N EW MA] 
 
 an appreciation 
 
 'with the choicest "Passages of his 
 Writings selected and arranged by 
 
 Alexander Whyte 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
NEWMAN 
 
 an ^Appreciation in two Lectures 
 with the Choicest Passages of his 
 Writings selected and arranged by 
 
 ^Alexander Jf^hyte 
 
 D,D. 
 
 The t^ppendix contains Six of 
 
 his Eminence's Letters not 
 
 hitherto published 
 
 Longmans^ Qreen^ and Co. 
 
 91 and 93 Fifth tAvenue^ D^w York 
 1902 
 

 Copyright, 1901, by 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 raiNTINQ AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
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 To e57kfy Classes 
 
 3594o6 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/appreciatinewmanOOwhytrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Lecture I.— NEWMAN ii 
 
 Lecture II.— NEWMAN'S WORKS .... 71 
 NEWMAN'S CHOICEST PASSAGES:— 
 
 ON GOD 141 
 
 ON GOD THE SON I43 
 
 ON THE WORD I47 
 
 ON THE INFINITE I51 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE ECONOMY . . . 153 
 
 ON THE WORD PERSON I56 
 
 ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE . . . 158 
 
 ON CONSCIENCE 161 
 
 ON FEAR AND LOVE 165 
 
 ON MAN 166 
 
 ON THE WORLD OF MEN 168 
 
 ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE I'Jl 
 
 ON A WRONG CURIOSITY ..... 173 
 
 ON REALISING WHAT WE READ . . . . I76 
 
 ON THE UNBELIEF OF SCIENTIFIC MEN . . 179 
 
 ON THE ENTERPRISE OF OUR RACE . . . 182 
 
 ON THE WORLD'S BENEFACTORS .... 185 
 
 7 
 
8 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON THE world's RELIGION 187 
 
 ON GREEK AND LATIN I90 
 
 ON ATHENS I92 
 
 ON A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION .... I96 
 
 ON GRAMMAR 199 
 
 ON THE UNREALITY OF LITERATURE . . . 203 
 
 ON A GENTLEMAN 204 
 
 ON MUSIC 205 
 
 ON DEFINITENESS IN PREACHING .... 209 
 
 ON EARNESTNESS IN PREACHING . . . .211 
 
 ON A LOST SOUL BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 
 
 OF CHRIST 213 
 
 ON THOMAS MOZLEY'S WASTE OF TIME . . .2X6 
 
 ON DAVID 219 
 
 ON PAUL 220 
 
 ON A GREAT AUTHOR 223 
 
 ON SOME GREAT AUTHORS 227 
 
 ON HIMSELF 234 
 
 ON LEAVING THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND . . 24O 
 
 ON LEAVING HIS CONGREGATION .... 242 
 
 ON HIS SECESSION TO ROME 243 
 
 APPENDIX 247 
 
NEWMAN 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
 Avowedly, this lecture is to be an apprecia- 
 tion. It is not to be a biography of Newman. 
 Much less is it to be a criticism or a censure of 
 that great man. This is in no sense to be a 
 controversial enterprise : for which, indeed, I 
 have neither the ability nor the taste. This 
 lecture will be much more of the nature of a 
 valuation and a eulogium, so far as that even is 
 seemly in my mouth toward a man who is so 
 far above me. I live by admiration , hope, and 
 love, and Newman has always inspired me 
 with all these feelings toward himself and tow- 
 ard many of his works. So much so, that I 
 intend this little essay of mine to be more of 
 the nature of an acknowledgment and a tribute 
 than anything else. An acknowledgment, that 
 is, of what I owe of enlargement and enrich- 
 ment of heart to this great author. If any 
 one, therefore, has the disposition to dwell on 
 any proofs of imperfection in Newman's mind, 
 
 II 
 
"^j] ] ' /Newman 
 
 or on any instances of instability in his life, or 
 on any of the manifold errors and defects in 
 his teaching and preaching, he will find his 
 full gratification in many able and unanswer- 
 able books and papers that could easily be 
 named. Only, he will not find much of that 
 nature in this appreciation, as I intend it, and 
 would like it to turn out. Newman, no doubt, 
 had his own share of those infirmities of mind 
 and temper, as also of conduct and character, 
 that the best of men cannot altogether escape ; 
 but I shall not dwell much on such things as 
 these, even when I cannot wholly shut my 
 eyes to them. 
 
 This little study is not at all intended for 
 those who know Newman already. It does 
 not presume to instruct those who have mas- 
 tered this rich writer for themselves. This 
 lecture has been prepared for those rather who 
 know Newman's name only, and who know 
 little or nothing more than his mere name. 
 Newman's name has for long been in every 
 mouth, but his writings are voluminous, and 
 they lie far out of the beaten track of our day. 
 And, then, they are not very easily mastered 
 even by those readers whose exercised senses 
 they strongly attract. At the same time, it is 
 my hope that this little study on which we 
 
Appreciation 13 
 
 are now entering will prove to be eminently 
 interesting and profitable to us all. For, among 
 many other things, it will show us how much 
 Newman's special genius, his peculiar tempera- 
 ment, and his providential environment, all had 
 to do with the formation and the alteration of 
 his opinions ; with the career he ran in the 
 Church of England, and then with the rest he 
 found in the Church of Rome. This little 
 study will surely teach us also to look at things 
 with other men's eyes, as well as with our own ; 
 to keep constantly in mind that we differ from 
 other men quite as much as they differ from 
 us. As, also, to see how hateful is the spirit of 
 party in the Church of Christ ; and over against 
 that, how beautiful is an open mind and a 
 humble and a hospitable heart. And in be- 
 ginning this little study, I think I can make 
 Newman's words in the preface to his Via 
 Media my own, and say with him that my main 
 object is not at all controversy, but rather edi- 
 fication. And now, after this long introduction, 
 I begin to see what a task I have set before 
 myself, till I enter on it, as George Chapman 
 entered on his translation of the Iliad ^ sure of 
 nothing but my labour. 
 
 Writing about himself in the third person, 
 Newman says in the beginning of his Autobio- 
 
14 Newman 
 
 graphical Memoirs : " John Henry Newman 
 was born in Old Broad Street, in the city of 
 London, on February 21, 1801, and was bap- 
 tized in the Church of St. Benet Fink on 
 April 9 of the same year. His father was a 
 London banker, whose family came from 
 Cambridgeshire. His mother was of a French 
 Protestant family, who left France for this 
 country on the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes. He was the eldest of six children — 
 three boys and three girls. On May i, 1808, 
 when he was seven years old, he was sent to a 
 school of two hundred boys, at Ealing, near 
 London, under the care of the Rev. George 
 Nicholas, D.C.L., of Wadham College, Ox- 
 ford. As a child Newman was of a studious 
 turn and of a quick apprehension ; and Dr. 
 Nicholas, to whom he became greatly attached, 
 was accustomed to say that no boy had run 
 through the school, from the bottom to the 
 top, as rapidly as John Newman. Though in 
 no respect a precocious boy, he attempted 
 original compositions in prose and verse from 
 the age of eleven, and in prose showed a great 
 sensibility, and took much pains in matter of 
 style. He devoted to such literary exercises, 
 and to such books as came in his way, a good 
 portion of his playtime ; and his schoolfellows 
 
Appreciation 1 5 
 
 have left on record that they never, or scarcely 
 ever, saw him taking part in any game. In 
 the last half year of his school life he fell under 
 the influence of an excellent man, the Rev. 
 Walter Mayer, of Pembroke College, Oxford, 
 one of the classical masters, from whom he re- 
 ceived deep religious impressions, at the time 
 Calvinistic in character, which were to him the 
 beginning of a new life." 
 
 Turning now to the Apologia^^ we read as 
 follows, this time in the first person : " I was 
 brought up from a child to take great delight 
 in reading the Bible ; but I had no formed re- 
 ligious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course, 
 I had perfect knowledge of my Catechism. 
 . . . When I was fifteen a great change of 
 thought took place in me. I fell under the 
 influences of a definite Creed, and received 
 into my intellect impressions of dogma, which, 
 through God*s mercy, have never been effaced 
 or obscured. Above and beyond the conver- 
 sations and sermons of the excellent man, long 
 dead, who was the human means of this be- 
 ginning of divine faith in me, was the effect of 
 the books which he put into my hands, all of 
 the school of Calvin. ... I was then, 
 and I still am, more certain of my inward con- 
 version than that I have hands and feet. My 
 
1 6 Newman 
 
 conversion was such that it made me rest in 
 the thought of two and two only supreme 
 and luminously self-evident beings, myself and 
 my Creator. ... I am obliged to men- 
 tion, though I do it with great reluctance, a 
 deep imagination which, in the autumn of 
 1816, took possession of me, — there can be 
 no mistake about the fact ; — viz. that it was 
 the will of God that I should lead a single life. 
 This anticipation, which has held its ground 
 almost continuously ever since, — with the 
 break of a month now and then, up to 1829, 
 and, after that date, without any break at all, 
 — was more or less connected, in my mind, 
 with the notion that my calling in life would 
 require such a sacrifice as celibacy involved : 
 as, for instance, missionary work among the 
 heathen, to which I had a great drawing for 
 some years." And so on, in that so fasci- 
 nating book. 
 
 Newman has a very characteristic sermon 
 in his series of University Sermons, entitled 
 " Personal Influence " ; and all his days he 
 was his own best example of that kind of in- 
 fluence, both as experiencing it and as exer- 
 cising it. So much so, that from the day he 
 entered Oxford his biography is really the his- 
 tory of the personal influences that were poured 
 
Appreciation 1 7 
 
 in continually, and sometimes unaccountably, 
 upon his susceptible mind and heart. Richard 
 Whately was, at that time, one of the ruling 
 influences of Oxford, and his moulding hand 
 was at once laid on the impressible freshman, 
 John Henry Newman. Whately was a big, 
 breezy, boisterous, out-of-doors kind of char- 
 acter. He was a sort of Anglican Church 
 Christopher North ; the last man you would 
 have said was likely to die an archbishop. 
 Whately was a man of an iron will, but he 
 was proverbially kind and helpful to all young 
 men who kept their proper place under him. 
 "If there was a man," says Newman, " easy for 
 a raw youth to get on with, it was Whately — 
 a great talker, who endured very readily the 
 silence of his company ; original in his views, 
 lively, forcible, witty in expressing them ; 
 brimful of information on a variety of subjects. 
 The worst that could be said of Whately was 
 that, in his intercourse with his friends, he was 
 a bright June sun tempered by a March north- 
 easter." 
 
 Whately was not long in discovering that 
 Newman was a youth full of all kinds of abil- 
 ity, and for a time Whately and Newman were 
 on the very best of terms. Whately's power- 
 ful mind, great learning, commanding manner. 
 
