genuinely popular religion. His

hostile view of urban industrial society in Belfast was criticised by many

Ulster Unionists including the writer St. John Ervine. In

the preface to the American edition of his book The Glass of Fashion (1921),

Begbie attacked Darwinism. However, he was not

anti-evolution. In his book The Proof of God (1914), he

endorsed theistic evolution. He

acted as ghostwriter for the memoir of the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. In 1902 and 1903, Begbie, together

with J. Stafford

Ransome and M.H. Temple wrote,

under the pseudonym Caroline Lewis, two parodies based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass,

entitled Clara in Blunderland and Lost in Blunderland.

These novels deal with British frustration and anger about the Boer War and with Britain's political leadership at the

time. By 1916, dismayed by the attacks being made on Lord Haldane by Leopold Maxse in the National Review,

he began to question the government's domestic policy. In 1917, he publicly

defended the rights of pacifists and conscientious objectors to oppose the war.

Begbie strongly defended the reality of the alleged apparition of the Angels of Mons and attacked Arthur Machen for claiming they derived from his story

"The Bowmen". Begbie printed numerous accounts of the

"Angels" in his book On the Side of the Angels (1915)

but these are generally anonymous, second-hand or otherwise unverifiable.

However, war regulations prevented naming of military personnel.[ Before the First World War

Begbie was an outspoken Liberal social reformist, but he moved rapidly to the

right in the post-war period. In a series of books written under the pseudonym "Gentleman with a Duster", he

denounced sexually suggestive literature (such as the early plays of Noël Coward), lamented the precarious economic state of the

middle classes and the prospective disintegration of the British Empire, and

called for a strong hand against left-wing subversives even if this meant

restricting some traditional British liberties.