1 8 Newman 
 
 and high position, all combined to make him 
 a tower of strength around his sensitive, shy, 
 and self-conscious, young friend. As time 
 went on, Whately began to share some of his 
 literary work with Newman, and in that, and 
 in not a few other things, Whately treated 
 Newman as if he were already a colleague and 
 an equal, rather than a junior and a subordi- 
 nate. And, altogether, Newman had good 
 reason to reckon Whately, as he always did, 
 as one of the best influences of his early Ox- 
 ford life. At the same time, it was impossible 
 that Whately and Newman could for very 
 long continue to act together, more especially 
 in their religious and ecclesiastical relations. 
 And the more that Whately helped forward 
 the development and the independence of 
 Newman's mind and character, the more the 
 inevitable breach between the two so different 
 men was hastened, not to say, precipitated. 
 But let Newman sum up this early Oxford re- 
 lationship in his own inimitable way : " In 
 1822 I came under very different influences 
 from those to which I had been hitherto sub- 
 jected. At that time Mr. Whately, as he was 
 then, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, showed 
 great kindness to me. ... I owe Dr. Whate- 
 ly a great deal. He was a man of generous 
 
Appreciation 1 9 
 
 and warm heart. He was particularly loyal to 
 his friends, and to use the common phrase, all 
 his geese were swans. While I was still awk- 
 ward and timid in 1822, he took me by the 
 hand, and acted the part to me of a gentle 
 and -encouraging instructor. He, emphatically, 
 opened my mind, and taught me to think and 
 to use my reason. After being first noticed by 
 him in 1822, I became very intimate with him 
 in 1825, when I was his Vice-Principal in Al- 
 ban Hall. I gave up that office in 1826, when 
 I became Tutor of my College, and his hold 
 upon me gradually relaxed. He had done his 
 whole work toward me or nearly so, when he 
 had taught me to see with my own eyes and to 
 walk with my own feet. . . . Dr. Whate- 
 ly's mind was too different from mine for us 
 to remain long on one line. ... I believe 
 that he has inserted sharp things in his later 
 works about me. They have never come in 
 my way, and I have not thought it necessary to 
 seek out what would pain me so much in the 
 reading." This passage on Whately's influ- 
 ence on Newman will be best wound up with 
 this characteristic postscript to a very painful 
 correspondence that took place long afterwards 
 between Newman and his old Oriel friend : 
 " May I be suffered to add, that your name is 
 
20 Newman 
 
 ever mentioned in my prayers, and to subscribe 
 myself your Grace's very sincere friend and 
 servant, John Henry Newman." 
 
 But by far the most powerful personal in- 
 fluence that laid hold of Newman in those im- 
 pressible days of his was that of Hurrell Froude. 
 Froude's personal friends are all at one in their 
 love for him and in their admiration of his tal- 
 ents and his character. At the same time, as 
 to the true value of Froude's influence on 
 Newman, men's judgments will vary according 
 to their ecclesiastical and religious principles. 
 Those who lean to Rome, and who look with 
 approval on the introduction of Romish doc- 
 trines and practices into the Church of Eng- 
 land, will see nothing but good in Froude's 
 immense influence over Newman. Whereas, 
 those who stand fast in the Reformed and 
 Evangelical faith will bitterly lament that 
 Froude and Newman ever met. Newman's 
 portrait of his friend is one of the shining char- 
 acterisations in a book full of such : — 
 
 " I knew Froude first in 1826, and was in 
 the closest and most aff^ectionate friendship 
 with him from about 1829 till his death in 
 1836. He was a man of the highest gifts, — 
 so truly many-sided, that it would be pre- 
 sumptuous in me to attempt to describe him. 
 
Appreciation 2 1 
 
 except under those aspects, in which he came 
 before me. Nor have I here to speak of the 
 gentleness and tenderness of nature, the play- 
 fulness, the free elastic force and graceful ver- 
 satility of mind, and the patient winning con- 
 siderateness in discussion, which endeared him 
 to those to whom he opened his heart ; for I 
 am all along engaged upon matters of belief 
 and opinion, and am introducing others into 
 my narrative, not for their own sake, or because 
 I love and have loved them, so much as be- 
 cause, and so far as, they have influenced my 
 theological views. . . . Dying prematurely, 
 as he did, and in the conflict and transition- 
 state of opinion, his religious views never 
 reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very 
 reason of their multitude and their depth. . . . 
 It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions 
 to my theological creed which I derived from a 
 friend to whom I owe so much. He taught 
 me to look with admiration towards the Church 
 of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the 
 Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea 
 of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led 
 me gradually to believe in the Real Presence." 
 And on Froude's death in 1836 Newman 
 wrote : " I can never have a greater loss, look- 
 ing on for the whole of my life. I never, on 
 
22 Newman 
 
 the whole, fell in with so gifted a person. In 
 variety and perfection of gifts I think he far 
 exceeded even Keble. For myself, I cannot 
 describe what I owe to him — as regards the 
 intellectual principles, the philosophy of relig- 
 ion and morals." 
 
 As to Froude having taught Newman to 
 dislike the Reformation, Mr. Gladstone, while 
 in many things admiring Froude and sympa- 
 thising with him, says that he is compelled to 
 admit and lament Froude^s "glaring, if not 
 almost scandalous disparagement of the Re- 
 formers." And on Froude's whole character, 
 as seen in his history and as studied in his 
 writings, Isaac Taylor, one of the most moder- 
 ately spoken of all the critics of the Tractarian 
 Movement, calls Froude's Remains a most of- 
 fensive book, and describes Froude himself as 
 the unhappy victim of a singularly malign tem- 
 perament, and of a pernicious training. He 
 denounces also the sombre and venomous flip- 
 pancies of Froude's published Journal. As to 
 what Newman suggests to his readers in saying 
 that Froude died before his religious views had 
 reached their ultimate conclusion, Isaac Will- 
 iams has this in his clear-headed and honest- 
 spoken Autobiography : " Many have imag- 
 ined, and Newman endeavoured to persuade 
 
Appreciation 23 
 
 himself, that if Froude had lived he would 
 have joined the Church of Rome as well as 
 himself But this I do not at all think. And 
 I find that John Keble and others quite agree 
 with me that there was that in Hurrell Froude 
 that he could not have joined the Church of 
 Rome. I had always full confidence in 
 Froude," adds Isaac Williams. 
 
 A far more sweet and genial influence than 
 that of Froude, though an influence that did 
 almost more than that of Froude to smooth 
 Newman's way to Rome, was that of John 
 Keble. " Do you know the story of the mur- 
 derer," Froude asks, " who had done one good 
 deed in his life ? Well, if I were asked what 
 good deed I had ever done, I would say that 
 I had brought Keble and Newman to under- 
 stand each other." John Keble had won an 
 immense reputation at Oxford, but great hon- 
 ours were never worn with a more lowly mind 
 than were Keble's college honours. He left 
 the University with the greatest prospects just 
 opening before him, and went to assist his 
 father in his parish work as a pastor. As to 
 Keble's devoted and all-absorbing churchman- 
 ship, it was as indisputable as was his scholar- 
 ship. In his brilliant sketch of Keble, Dean 
 Church tells us that Keble " looked with great 
 
24 Newman 
 
 and intelligent dislike at the teaching and the 
 practical working of the Evangelical Christian- 
 ity " around him, and that " his loyalty to the 
 Church of England was profound and intense. 
 He was a strong Tory, and by conviction and 
 religious temper a thorough High Church- 
 man." Froude had been Keble's pupil at 
 Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy, 
 he took Froude with him to read for his de- 
 gree. And not only did Froude read under 
 Keble, but from that time Keble gained in 
 Froude a disciple who was to be the mouth- 
 piece and the champion of his High Church 
 ideas. Froude took in from Keble all he had 
 to communicate, Dean Church tells us — " prin- 
 ciples, convictions, moral rules and standards 
 of life, hopes, fears, antipathies." A story is 
 told to the effect that Keble before parting 
 with Froude one day, seemed to have some- 
 thing on his mind ; and as Froude stepped 
 into the coach, Keble said to him, " Froude, 
 you said to-day that you thought Law's Serious 
 Call a very clever book ; it seemed to me al- 
 most as if you had said that the Day of Judg- 
 ment would be a very pretty sight." Froude 
 all his days acknowledged the deep impression 
 that these words of Keble made upon him. 
 As a matter of fact, William Law was one of 
 
Appreciation 25 
 
 Froude^s favourite authors all his days, and 
 the same masterly writer was one of Keble's 
 favourite authors also. 
 
 Keble's immense influence on Newman is 
 traced both by Newman himself, and by all the 
 writers of authority on that time, to two things 
 — to the influence of Keble upon Froude 
 and to 'The Christian Tear, Hursley has pro- 
 duced two very influential books in its time, 
 which are as diametrically removed from one 
 another, not to say as diametrically opposed to 
 one another, as could possibly be found in the 
 whole spacious circle of Christian literature. 
 The one book is a Puritan classic, and the 
 other is an Anglican classic. The one is a 
 treatise in strong old English prose, and the 
 other is a volume of sweet, somewhat senti- 
 mental, somewhat ecclesiastical, but always de- 
 vout and always beautiful, poetry. The one is 
 a very masterpiece of the soul under the deep- 
 est spiritual sanctification, and the other is an 
 acknowledged masterpiece of an Englishman's 
 religion under the English obedience and dis- 
 cipline. " Keble," wrote Newman satirically in 
 his Church of Rome days, " did that for the 
 Church of England which none but a poet 
 could do : he made it poetical." Keble*s own 
 condemnation of The Christian Tear in after 
 
26 Newman 
 
 days may well bewilder his biographer. Dr. 
 Abbott traces this state of mind in Keble to the 
 malign influence upon him of Newman. Be 
 that as it may, few, I fear, have the catholicity 
 of training, and the taste and the temper, to 
 make to themselves classics of both these 
 Hursley books, though both books are real 
 classics, each in its own kind. Even Dean 
 Stanley, with all his well-known catholicity, has 
 no word of appreciation for Marshall, or even 
 of recognition for that truly great divine. I^he 
 Christian Year is in a multitude of scholarly 
 and beautifully got-up editions, and T^he Gospel 
 Mystery is in not a few somewhat poor and 
 mean-looking editions. My favourite copy of 
 T'he Gospel Mystery^ which I have read as often 
 as Jowett had read Boswell, if not as often as 
 President Roosevelt has read Plutarch, is of 
 the fourteenth edition, and bears the date of 
 1 8 19. Dr. Andrew Murray of South Africa 
 has lately published with Messrs. Nisbet an 
 admirably introduced edition of Marshall at a 
 shilling. And the purchaser who answers to 
 the advertisement for him on the title-page, and 
 who once reads Marshall, will never cease read- 
 ing him till, as Keble says, " time and sin to- 
 gether cease." But after this parenthesis, which, 
 at the same time, is of more importance than 
 
Appreciation 27 
 
 the proper text, let me supply you with one 
 more passage out of the Apologia about the 
 author of 'The Christian Tear^ and his immense 
 influence on Newman : " The true and primary 
 author of the Tractarian Movement, as is usual 
 with great motive-powers, was out of sight. 
 Having carried off as a mere boy the highest 
 honours of the University, he had turned from 
 the admiration which haunted his steps, and 
 had sought for a better and holier satisfaction 
 in pastoral work in the country. Need I say 
 that I am speaking of John Keble ? . . . Tihe 
 Christian Tear made its appearance in 1827. 
 It is not necessary, and scarcely becoming, to 
 praise a book which has already become one of 
 the classics of the language. . . . Nor can I 
 pretend to analyze, in my own instance, the 
 effect of religious teaching so deep, so pure, so 
 beautiful. The two main intellectual truths 
 which it brought home to me I had already 
 learned from Butler : the first of these may be 
 called, in a large sense, the Sacramental system, 
 and the other that probability is the guide of 
 life." Every one who is acquainted with New- 
 man's works will remember how those two 
 principles, first implanted by Butler, and then 
 watered by Keble, grew till they cover with 
 their branches and with their leaves and with 
 
28 Newman 
 
 their fruits the whole broad expanse of New- 
 man*s philosophical, ecclesiastical, and religious 
 writings. 
 
 The Tractarian Movement was well ad- 
 vanced before Dr. Pusey joined it. But his 
 accession to the movement immediately gave 
 it an immense impulse. " Towards the end of 
 1 834," says Dean Church, " and in the course 
 of 1835, an event happened which had a great 
 and decisive influence on the character and 
 fortunes of the movement. This was the ac- 
 cession to it of Dr. Pusey. He had looked 
 favourably on it from the first, partly from his 
 friendship with Mr. Newman, partly from the 
 workings of his own mind." But I am always 
 glad when I can set aside every other author- 
 ity, even Church and Mozley, and open the 
 Apologia, And on opening that peerless book 
 at this point, I read : " It was under these cir- 
 cumstances that Dr. Pusey joined us. I had 
 known him well since 1827-8, and had felt for 
 him an enthusiastic admiration. I used to call 
 him 6 ^eyag. His great learning, his immense 
 diligence, his scholarlike mind, his simple de- 
 votion to the cause of religion, overcame me ; 
 and great of course was my joy when, in the 
 last days of 1833, he showed a disposition to 
 make common cause with us. . . . He at once 
 
Appreciation 29 
 
 gave us a position and a name. Dr. Pusey was 
 a Professor and Canon of Christ Church ; he 
 had a vast influence in consequence of his deep 
 religious seriousness, the munificence of his 
 charities, his Professorship, his family connec- 
 tions, and his easy relations with University 
 authorities. . . . Dr. Pusey was, to use the 
 common expression, a host in himself; he was 
 able to give a name, a form, and a personality 
 to what was without him a sort of mob. . . . 
 People are apt to say that he was once nearer 
 the Catholic Church than he is now. I pray 
 God that he may be one day far nearer that 
 Church than he was then ; for I believe that, 
 in his reason and judgment, all the time that I 
 knew him, he never was near to it at all." 
 
 Pusey, as well as Newman, had already 
 passed through some very remarkable changes 
 in his theological views. He had spent some 
 time in Germany, and on his return to England 
 he had published a treatise full of promise in 
 defence of the liberal theologians and liberal 
 theology of Germany. He afterwards with- 
 drew that book, and it is now very little known. 
 But as I read that long-denied and forgotten 
 essay, I see nothing in it, at any rate in its de- 
 mand for freedom in Biblical studies, of which 
 any High Churchman, or any one else, need 
 
30 Newman 
 
 be ashamed. Indeed, I am not sure but that 
 it will yet be pronounced to be the best book 
 that its learned author ever wrote. At any 
 rate, there is a strength in it, and a sanity, and 
 a true catholicity, that are not always exhibited 
 in Pusey's later writings. I could quote page 
 after page out of this repudiated book of the 
 profoundest insight into many still-pressing 
 problems of Biblical criticism ; pages that, had 
 their author stood true to them, and had he 
 gone on to unite to them all his piety, and all 
 his learning, and all his well-earned influence 
 in the Church of England, would have done 
 much to prepare the way for that combination 
 of orthodox doctrine with the foremost scholar- 
 ship, which our own Church in Scotland, as 
 well as Pusey's Church in England, are still 
 painfully seeking to attain. But instead of be- 
 coming what at one time Pusey gave promise 
 to become, he fell back into Tractarianism, and 
 became another instance of a great and good 
 man making the grand refusal. 
 
 Such, then, were the three remarkable men 
 to whom Newman, in his humility, makes such 
 handsome and honest acknowledgment. But 
 the real truth in that whole matter is told 
 about all those four men, and their relations to 
 one another, in this final and unchallengeable 
 
Appreciation 3 1 
 
 judgment of James Anthony Froude : " Far 
 different from Keble, from my brother, from 
 Dr. Pusey, from all the rest, was the true chief 
 of the Catholic revival — John Henry Newman. 
 Compared with him, they all were but ciphers, 
 and he the indicating number.'* At the same 
 time, we find the historian writing about his 
 brother in the Nineteenth Century for 1879 in 
 these strong terms : " I look back upon my 
 brother as on the whole the most remarkable 
 man I have ever met with in my life. I have 
 never seen any person — not one, in whom, as 
 I now think of him, the excellences of intellect 
 and character were combined in fuller measure." 
 Forty years after this, in a letter to Newman 
 now in the oratory at Birmingham, and written 
 in reference to a chance meeting of Newman 
 and Pusey and Keble at Hursley, Keble sent 
 these lines to Newman : — 
 
 ** When shall we three meet again ? 
 When the hurley-burley 's done. 
 When the battle 's lost and won.'* 
 
 And may I not add from Keble himself: — 
 
 *' And sometimes even beneath the moon 
 The Saviour gives a gracious boon. 
 
 When reconciled Christians meet. 
 And face to face, and heart to heart. 
 High thoughts of holy love impart 
 
 In silence meek or converse sweet.*' 
 
32 Newman 
 
 In the month of December 1832 Archdeacon 
 Froude, taking his son Hurrell and Newman 
 with him, set out to the south of Europe in 
 search of health for the two young divines. 
 Hurrell Froude was far gone in a consump- 
 tion, and Newman's health had suffered se- 
 verely from the labour involved in the compo- 
 sition of his book on the Arians. Condensed 
 as is Newman's account of their tour in the 
 Apologia, I must condense it still more. The 
 full narrative is given, as only he could give it, 
 in his correspondence published by his sister, 
 Mrs. Mozley. But I quote and condense 
 from the Apologia : " We set out in December 
 1832. It was during this expedition that my 
 verses which are in the Lyra Apostolica were 
 written. Exchanging as I was definite tutorial 
 work, and the literary quiet and pleasant friend- 
 ships of the last six years, for foreign countries 
 and an unknown future, I naturally was led to 
 think that some inward changes, as well as 
 some larger course of action, were coming upon 
 me. The strangeness of foreign life threw me 
 back upon myself: I found pleasure in histor- 
 ical sights and scenes, not in men and manners. 
 We kept clear of Catholics throughout our 
 tour. My general feeling was — ' All, save the 
 spirit of man, is divine.' I saw nothing but 
 
Appreciation 3 3 
 
 what was external ; of the hidden life of Catho- 
 lics I knew nothing. I was still more driven 
 back upon myself, and felt my isolation. Eng- 
 land was in my thoughts solely, and the news 
 from England came rarely and imperfectly. 
 The Bill for the Suppression of Irish Sees was 
 in progress, and filled my mind. I had fierce 
 thoughts against the Liberals. It was at Rome 
 that we began the Lyra Apostolica. The motto 
 shows the feeling of both Froude and myself 
 at the time. We borrowed from Bunsen a 
 Homer, and Froude chose the words in which 
 Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, ' You 
 shall know the difference, now that I am back 
 again.* I was aching to get home. At last I 
 got off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. 
 Then it was that I wrote the lines ' Lead, 
 kindly Light,* which have since become well 
 known. When I reached my mother's house, 
 my brother Frank had arrived from Persia 
 only a few hours before. This was the Tues- 
 day. The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. 
 Keble preached the Assize Sermon in the Uni- 
 versity pulpit. It was published under the 
 title of ' National Apostasy.* I have ever con- 
 sidered and kept the day as the start of the re- 
 ligious movement of 1833.** With all that, 
 thirty years after, Keble whispered to Newman 
 
34 Newman 
 
 of that very National Apostasy, " But was it 
 not just and right ? " 
 
 As we have seen, Newman has said that 
 John Keble was the true and primary author 
 of the Tractarian Movement. Be that as it 
 may, there can be no doubt that the idea of 
 the Tracts originated with Keble. In a private 
 letter of Keble's we find the first intimation of 
 what Thomas Mozley has called " that porten- 
 tous birth of time, the 'Tracts for the 'Times' 
 " To give you a notion of the kind of thing," 
 writes Keble, " the first tract we propose to 
 print will be a penny account of the martyrdom 
 of St. Ignatius, with extracts from his Epistles. 
 Pray do not blow on it as being all ultra" As 
 a matter of fact, when the first tract actually 
 came out, it showed to all who had eyes to 
 read it that a very different hand from that of 
 Keble was to be on the helm of the new enter- 
 prise. Newman wrote the first tract with his 
 own pen under the name of " A Presbyter," 
 and the full title of the tract was this, " Thoughts 
 on the Ministerial Commission, respectfully 
 addressed to the Clergy." The famous series 
 thus begun ran on from the 9th September 
 1833 ^"^ ^^ Feast of the Conversion of St. 
 Paul, 1 84 1, during which years ninety tracts 
 were published, varying in size from four pages 
 
Appreciation 35 
 
 to an octavo volume. Newman wrote twenty- 
 seven numbers out of the ninety, Keble twelve, 
 and Pusey eight, but Pusey's characteristic con- 
 tributions were large treatises rather than handy 
 tracts. The rest of the ninety tracts were 
 either written by men whose names you would 
 not recognise, or they were compilations and 
 extracts out of such writers as Bull, and Bev- 
 eridse, and Wilson. The substance of the 
 tracts was wholly limited to what is known as 
 High Church doctrine. The tracts are full of 
 the privileges of the Catholic Church, her min- 
 istry, her sacraments, and the discipline to 
 which her priesthood and her people ought to 
 submit themselves. " Their distinctive speech," 
 says Mr. Gladstone, " was of Church and 
 Priesthood, of Sacraments and Services." And, 
 as was to be expected, there runs, through the 
 whole series a great scorn of evangelical preach- 
 ing, and a great contempt toward every min- 
 ister of the Church of Christ who is not a 
 priest, either of the Greek, or the Roman, or 
 the Anglican obedience. But, whatever the 
 subject, and whatsoever the treatment, it is 
 Newman who draws on the reader through all 
 the tracts. At the same time, with all his ex- 
 traordinary power of writing, the tracts are 
 little read either in England or in Rome ; and 
 
36 Newman 
 
 were it not for Newman, nobody nowadays 
 would ever open them. At least so I learn 
 from all Anglican authorities. But if you have 
 a sufficient wish to study the development, or, 
 as some readers will be sure to call it the de- 
 generation of the finest mind in the Church 
 of England in this century, you must not 
 grudge to go diligently through every succes- 
 sive number of the T^r acts for the 'Times. Not 
 that Newman writes them all, but there is not 
 one of them without his consent and approval 
 and personal stamp. At the same time, I 
 warn you before you begin that you will need 
 to have all your patience in its fullest exercise, 
 and all your forbearance, and all your admi- 
 ration of Newman, in order to carry you on 
 from the beginning of Tract I. to the end of 
 Tract XC. Dreary and saddening as much 
 of the tract-writing is, I do not need to say 
 that, since so much of Newman is in it, you 
 will come on passages not a few that do not 
 require his signature set to them — passages of 
 such truth and beauty that they will dwell with 
 you all your days. Having read all the ninety 
 tracts, and some of them many times over, I 
 can, concerning not a few of them, subscribe 
 to what Dean Church says about the series : 
 " They were clear, sharp, stern appeals to con- 
 
Appreciation 37 
 
 science and reason, sparing of words, utterly 
 without rhetoric, intense in purpose. They 
 were like the short, sharp, rapid utterances of 
 men in pain, and danger, and pressing emer- 
 gency." That eulogium is only true of the 
 selectest and the best of the tracts, that is to 
 say, of Newman's contributions to the series. 
 As regards the first tract, which gave the key- 
 note to the series, I can entirely subscribe to 
 what Dr. Abbott, Newman's severest critic, 
 says about it : " Regarded as a specimen of 
 Newman's sympathetic rhetoric, the tract is 
 most admirable. It is indeed a splendid piece. 
 All the more effective, because so restrained." 
 And what that sternest of Newman's censors 
 says about the first tract is entirely true of 
 many more of Newman's contributions. " Top- 
 ics," says Mr. Jacobs in a fine piece of criticism 
 reprinted from the Athenauniy " that seemed 
 forbidding, both for their theological techni- 
 calities, and their repulse of reason, were pre- 
 sented by Newman with such skill that they 
 appeared as inevitable as Euclid, and as at- 
 tractive as Plato." 
 
 But it was the pulpit of St. Mary's that was 
 Newman's true and proper throne. It was 
 from the pulpit of St. Mary's that he began to 
 conquer and to rule the world. I never saw 
 
38 Newman 
 
 Newman in his pulpit myself, but I have read 
 so much about his appearance in the pulpit that 
 I feel as if I could undertake to let you see 
 and hear him in it. I have open before me, as 
 I compose these lines, what Shairp, and Church, 
 and Mozley, and Froude, and Lockhart, and 
 Oakeley, and the Bishop of Carlisle, and many 
 more have told us about Newman's preaching. 
 Principal Shairp, for one, has a most admirable 
 picture of Newman in the pulpit. He begins 
 by telling us how simple and unostentatious 
 the service in St. Mary's was when Newman 
 was the preacher. " No pomp, no ritualism," 
 are Shairp's words, " nothing but the silver in- 
 tonation of Newman's magic voice. Newman's 
 delivery had this peculiarity. Each sentence 
 was spoken rapidly, but with great clearness of 
 intonation, and then, at the close of every sen- 
 tence, there was a pause that lasted for several 
 seconds. Then another rapidly but clearly 
 spoken sentence, followed by another pause, 
 till a wonderful spell took hold of the hearer. 
 The look and bearing of the preacher were as 
 of one who dwelt apart, and who, though he 
 knew his age well, did not live in his age. 
 From his seclusion of study, and abstinence, 
 and prayer ; from habitual dwelling in the un- 
 seen, he seemed to come forth that one day of 
 
Appreciation 39 
 
 the week to speak to others of the things he 
 had seen and known in secret. As he spake, 
 how the old truths became new ! how they came 
 home with a meaning never felt before ! The 
 subtlest of truths were dropped out as by the 
 way in a sentence or two of the most transpar- 
 ent Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what 
 calm power ! how gentle yet how strong ! how 
 simple yet how suggestive ! how homely yet 
 how refined ! how penetrating yet how tender- 
 hearted ! And the tone of voice in which all 
 this was spoken sounded to you like a fine 
 strain of unearthly music." I remember viv- 
 idly the delight I took in an article on New- 
 man's sermons that appeared more than thirty 
 years ago in the Saturday Review, That arti- 
 cle gave a voice to what I had long felt about 
 Newman's sermons, but had not the ability 
 myself to utter. And I remember how I 
 bought up not a few numbers of that issue of 
 the Saturday Review, and sent them to friends 
 up and down the country in order that they 
 might share the fine tribute with me. I did 
 not know at the time that Dean Church was 
 the writer of that remarkable appreciation. I 
 used to have the following passage by heart : 
 " Dr. Newman's sermons stand by themselves 
 in modern English literature : it might even be 
 
40 Newman 
 
 said, in English literature generally. There 
 have been equally great masterpieces of Eng- 
 lish writing in this form of composition, and 
 there have been preachers whose theological 
 depth, acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, 
 tenderness, and power have not been inferior 
 to his. [I did not know those preachers then, 
 and I do not know them yet.] But the great 
 writers," Church goes on, " do not touch, 
 pierce, and get hold of minds as Newman 
 does, and those who are famous for the power 
 and the results of their preaching do not write 
 as he does. We have learned to look upon 
 Dr. Newman as one of those who have left 
 their mark very deep on the English language. 
 Little, assuredly, as their writer originally 
 thought of such a result, the sermons have 
 proved a permanent gift to our literature, of 
 the purest English, full of spring, clearness, 
 and force. Such English, graceful with the 
 grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must 
 always have attracted attention ; but his Eng- 
 lish had also an ethical element which was al- 
 most inseparable from its literary characteris- 
 tics." And so on, to the end of an article 
 very remarkable for its insight and its elo- 
 quence. 
 
 Before leaving St. Mary*s, I must give you 
 
Appreciation 41 
 
 this very remarkable portrait of Newman, lest 
 you may never have seen it. James Anthony 
 Froude, in an article in Good Words for 1881, 
 says : " My present letter will be given to a 
 single figure. When I entered Oxford John 
 Henry Newman was beginning to be famous. 
 His appearance was striking. He was above 
 the middle height, slight, and spare. His head 
 was large, his face remarkably like that of Julius 
 Caesar. The forehead, the shape of the ears 
 and nose, were almost the same. I have often 
 thought of the resemblance, and believed that 
 it extended to the temperament. In both 
 there was an original force of character which 
 refused to be moulded by circumstances, which 
 was to make its own way, and become a power 
 in the world ; a clearness of intellectual percep- 
 tion, a disdain for conventionalities, a temper 
 imperious and wilful, but always with it a most 
 attaching gentleness, sweetness, singleness of 
 heart and purpose. Newman's mind was 
 world-wide. He was interested in everything 
 which was going on in science, in politics, in 
 literature. Nothing was too large for him, 
 nothing too trivial. He was careless about his 
 personal prospects. He had no ambition to 
 make a career, or to rise to rank and power. 
 Still less had pleasure any seductions for him. 
 
42 Newman 
 
 His natural temperament was bright and light ; 
 his senses, even the commonest, were excep- 
 tionally delicate. I am told that, though he 
 rarely drank wine, he was trusted to choose the 
 vintages of the college cellar. He could ad- 
 mire enthusiastically any greatness of action 
 and character, however remote the sphere of it 
 from his own. Gurwood*s Despatches of the 
 Duke of Wellington came out just then. New- 
 man had been reading the book, and a friend 
 asked him what he thought of it. ' Think ! ' 
 he said ; * it makes one burn to have been a 
 soldier ! ' " I could not deny you that re- 
 markable characterisation, though it is Froude*s 
 description of Newman in the pulpit I am spe- 
 cially in quest of: " No one who heard his ser- 
 mons in those days can ever forget them. 
 Taking some Scripture character for a text, 
 Newman spoke to us about ourselves, our 
 temptations, our experiences. His illustrations 
 were inexhaustible. He seemed to be address- 
 ing the most secret consciousness of each of 
 us — as the eyes of a portrait appear to look at 
 every person in a room. He never exagger- 
 ated ; he was never unreal. A sermon from 
 Newman was a poem, formed on a distinct 
 idea, fascinating by its subtlety, welcome — how 
 welcome! — from its sincerity, interesting from 
 
Appreciation 43 
 
 Its originality ; even to those who were careless 
 of religion, and to those who wished to be re- 
 ligious, it was like the springing of a fountain 
 out of a rock." And take this also from an 
 anonymous pen : " Action in the common 
 sense there was none. His hands were liter- 
 ally not seen from the beginning to the end. 
 The sermon began in a calm, musical voice, 
 the key slightly rising as it went on ; by and 
 by the preacher warmed with his subject, till it 
 seemed as if his very soul and body glowed 
 with suppressed emotion. The very tones of 
 his voice seemed as if they were something 
 more than his own. There are those who to 
 this day, in reading many of his sermons, have 
 the whole scene brought back before them. 
 The great church, the congregation all breath- 
 less with expectant attention, the gaslight just 
 at the left hand of the pulpit, lowered that the 
 preacher might not be dazzled : themselves, 
 perhaps, standing in the half-darkness under 
 the gallery, and then the pause before those 
 words in T'he Ventures of Faith thrilled through 
 them, * They say unto Him, " We are able," * 
 or those in the seventh sermon in the sixth 
 volume, ' The Cross of Christ.' " 
 
 But hear William Lockhart also, one of 
 Newman's oldest living disciples : " To see 
 
44 Newman 
 
 Newman come into St. Mary's, in his long 
 white surplice, was like nothing one had seen 
 before. He glided in swiftly like a spirit in- 
 carnate. When he reached the lectern, he 
 would drop down on his knees and remain 
 fixed in mental prayer for a few moments, then 
 he rose in the same unearthly way and began 
 the service. His reading of the lessons from 
 the Old and New Testaments was a most mar- 
 vellous expression of soul. Many men are 
 expressive readers, only we can see that they 
 intend to be expressive. But they do not 
 reach the soul ; they are good actors, certainly, 
 but they do not forget themselves, and you do 
 not forget them. The effect of Newman's 
 preaching on us young men was to turn our 
 souls inside out. It was like what he says in 
 the Dream of Gerontius of the soul after death, 
 and presented before God — 
 
 * Who draws the soul from out its case 
 And burns away its stains.* ** 
 
 " We never could be again the same men 
 we were before." 
 
 That is surely enough. Nothing surely 
 could add to that. Such testimonies, from 
 such men, is almost more to us than if we had 
 been hearers of Newman for ourselves. Next 
 
Appreciation 45 
 
 to having been his hearers, and far better than 
 that, we have his incomparable sermons in our 
 hands, so that we can enter St. Mary's when- 
 ever we choose. 
 
 We would willingly remain with Newman in 
 St. Mary's pulpit to the end, if he would only 
 remain there with us. But we are following 
 out his onward career, and all this time he has 
 been making steady and straight for Rome ; so 
 much so, that his Romeward progress can be 
 watched, and measured, and recorded — Dr. 
 Abbott has done it — in almost every one of 
 his St. Mary's sermons. No reader of those 
 sermons who has his eyes open can fail to see 
 Newman's Romeward footprints on every page. 
 He denies that he ever took his Tractarian 
 doctrines into the pulpit ; but, then, he tells 
 us that it was almost a rule of his not to open 
 his own books after they came out ; and he 
 cannot have opened many of his St. Mary's 
 sermons, if he is entirely candid in what he 
 says about them in the matter of their Trac- 
 tarianism. At any rate, I cannot open them 
 without being continually vexed and thrown 
 out by his constant asides at evangelical truth, 
 not to say by his constantly insinuated praises 
 of Tractarian positions, and sacerdotal and as- 
 cetic practices, with their both justifying and 
 
46 Newman 
 
 sanctifying influences. From the first of his 
 published sermons to the last, sermon succeed- 
 ing sermon, there are to be seen Newman's 
 onward footprints, soft as the falling snow ; his 
 swift, noiseless, delicate, and refined footprints. 
 Sometimes for a moment seeming to turn 
 aside ; sometimes for a moment, as one would 
 think, looking not unwistfully back ; but only 
 to turn all the more resolutely, and sometimes, 
 to use his own word, " fiercely," on his Rome- 
 ward way. In all his tracts also you can trace 
 the same progress as plainly as in his sermons ; 
 as also in all his historical, doctrinal, and po- 
 lemical writings, from the Avians to the De- 
 velopment ; and the same progress is still more 
 dramatically to be studied in all his letters. 
 " It has ever been a hobby of mine, though 
 perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that the 
 true life of a man is in his letters. Not only 
 for the interest of a biography, but for arriving 
 at the true inside of things, the publication of 
 letters is the true method. Biographers var- 
 nish, they assign motives, they conjecture feel- 
 ings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods ; but 
 contemporary letters are facts." On these four 
 parallel and converging lines then, — his ser- 
 mons, his tracts, his historical doctrinal and 
 controversial publications, and his letters, and. 
 
Appreciation 47 
 
 I may add, his poems — the attentive student 
 can trace every step of Newman's secession 
 from the Church of England, and every step 
 in his progress toward the Church of Rome. 
 And a right repaying study it is to the proper 
 student, the rare student, that is, of sufficient 
 enterprise and endurance. 
 
 " From the end of 184 1 I was on my death- 
 bed as regards my membership with the An- 
 gHcan Church. Now a deathbed has scarcely 
 a history ; it is a tedious decline, with seasons 
 of rallying and seasons of falling back ; and 
 since the end is foreseen, or what is called a 
 matter of time, it has little interest for the 
 reader, especially if he has a kind heart. More- 
 over, it is a season when doors are closed and 
 curtains drawn, and when the sick man neither 
 cares nor is able to record the stages of his 
 malady.'* Littlemore was the scene of New- 
 man's deathbed. Littlemore was a sort of 
 midway house between Oxford and Rome. Or, 
 rather, it was the last hostel on the Roman 
 road. " Father Dalgairns and myself," says 
 Lockhart, "were the first inmates of Little- 
 more. It was a kind of monastic life of retire- 
 ment, prayer, and study. We had a sincere 
 desire to remain in the Church of England, if 
 we could be satisfied that in so doing we were 
 
48 Newman 
 
 members of the world-wide visible communion 
 of Christianity which was of apostolic origin. 
 We spent our time at Littlemore in study, 
 prayer, and fasting. We rose at midnight to 
 recite the Breviary Office, consoling ourselves 
 with the thought that we were united in 
 prayer with united Christendom, and were 
 using the very words used by the saints of all 
 ages. We regularly practised confession, and 
 went to Communion, I think, daily, at the 
 village church. At dinner we met together, 
 and after some spiritual reading at table we en- 
 joyed conversation with Newman. He spoke 
 freely on all subjects that came up, but I think 
 controversial topics were tacitly avoided. He 
 was most scrupulous not to suggest doubts as 
 to the position of the Church of England to 
 those who had them not. Newman would 
 never let us treat him as a superior, but placed 
 himself on a level with the youngest of us. It 
 was his wish to give us some direct object of 
 study in his splendid library, in which were all 
 the finest editions of the Greek and Latin 
 fathers and schoolmen, all the best works on 
 Scripture and theology, general literature, prose 
 and verse, and a complete set of the Bollandist 
 Acta Sanctorum^ so far as they had been printed. 
 Newman was an excellent violin player, and he 
 
Appreciation 49 
 
 would sometimes bring his instrument into the 
 library after dinner and entertain us with the 
 exquisite sonatas of Beethoven.'* 
 
 But by this time the end was not far off. 
 And this letter to his sister will best describe 
 the end : — 
 
 Littlemore^ October %th, 1845. 
 
 " My dear Jemima, — I must tell you what 
 will pain you greatly, but I will make it as 
 short as you would wish me to do. 
 
 " This night Father Dominic, the Passionist, 
 sleeps here. He does not know of my in- 
 tention ; but I shall ask him to receive me into 
 what I believe to be the one Fold of the Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 " This will not go till all is over. — Ever 
 yours affectionately, John H. Newman." 
 
 " I left Oxford for good on Monday, Febru- 
 ary 23, 1846. On the Saturday and Sunday 
 before, I was in my house at Littlemore simply 
 by myself, as I had been for the first day or 
 two when I had originally taken possession of 
 it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, 
 Mr. Johnson, at the Observatory. Various 
 friends came to see the last of me : Mr. Cope- 
 land, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, 
 and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey, too, came up to 
 
50 Newman 
 
 take leave of me ; and I called on Dr. Ogle, 
 one of my very oldest friends, for he was my 
 private tutor when I was an undergraduate. In 
 him I took leave of my first college. Trinity, 
 which was so dear to me, and which held on 
 its foundation so many who have been kind to 
 me, both when I was a boy, and all through 
 my Oxford life. Trinity had never been un- 
 kind to me. There used to be much snap- 
 dragon growing on the walls opposite my fresh- 
 man's rooms there, and I had for years taken 
 it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence, 
 even unto death, in my university. 
 
 " On the morning of the 23rd I left the 
 Observatory. I have never seen Oxford since, 
 excepting its spires, as they are seen from the 
 railway." 
 
 To me by far the most important chapter of 
 the whole Apologia is that in which its author 
 goes on to tell us what the position of his mind 
 has been since 1845. ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ nttd. to 
 tell us that his mind had not been idle, nor 
 that he had not given over thinking on theo- 
 logical subjects. But it makes us open our 
 eyes and attend to every word when he con- 
 tinues as follows : " I have had no variations 
 to record, and have had no anxiety of heart 
 
Appreciation 5 1 
 
 whatever. I have been in perfect peace and 
 contentment ; I have never had one doubt. I 
 was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, 
 of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought 
 in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer 
 faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, 
 or of more self-command ; I had not more fer- 
 vour ; but it was like coming into port after a 
 rough sea ; and my happiness on that score 
 remains to this day.'' Now, I for one am not 
 satisfied with that statement, frank, and open, 
 and guileless, as it looks, and as I entirely be- 
 lieve it to be. I would like to be told more 
 than I am here told. I would like that this 
 chapter had gone far deeper down than it has 
 gone. I do not for a moment forget that the 
 Apologia sets out to be a history of its author's 
 religious opinions only ; but I am so consti- 
 tuted that every man's religious opinions take 
 their interest, and their sanction, and their 
 weight, and their worth, with me according to 
 the influence they have on the heart and the 
 life of him who holds such and such opinions. 
 And the longer I live I am becoming more and 
 more exacting in this respect with my few 
 favourite authors. So much so, that I now 
 rank my classics according as their authors show 
 me that they know the plague of their own 
 
52 Newman 
 
 hearts, and are able to speak home to the plague 
 of my heart. Rare genius in a writer, great 
 learning, a perfect style — nothing whatsoever 
 will any more make up to me for his blindness 
 to, and his silence about, his own heart and 
 mine. I will show you what I mean. In his 
 Tractarian days Newman did an immense ser- 
 vice in that he translated Bishop Andrewes's 
 Private Devotions out of the Greek into his 
 own incomparable English, and printed his 
 translation in the Eighty-eighth 'Tract for the 
 'Times, Now in one memorable place, the 
 saintly old Bishop cries out in his sweat and 
 tears that he is still trodden down by a great 
 trespass that has tyrannised over him from his 
 youth up. It is perhaps too much to ask at 
 Newman, or at any one else, but a man will 
 not stick at trifles when his soul is at stake. 
 Well, then, when Newman after his second 
 conversion came again on that agonising cry of 
 Andrewes*s, did he still continue to make that 
 agonising cry his own ? Or was his new con- 
 version such and so complete that all the sins 
 of his youth and middle age were now sloughed 
 off, and for ever left behind him ? Did New- 
 man's youthful "shuddering at himself" dis- 
 appear after he came into the perfect peace of 
 Rome ? Was he any better able to keep his 
 
Appreciation 53 
 
 heart clean of pride, and of anger, and of ill- 
 will, say, at the Jesuits, at Cardinal Manning, 
 and at Charles Kingsley ? And of self-satis- 
 faction and elation of mind when the Apologia^ 
 say, turned out so well, and was received with 
 such universal acclamation ? There are spots 
 in the sun, and there are the dregs of original 
 sin still left in the most advanced of the saints. 
 But I am pained above measure when one who 
 lived under the same roof with Newman in his 
 old age quite outspokenly accuses him of " ex- 
 traordinary implacability " toward any one who 
 either thwarted or disappointed him. " There 
 was, in fact, no place for repentance. A com- 
 plete submission might mend matters ; but the 
 offender would for ever afterwards remain in 
 the outer circle." " John," said his sister, 
 " can be most amiable, most generous. He 
 can win warm love from all his friends ; but to 
 become his friend the essential condition is 
 that you see everything along his lines, and ac- 
 cept him as your leader." Now, if you were 
 to find yourself out to be at all like that at 
 eighty, would you not be glad to ask, — your 
 baptism and all else notwithstanding, — Can a 
 man be born again when he is old ? You would 
 be compelled to admit that neither circumci- 
 sion availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but 
 
54 Newman 
 
 a new creature. And would you not begin to 
 doubt if you were in the right Church of Christ 
 after all? Because you have it on His own 
 authority that all the Churches, with all their 
 sacraments, and all else, are to be tried as if 
 they were trees ; that is to say, by their fruits 
 in their ministers and in their people they are 
 to be known and are to be dealt with ; pruned 
 and dressed, or altogether cut down, as the case 
 may be. " I was not conscious to myself, on 
 my conversion, of any change, intellectual or 
 moral, wrought in my mind. I was not con- 
 scious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths 
 of Revelation, or of more self-command ; I had 
 not more fervour." Now, these are just the 
 things that the Church of Christ exists in all 
 her branches to produce. And, than these 
 things, there is nothing in any Church that I, 
 speaking for myself, value one farthing. And 
 if Rome did not do anything at all in these 
 directions for her most docile and most suscep- 
 tible convert, certainly she has nothing else 
 wherewith to tempt me. It is just my want 
 of faith, and self-command, and fervour, that 
 makes me shudder at myself, and no ecclesi- 
 astical subterfuge, short of these things, would 
 bring any true rest and security of heart to me. 
 Now, I protest to you that I am not disrespect- 
 
Appreciation 55 
 
 ful in one syllable of what I am now saying, 
 or anything but absolutely reverential, to this 
 great man. I am not speaking in an imperti- 
 nent or a debating mind. I am in dead ear- 
 nest, I assure you, in all I now say. Because, 
 if Newman could have satisfied me about all 
 these momentous things in his various autobi- 
 ographic writings, I do not see how I could 
 possibly have rested short of the same submis- 
 sion and surrender to Rome that he made. 
 But if Newman's perfect peace and absolute 
 contentment after his second conversion ter- 
 minated short of an entirely humble, and holy, 
 and heavenly heart, then I shall remain where 
 I am : trusting that He who has begun these 
 transcendent things in me where He has plant- 
 ed me, will perfect them either where He has 
 planted me, or where He will thence transplant 
 me in His own time. Far above the fascinat- 
 ing history of his rehgious opinions ; far above 
 his exquisite style ; far above all these and all 
 his other manifold benefits to me, I would like 
 far better that Newman had still further con- 
 descended and had laid bare some of these still 
 deeper secrets of his. "It may easily be con- 
 ceived how great a trial it is to me to write the 
 following history of myself; but I must not 
 shrink from the task. The words, * Secretum 
 
56 Newman 
 
 meum mihi/ keep ringing in my ears ; but as 
 men draw towards their end, they care less 
 for disclosures." Would that he had carried 
 that noble resolution far deeper than he has 
 done ! For, what an Autobiography the world 
 would then have had ! And what an apple of 
 gold in what a picture of silver his fifth chapter 
 would then have been ! As it is, this history 
 of the position of Cardinal Newman's mind 
 merely, after 1 845, beyond its captivating style, 
 has little or nothing of real interest or value to 
 me. 
 
 " Father Dominic does not know of my in- 
 tention ; but I mean to ask of him admission 
 into the One Fold of Christ." Now, I have 
 studied every syllable that Newman ever wrote 
 about " the One Fold of Christ," both before 
 he had asked to be admitted into it, and after 
 his admittance. But he has failed to convince 
 his most admiring and most open-minded 
 reader. Not only has he not convinced that 
 reader, but he has confirmed him more than 
 ever the other way. No ; Newman and all his 
 intoxicating Tractarian and Catholic writings 
 notwithstanding. Neither Moscow, nor Rome, 
 nor Geneva, nor Canterbury, is the One Fold 
 of Christ to me. To me, I thank God, none 
 of all those assuming and contending churches. 
 
Appreciation 57 
 
 nor all of them taken together, is the One 
 Fold of Christ. The Good Shepherd, who 
 gave His life for the sheep, has much sheep 
 of His in all these partial folds, and much 
 sheep of His outside them all, neither shall any 
 man pluck them out of His hand. To me, 
 Protestant though I am, the true pathos of 
 Newman's history does not lie in his leaving 
 the Church of England for the Church of 
 Rome, but it lies in his for ever forsaking the 
 Evangelical faith, than which, properly speak- 
 ing, there is no other faith, and in declining 
 upon a system of religion in which that faith, 
 as I suppose, is at its very lowest point. Paul's 
 indignant language to the Galatian Church 
 alone expresses my sad thoughts over New- 
 man's declension. I will not repeat that lan- 
 guage, but everyone who knows Newman's his- 
 tory will recall and will apply that language 
 for themselves. " But," as Newman says of 
 himself in the Introduction to his Chrysostom, 
 " I am getting far more argumentative than I 
 thought to be when I began ; so I will soon 
 lay down my pen and retire into myself." 
 
 The last forty years of Newman's earthly 
 life were spent within the walls of the Oratory 
 at Birmingham. And, monastery as it was, it 
 was in many respects a charming retreat for 
 
58 Newman 
 
 a community of scholars and Christian gentle- 
 men. You must not think of Newman and 
 his confraternity as cooped up in narrow cells, 
 never seeing the sun, and never allowed to 
 speak or to look up from the ground. You 
 must not think of them as fasting every day, 
 and only breaking their fast with a crumb 
 of bread and a cup of cold water. Far from 
 that; for Philip Neri was their patron saint, 
 and not Father Mathew. And under Philip's 
 genial rule they had great times of it at Edg- 
 baston. The students had stage plays and all 
 kinds of out-of-doors sports and games to their 
 hearts' content. Father Newman the greatest 
 boy of them all. He employed his fine and 
 familiar scholarship to adapt old Latin com- 
 edies to the Oratory stage, he presided in per- 
 son over the rehearsals, saw to the proper 
 dresses with his own eyes, and that at no end 
 of expense. " He coached nearly every one 
 of the players privately, and astonished them 
 not a little by the extraordinary versatility and 
 dramatic power with which he would himself 
 personate for their imitation a love-sick Roman 
 exquisite or a drunken slave." And not for 
 the entertainment of the young men only, were 
 these relaxations indulged in. The head of 
 the holy house himself had been all his days 
 
Appreciation 59 
 
 passionately fond of music, and at eighty few 
 could handle the fiddle-bow like him. The 
 first piece of furniture my own eye lighted on 
 in the lobby of the Oratory, when Dr. Dods, 
 Dr. Thomson, and I went to pay our respects 
 to Newman, was the Cardinal's mammoth 
 cello. And then, the six days of the secular 
 week were not sufficient for the flow of spirits 
 that welled up in the old Cardinal's heart. 
 Dr. Allen tells us that long after PhiUips 
 Brooks was the most famous preacher in 
 America, on one occasion when he and his 
 brother were back in the old home on a hol- 
 iday, so obstreperous were the noises that were 
 coming out of the smoking-room, that their 
 mother knocked at the door and exclaimed, 
 " My boys, remember that it is the Sabbath- 
 day!" And had the Cardinal's Huguenot 
 mother been allowed inside the Oratory on 
 any Sabbath-day whatever, most certainly she 
 would have boldly reproved the cricket and 
 the concerts that went on all the afternoon, to 
 the scandal of the Puritan neighbourhood. As 
 a matter of fact, Newman's near neighbours 
 did remonstrate with him against his conti- 
 nental Sunday, but Hippocleides didn't care. 
 And the thing went on. But you must not 
 suppose that all the Cardinal's forty years in 
 
6o Newman 
 
 the Oratory were spent in sport like that. 
 One who must have known the Oratory from 
 the inside once wrote about it thus : " As Dr. 
 Newman^s days grow fewer, they grow longer. 
 He has ever been an early riser, and now from 
 five in the morning to an unknown hour at 
 night he is busily engaged in redeeming the 
 time. His first two hours are given to de- 
 votion. About eight o'clock he appears in 
 the refectory, where he breakfasts in silence, 
 attacking meanwhile the pile of correspondence 
 which awaits him on the table. Then his own 
 room receives him, and until half-past two or 
 three in the afternoon correspondence, study, 
 and the duties of the house and the school, 
 engross him. An hour or two in the afternoon 
 is given to exercise, for he is still a great 
 pedestrian ; the community dinner is at six 
 o'clock; and on days when his turn comes 
 round ' the Father ' girds on the apron of ser- 
 vice, and waits upon his brethren, not sitting 
 down till they are all served. All eat in si- 
 lence, only broken by the voice of the lector. 
 Perhaps the two things which most strike the 
 visitor among these ecclesiastics is their thor- 
 oughly English tone, and the liberality, in the 
 highest sense, of their views. So passes Dr. 
 Newman's life in the Birmingham Oratory." 
 
Appreciation 6i 
 
 He did not need to assure us that his mind 
 was not idle during his Catholic days. He 
 did not need to certify us that he had not 
 given over thinking on theological subjects. 
 The Sermons addressed to Mixed Congregations, 
 the Sermons preached on Various OccasionSy 
 ^The Idea of a University , l!he Grammar of As- 
 sent , the Apologia pro vita sua. Loss and Gain, 
 Callista, 'The Dream of Gerontius, his brilliant 
 controversial volumes, and his ceaseless re- 
 writing and re-arranging of his Anglican works, 
 such as his Arians, his Athanasius, his Theo- 
 logical Tracts, and his fine volumes of Critical 
 and Historical Essays ; all that is proof enough 
 of the continued activity of his magnificent 
 mind. His Oratory writings alone would make 
 up a noble life's work in themselves, even for 
 a man of the greatest genius, and the greatest 
 industry, which Newman was to the end of his 
 days. 
 
 " I cannot see, I cannot speak, I cannot 
 hear, God bless you," was Newman's message 
 to his old friend Mr. Gladstone in November 
 1888. Newman's delight in men, in books, 
 and in affairs had all his life been intense, and 
 he had a strong desire that his life might be 
 prolonged to its utmost possible span, if it was 
 the will of God. " For myself, now, at the end 
 
62 Newman 
 
 of a long life, I say from a full heart that God 
 has never failed me, has never disappointed me, 
 has ever turned evil into good for me. When 
 I was young I used to say (and I trust it was 
 not presumptuous to say it) that our Lord 
 ever answered my prayers." And his prayer 
 for a long life was answered like all the rest 
 of his prayers. Cardinal Newman died at the 
 Edgbaston Oratory on Monday, nth August 
 1890, and was buried at his own little estate of 
 Rednal, under this epitaph written by him- 
 self:— 
 
 JOANNES HENRICUS NEWMAN 
 
 EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS 
 
 IN VERITATEM 
 
 REQUIESCAT IN PACE. 
 
 The Church of Rome may well be proud of 
 her conquest of Newman, for she never made 
 spoil of a nobler foe. But what Rome gains 
 and holds, she gains and holds not for herself 
 alone. Men like Newman are not to be sep- 
 arated up to any one sect of the Church of 
 Christ. They belong to no one denomina- 
 tion even when they surrender themselves to it. 
 In the adorable providence of God, it may 
 have been permitted and appointed that New- 
 man should pass over into the Roman commun- 
 
Appreciation 63 
 
 ion to do a service for God in that commun- 
 ion that no other Hving man could do. We 
 are not able to follow out such permissions and 
 appointments of God's providence to their ul- 
 timate end. It is enough to know that men 
 like Newman are not their own, and that their 
 very errors and mistakes are made to work to- 
 gether for good to themselves, and to many 
 besides themselves. Rome belongs to the 
 Risen Christ, as well as Moscow, and Geneva, 
 and Canterbury, and Edinburgh. And He 
 to whom we all belong will dispose of His 
 servants, and will distribute their services, ac- 
 cording to their talents and according to our 
 necessities. And that, not according to our 
 approval, but according to His own. And 
 now, for one thing, who can tell but some open 
 mind among ourselves may, as he hears all this, 
 be led to say — Surely the Church of Rome 
 must be other and better than I have been 
 brought up to think she was, since she drew 
 over to herself such a saint, and such a scholar, 
 and such a man of genius, as Newman was. 
 Well, whatever the Church of Rome is or is 
 not, for you to say that about her is a good sign 
 in you. I want you to be more hospitable in 
 your heart to Rome than she is to you ; more 
 catholic than she is, more humble, more tender. 
 
64 Newman 
 
 more hopeful, and altogether more charitable. 
 I do not want any of you to be like the man 
 in William Law who died devoid of all religion 
 because he had spent all his life on earth in 
 nothing else but in constant terror of Popery. 
 And I will hope and will be sure that one re- 
 sult of our present appreciation of Newman 
 together will help to lead you to something of 
 my own mind in these matters, which I would 
 not now lose or exchange for all the world. 
 For, as I see and believe, our brethren in the 
 Church of Rome have some things to teach 
 us ; but, again, we have far more important 
 things to call to their remembrance. 
 
 ** O that thy creed were sound ! '* sang Newman, 
 ** For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome, 
 By thy unwearied watch and varied round 
 Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.** 
 
 When her creed is again sound, and when 
 we have humbled ourselves to learn from her 
 some of the not unneeded lessons that she has 
 to teach us, then Ephraim shall not any more 
 envy Judah, and Judah shall not any more vex 
 Ephraim. Then He shall set up an ensign 
 for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts 
 of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of 
 Judah from the four corners of the earth. Who 
 
Appreciation 65 
 
 is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair 
 as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as 
 an army with banners ? Enlarge the place of 
 thy tent, and let them stretch forth the cur- 
 tains of thine habitations ; spare not, lengthen 
 thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; for thou 
 shalt break forth on the right hand and on the 
 left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, 
 and make the desolate cities to be inhab- 
 ited. 
 
 The true Catholic, as our class-studies have 
 been teaching us for these past years, is the 
 well-read, the open-minded, the hospitable- 
 hearted, the spiritually-exercised Evangelical, as 
 he is called. He is of no sect. He is of no 
 school. He is of no occasion. He comes of 
 no movement. He belongs to all sects, and 
 all sects belong to him. So far as they have 
 any portion of Divine truth in their keeping, 
 or any evidence of Divine grace in their walk 
 and conversation, they are all his fellow-com- 
 municants and his brethren. How rich such 
 men are in truth and love and hope ! for all 
 things are theirs. All men, and all books, and 
 all churches. Whether Paul, or John, or Au- 
 gustine, or Athanasius, or Dante, or Behmen, 
 or Luther, or Calvin, or Hooker, or Taylor, 
 or Knox, or Rutherford, or Bunyan, or But- 
 
66 Newman 
 
 ler, or Edwards, or Chalmers, or Newman, or 
 Spurgeon. And we have not a few of such 
 Catholic Evangelicals in our pulpits, and among 
 our people, in Scotland, and they are multiply- 
 ing among us every day. And nowhere in 
 broad Christendom does the foremost scholar- 
 ship, wedded to the oldest and deepest doc- 
 trines of grace, produce such good preaching, 
 and such receptive and believing hearing, as 
 just in that land where Laud found no relig- 
 ion, and where Newman, when in his Laud- 
 like mind, saw only Samaritan schism, some- 
 what alleviated by God's uncovenanted mercies. 
 To return once more to the Apologia : "In 
 1 843 I took a very significant step. I made a 
 formal Retractation of all the hard things which 
 I had said against the Church of Rome." Now 
 there was a far more significant step than that 
 which Newman ought to have taken in 1890. 
 But it was a step which, alas, he died without 
 having taken. He ought to have laid his 
 honoured head in the dust for all the slings and 
 scoffs he had ever uttered in the pride of his 
 heart at men whose shoe-latchet, he should have 
 said, he was not worthy to unloose. The shoe- 
 latchet of such men of God as Luther, and 
 Calvin, and the Anglican Reformers, as well as 
 Bunyan, and Newton, and Wesley, and many 
 
Appreciation 67 
 
 more men of God, whose only offence against 
 Newman and his sectarian and intolerant school 
 had been that they were determined to preach 
 no other gospel than the gospel of a sinner's free 
 justification before God by faith on the Son of 
 God, and on Him and on His work alone. 
 Men to whom their Master will yet say, Well 
 done, good and faithful servant ! and that, too, 
 in Newman's hearing. Those who are best 
 able to speak about such matters assure us that 
 Newman largely returned to his mother's 
 Huguenot and Puritan faith in his last days. 
 And I believe it. But, then, he should have 
 said so himself, and he should have openly 
 apologised for and repudiated all he had ever 
 written, and had instigated others to write, to the 
 detriment of apostolical and evangelical religion. 
 Had he done that he would have died in the 
 Catholic faith indeed. And then he would 
 have had all his great gifts, with all their splen- 
 did usury, accepted when he came to offer them 
 at the altar. As it is, " He that despiseth you, 
 despiseth Me ; and he that despiseth Me, des- 
 piseth Him that sent Me." I am not New- 
 man's judge ; but if I were, I would say of 
 him, in the language of his own Church, that 
 he died unrepentant and unabsolved of the sin 
 of having despised, and of having taught many 
 
68 Newman 
 
 others to despise, some of the best ministers of 
 Christ this world has ever seen. 
 
 When, then, if such thy lot, thou seest thy Judge, 
 
 The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart 
 
 All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts. 
 
 And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself ; for, though 
 
 Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned. 
 
 As never thou didst feel ; and wilt desire 
 
 To slink away, and hide thee from His sight. 
 
 And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell 
 
 Within the beauty of His countenance. 
 
 And those two pains, so counter and so keen, — 
 
 The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not ; 
 
 The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, — 
 
 Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory. 
 
NEWMAN'S WORKS 
 
NEWMAN'S WORKS 
 
 Newman's works extend altogether to some 
 thirty-seven or thirty-eight volumes, not count- 
 ing his "Tr acts for the 'Times, Newman's works 
 may be described and classified as containing 
 sermons, pure theology, pure literature, history, 
 treatises, essays, polemics, fiction, poetry, de- 
 votions, autobiography, — and all first-rate of 
 their kind. And, all taken together, constitut- 
 ing a body of intellectual workmanship that 
 stands absolutely by itself in English literature. 
 The Lyra Apostolica was the first publication 
 with which Newman's name was associated. 
 "It was at Rome that we began the Lyra 
 Apostolica^ which appeared monthly in the 
 British Magazine, The motto shows the feel- 
 ing of both Froude and myself at the time ; we 
 borrowed from Bunsen a Homer ; and Froude 
 chose the words in which Achilles on returning 
 to the battle says, ' You shall know the differ- 
 ence, now that I am back again.' " Exactly so. 
 It is the motto, not the title-page, that truly 
 
 71 
 
72 Newman*s Works 
 
 describes the character of this bellicose little 
 book. The motto is out of the Iliads and, 
 most certainly, the fierce little volume is written 
 much more in the spirit of the Iliad than in the 
 spirit of the New Testament. If you had never 
 heard of the Lyra Apostolica, but had come 
 upon it by chance, had read its title-page, and 
 had then dipped into its contents, you would 
 certainly have laid it down, saying, Surely never 
 was written book worse named than this proud, 
 scornful, ill-natured, and most anti-apostolic, 
 ebullition ! And the more you had been in- 
 doctrinated with apostolic truth, and imbued 
 with the apostolic spirit, the more would you 
 resent the utterly misleading title-page, however 
 happy to the book you might think the motto 
 and the heathen source of it. The motto is 
 most excellent for the purpose of the Lyra^ but 
 the title-page is a very triumph of misnomer. 
 Froude supplied the motto, and no little of the 
 pugnacious and egotistical spirit of the Lyra ; 
 but Newman, as usual, did the most of the 
 work, as he certainly did all the best of it. 
 There are 179 pieces in the Lyra altogether; 
 of which Newman contributed 109, Keble 46, 
 Isaac Williams 9, Froude 8, Bov/den 6, and 
 Wilberforce i . Bowden writes above the signa- 
 ture a, Froude above ^, Keble above 7, New- 
 
Appreciation 73 
 
 man above 8, Wilberforce above e, and Williams 
 above ?. The most valuable of the pieces are 
 those that are autobiographical of Newman, but 
 there are other contributions of his besides the 
 autobiographical that we would not willingly let 
 die. They are such as Moses, The Call of 
 David, Judaism, The Elements, Deeds not 
 Words, and some more. But, on the other 
 hand, there are far more, both of his and of his 
 colleagues' contributions, that, both for their 
 writers* sake, as well as for the sake of truth and 
 love, had better have been buried out of sight. 
 Newman's more personal pieces are full of re- 
 ligious fear, and religious doubt, and sometimes 
 of downright religious despair ; at their be st they 
 are everything but apostolical. From first to 
 last the Lyra is political, ecclesias tical, clerical^ 
 sacramental, ascetic ; but it is impossible to let 
 it be called apostolical without a loud protest. 
 You may hesitate to believe that the work of 
 such men can, with any fairness, be called po- 
 litical ; but that description of the book is not 
 mine. " Do not mention it," writes Newman, 
 " but we have hopes of making the Lyra an 
 effective, quasi-political engine, without any 
 contribution being of that character." And 
 Mr. Holt Hutton, who loved Newman like a 
 father, has insight and honesty enough to admit 
 
74 Newman's Works 
 
 that several of Newman's own pieces are nothing 
 other than " theologico-political anathemas." 
 And Mr. Jacobs in an admirable Athenaum 
 article says that " throughout Newman's An- 
 glican period the ecclesiastical things that 
 touched him most nearly were not things of 
 dogma, but lay in the sphere of practical poli- 
 tics. At every point of his career it was some 
 problem in the relations of Church and State 
 that affected him most strongly. The abolition 
 of the Irish bishoprics, the alliance of O'Con- 
 nell and the Whigs, — these things, and things 
 like these, are the turning-points of his career. 
 Even the diplomatic reserve and economy of 
 truth with which the world credited him for so 
 many years were marks of the ecclesiastical 
 statesman, not of the religious thinker." There 
 is plenty of intellect in the Lyra — with such 
 authors it could not be otherwise ; plenty of 
 scholarship of a kind; plenty of Old Testa- 
 ment, classical, and ecclesiastical illustration and 
 allusion, but you will search in vain for the apos- 
 tolical element in it. The Lyra is too much 
 like what Augustine found the father of New- 
 man's style to be. The author of the Confes- 
 sions discovered everything in Cicero that was 
 delightful, except the name of Jesus Christ. 
 And that name of all names is far too little to 
 
Appreciation 75 
 
 be found in the Lyra to let us call it, of all 
 epithets, apostolical. The Church of England 
 and the Church of Rome are quite sufficiently 
 in it to admit of its being truly described as 
 ecclesiastical, and we have the best of authority 
 for calling it quasi-political ; but, again, I will 
 protest, not apostolical. Isaac Williams wrote 
 a famous tract on " Reserve in communicating 
 Religious Knowledge," and the Lyra authors 
 are all so many illustrations and examples of 
 that anti-apostolical tract. For they reserve 
 and exclude altogether the things that the 
 Apostle always puts in the very forefront of 
 every Epistle of his. Newman says that the 
 movement needed boldness. So it did. And 
 it needed some boldness in him to call the Lyra 
 by the name of apostolical, unless it was so 
 called in an economy, and in another case of the 
 editor's irony. 
 
 Yes ; call the Lyra Judaica, or Patristica, or 
 Ecclesiastica, or Anglicana, but Apostolica it 
 never is in so much as a single page. I have 
 sought for it, but I have not found one single 
 piece among all the 179, that I could imagine 
 the Apostle receiving into the number of the 
 psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that he 
 taught his young churches to sing. Not one. 
 I never find myself chanting a Lyra to myself 
 
76 Newman's Works 
 
 when I again come to myself in the early 
 morning. An Olney hymn or a Wesley hymn 
 often — ' Rock of Ages/ ' There is a fountain 
 filled with blood/ ' Just as I am/ 'Jesus, Lover 
 of my soul/ ' Jesus, Thy blood and righteous- 
 ness,' ' How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,' 
 * Come, my soul, thy suit prepare' — but never 
 once a Lyra Apostolica^ nor any of its school, 
 unless it is ' New every morning is the love,' 
 or ' Help us this and every day to live more 
 nearly as we pray.' The Lyra will no doubt 
 continue for a time to be studied and annotated 
 by experts in English ecclesiastical history, 
 but by very few besides. Whereas, the hymns 
 I have named, and which are so despised by 
 the Tractarian school, will last as long as the 
 Church of Christ lasts. Both the Lyra^ and 
 the Christian Tear^ and the Cathedral^ are the 
 poetry of a school. A great school in its day. 
 A scholarly school. An aristocratic school. 
 A stately, refined, fastidious school ; but still a 
 school. A caste, as those it despises and 
 tramples upon might well turn upon it and call 
 it. Yes ; the Lyra is the production of a 
 school, of a caste, and of an occasion. Neither 
 the Lyra, nor anything of its kind, is truly 
 Christian and Catholic. You could not trans- 
 late the Lyra into another language than the 
 
Appreciation 77 
 
 English. It will not be intelligible to another 
 age than that which produced it, nor to another 
 civilisation. Whereas, wherever Paul's Epis- 
 tles are preached, if they are preached with the 
 understanding and the spirit, there the great 
 hymns I have named will come to the mind 
 like the mother-tongue of the Evangelical 
 worshipper. This is not said in any deprecia- 
 tion of Newman, or Keble, or Williams, or any 
 of their school. I only say this to lead you to 
 give to the Wesleys, and Newton, and Cowper, 
 and Toplady, and Zinzendorf, and Doddridge, 
 and Watts, and Bonar, their unchallengeably 
 apostolic places in your worship and in your 
 love. 
 
 Under the title of " Schism ** there are three 
 very characteristic verses in the Lyra that bear 
 on ourselves. Scotland is " Samaria," and our 
 Presbyterian reformers and theologians are a 
 "self-formed priesthood.*' Our fathers sinned 
 in carrying out the Reformation, and we, their 
 children, have thus lost the grace that seals 
 " the holy apostolic line." That is to say, 
 Knox, and Melville, and Bruce, and Ruther- 
 ford, and Halyburton, and the Erskines, and 
 Boston, and Chalmers, and M'Cheyne, were 
 a grace-forsaken priesthood. And we, their 
 spiritual children, can only look for the crumbs 
 
y8 Newman's Works 
 
 that fall from the CathoHc table. That is a 
 specimen of the religion and the morals and 
 the manners of the Tractarian lyre. But, then, 
 two can play at that unchurching and excom- 
 municating game. As thus, " We know you 
 only as heretics," said M. MourouviefF of the 
 Holy Synod to William Palmer, the Tracta- 
 rian deputy. " You separated from the Latin 
 Church three hundred years ago, as the Latins 
 had before that separated from the Greeks. 
 We think even the Latin Church heretical, but 
 you are an apostasy from an apostasy. You 
 are a descent from bad to worse." And, as if 
 taught a lesson by the Greek reception of their 
 Tractarian envoy, or else as visited surely by 
 the spirit of Christian wisdom and Christian 
 love, Newman afterwards modified somewhat 
 his " Samaria " effusion. " I still must hold 
 that we have no right to judge of others at this 
 day, as we would have judged of them had all 
 of us lived a thousand years earlier. I do 
 really think, for instance, that in the Presbyte- 
 rianism of Scotland we see a providential phe- 
 nomenon, the growth of a secondary system 
 unknown to St. Austin ; begun, indeed, not 
 without sin, but continued, as regards the many, 
 ignorantly, and compatibly with some portion 
 of the true faith." Pitiful enough, and repre- 
 
Appreciation 79 
 
 hensible enough, you will say, in sucn a man, 
 though not quite so insolent as the original 
 " Samaria." But Newman sometimes came to 
 himself. And when in his old age he was re- 
 vising some of the Tractarian outbursts of his 
 arrogant and hot-headed youth, he is compelled 
 to admit again and again that he had no justifi- 
 cation for a great deal of the language that he 
 employed about other men and other churches 
 in the Lyra, " Their common bond is lack of 
 truth,'' said Manning, to Gladstone's horror. 
 And, really, as we read the Lyra, even in the 
 cooled-down air of our remote day, we are 
 sometimes tempted to add to our own horror, 
 " both lack of truth and lack of love." But 
 a truce to this. For, as iEneas replied to 
 Achilles — 
 
 Long in the field of words we may contend. 
 Reproach is infinite, and knows no end, 
 Arm'd or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong : 
 So voluble a weapon is the tongue ; 
 Wounded we wound, and neither side can fail. 
 For every man has equal strength to rail. 
 
 I can honestly assure you I have no pleasure 
 in repeating to you these railings of Newman 
 and his Tractarian allies. I have not told you 
 nearly all, nor by any means the worst, of that 
 
8o Newman's Works 
 
 kind. I could not help telling you somewhat, 
 if I was to tell you the truth. But you should 
 judge of that time, and of the spirit of that 
 time, for yourselves. And you have an admir- 
 able opportunity for studying the intellectual 
 and moral and religious qualities of the Lyra at 
 least, in a cheap, scholarly, beautiful, edition of 
 that book just published by Messrs. Methuen, 
 and admirably edited by Canon Scott Holland. 
 The little volume contains, besides the editor's 
 very able preface, an invaluable Critical Note 
 by Professor Beeching. Critical, but on much 
 safer and much pleasanter lines of criticism 
 than those I have been compelled to go out 
 upon in passing. 
 
 Very much what the Lyra Apostolka is in 
 poetry, that the T^r acts for the Times are in prose. 
 Like the Lyra, the 'Tracts are the productions 
 of several authors ; like the Lyra^ the Tracts 
 are contingent and occasional ; and, like the 
 Lyra^ they sway backwards and forwards from 
 the very best tempers of mind and styles of 
 writing to the very worst. The motto of the 
 Tracts is not taken out of the Iliad indeed, but 
 they have the same battle-note and boast of 
 coming war in them. And, following up their 
 warlike motto, very much the same good 
 
Appreciation 8 1 
 
 qualities are found in the 'Tracts as in the 
 poems, and very much the same bad qualities. 
 Newman's own remarkable character ; his aris- 
 tocratic, refined, fastidious, severe, sometimes 
 scornful, and sometimes fierce and reckless, 
 temper, finds its full scope in the Tracts^ just 
 as it does in the whole of the Tractarian move- 
 ment, and in the whole of its literature. 
 
 To begin with, we all see now that Newman, 
 in his passionate impetuosity, — "vehement feel- 
 ings " is his own expression, — rushed into the 
 battle before he had proved his armour. He 
 launched out into the great Tractarian enter- 
 prise very ill prepared for its difficulties and 
 its dangers. In a very able paper printed in 
 the North British Review for October, 1864, 
 Dr. Rainy has pointed out how scandalously 
 ill-furnished Newman was for what he set out 
 on with such confidence. Dr. Rainy shows 
 how little ballast Newman had on board, either 
 of theological learning, or of a disciplined 
 judgment, in such difficult matters. And he 
 out on such a wide sea, swept with such storms, 
 and liable to be suddenly struck with such 
 unforeseen currents. " It is a fact," writes Dr. 
 Rainy, " and not a creditable one, that, owing 
 largely to the want of regular theological train- 
 ing in the English Church, there is very little 
 
82 Newman's Works 
 
 tuition, and very little literature, fitted to sug- 
 gest to the minds of her young divines the 
 range of theological responsibilities that may 
 attach to the positions they take up, and the 
 alternatives they embrace. And a certain allow- 
 ance may be reasonable on that score." Newman 
 himself, indeed, in his own candid and con- 
 fidential way, admits as much in his Apologia, 
 He confesses to us that he was "taken in" by 
 those who should have known better, and that 
 he, in his turn, took in others. He sometimes 
 uses strong language about himself in this 
 matter when in after days he is in a confidential 
 and rhetorical mood ; but Dr. Rainy's powerful 
 paper only proves the simple and severe truth 
 of what Newman, sometimes somewhat too 
 jauntily, and in a literary way, admits about 
 himself. 
 
 The first Tract has this for its title-page and 
 headline, " Thoughts on the Ministerial Com- 
 mission, respectfully addressed to the Clergy." 
 And its author, — and there is no mistaking his 
 pen, — commences thus : " I am but one of 
 yourselves — a Presbyter ; and therefore I con- 
 ceal my name, lest I should take too much 
 on myself by speaking in my own person. 
 Yet speak I must ; for the times are very evil, 
 yet no one speaks against them." 
 
Appreciation 83 
 
 Now, when a man born and brought up as 
 Newman had been born and brought up ; born 
 and brought up in an Evangelical household, 
 and educated for the Christian ministry, and 
 by this time by far the foremost preacher in 
 the English Church ; and with England and 
 Oxford in the state they were still in, notwith- 
 standing all that Whitefield, and the Wesleys, 
 and Newton, and Scott, had done ; — when such 
 a man begins a series of tracts addressed to 
 his fellow-ministers in the way we have seen, I 
 would have looked for a succession of writings 
 that would have been meat and drink to every 
 true minister of Jesus Christ in England. I 
 see now that it would have been preposterous 
 and impossible to expect such a service from a 
 man in the fanatical and anti-evangelical spirit 
 that Newman was in at that time. Yet it would 
 have been but an instance of believing all 
 things, and hoping all things, to have looked 
 for such a result as I have described from such 
 a commencement. With that charity in my 
 heart, I would have looked for a nineteenth- 
 century Reformed Paslor from Newman's pen ; 
 or a series of letters worthy to stand beside 
 William Law's Letter to a Young Minister^ or a 
 succession of utterances like Jeremy Taylor's 
 noble Addresses to his clergy. I would have 
 
84 Newman's Works 
 
 encouraged myself to hope that an early Tract 
 would have been given to Bedford ; and, con- 
 sidering the state of the rural parishes of Eng- 
 land at that time, another to Kidderminster ; 
 and, still considering the state of the mining 
 villages of the north, another to Wesley and 
 his truly apostolic work. But how bitterly 
 would my hopes have been disappointed ! For, 
 not only did the successors of those apostolic 
 men get no help from the 'TractSy but their 
 New Testament preaching and pastorate were 
 in every possible way belittled and sneered at ; 
 their defects and failures were dwelt upon, ex- 
 aggerated, and held up to scorn and contempt, 
 in a way you would not credit. Even Hooker 
 himself, truly Evangelical as he was at heart, 
 was so carried away with the controversy to 
 which he had committed himself, that even he 
 spake almost as unbecomingly of the Puritan 
 pulpit as Newman and Froude spake. Both 
 the high Anglican of Hooker's day, and the 
 Tractarian of Newman's day, fell before the 
 temptation to exalt some of the other functions 
 of the ministerial commission above its always 
 first, and always fundamental, function, even 
 the immediate and urgent preaching of Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified. All students for 
 the Christian pulpit, and all occupants of the 
 
Appreciation 85 
 
 Christian pulpit, and all intelligent Christian 
 men, should have by heart Coleridge's noble 
 rebuke of Hooker himself in this matter. 
 Coleridge's splendid services to Reformation 
 and Evangelical religion have never to this day 
 been adequately acknowledged in England. 
 Coleridge's incomparable services as a critic and 
 an annotator were not confined to Shakespeare 
 and Milton. I like him best when he is writ- 
 ing notes on Luther, and Hooker, and Taylor, 
 and Baxter, and Bunyan, and ' A Barrister ' ; 
 but that prince of critics is nowhere better than 
 just on Hooker in the matter in hand. Born 
 preachers, like Hooker and Newman, will 
 prove themselves to be born preachers, all per- 
 nicious influences notwithstanding. But the 
 ordinary occupant of the Christian pulpit has 
 small need to have his divine work made little 
 of by men to whom he looks up as his masters 
 in Israel. And when Newman escapes out of 
 the Tractarian paddock, and gives full expres- 
 sion to all that is in his heart about the great- 
 ness of preaching, how nobly, how inspiringly, 
 how memorably to all times, he speaks ! How 
 like himself ! But, from some of the 'Tracts, you 
 would actually think that the Evangelical pul- 
 pit had been an evil invention of the Puritans, 
 and that the doctrines of grace were a device. 
 
86 Newman's Works 
 
 if not actually of the great enemy himself, then 
 of some of those middle and half-fallen spirits 
 of his who sometimes take possession of nations 
 and churches, and of whom Newman has writ- 
 ten such characteristic chapters of national and 
 ecclesiastical demonology. At the same time, 
 and with all that, let this be said here, and said 
 with all possible emphasis, and with the most 
 profound thankfulness, that the Tractarian pul- 
 pit and press are at one with the Reformed 
 and Evangelical pulpit and press on the great 
 foundation-stones and corner-stones of the 
 Christian faith. On God; on the Son of God; 
 on the sin-atoning death of the Son of God ; 
 and on the Person, if not always on the work, 
 of the Holy Ghost. It is at this crucial ques- 
 tion in the Westminster Shorter Catechism 
 that the Evangelical and the Tractarian pul- 
 pits part company. This question — " How 
 doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption 
 purchased by Christ?" The Evangelical, and 
 I feel sure, the Scriptural, if not the patristic 
 and traditionary and ecclesiastical answer is by 
 our effectual calling ; that is to say, " By en- 
 lightening our minds in the knowledge of 
 Christ, by renewing our wills, and by persuad- 
 ing and enabling us to embrace Jesus Christ 
 as He is offered to us in the Gospel." And, 
 
Appreciation 87 
 
 then, baptism comes in, as it comes in in Script- 
 ure, as a sign and a seal of what has already 
 been wrought by the hand of the Holy Ghost 
 in the renewed soul. And, then, the Lord's 
 Supper comes in from time to time to strengthen 
 and to build up the renewed and believing soul. 
 Whereas, the Tractarian teaching is — leaning 
 too much, as it does, on the least Evangelical 
 of the fathers, on the least Evangelical line of 
 tradition — that the soul is united to Christ in 
 baptism, when that ordinance is administered 
 by the hand of a true priest, through whose 
 hand alone the Holy Ghost may be expected 
 to operate. And so begun, so on. Newman 
 tells one of his correspondents in 1833, that he 
 has started the tracts with what he calls " an 
 indirect inculcation of apostolical principles.'' 
 But if he was quite sure that they were " apos- 
 tolical principles," why did he feel any need to 
 inculcate them indirectly ? The Lyra also, he 
 tells us in confidence, was undertaken " with a 
 view of catching people when unguarded." 
 Now, after all allowance is made for his para- 
 doxicalness, and playfulness, and banter, in 
 his private letters to his intimate friends, these 
 somewhat remarkable terms of expression, in 
 the circumstances, have their own significance. 
 Mr. Holt Hutton, no Puritan certainly, either 
 
88 Newman's Works 
 
 in the doctrine or the discipline he preached in 
 the Spectator for so long and with such attrac- 
 tiveness and power, while he almost worships 
 Newman, honestly admits that the Tractarian 
 was essentially a clerical movement — clerical to 
 the core, is his very word about it. And he goes 
 on to make, for him, this very remarkable ad- 
 mission that " the Tractarian was a much more 
 pronounced and self-conscious, not to say al- 
 most aggressive and over-pretentious, type of 
 sacerdotalism, than that of a Church wherein 
 direct Apostolical Succession had been the 
 plainly and universally avowed basis of the 
 priesthood for nearly two thousand years." In 
 short, that Tractarianism was more Popish 
 than Popery itself There is a large literature 
 on the Notes of the True and Only Apostolic 
 Church, and the 'Tracts for the 'Times belong to 
 that literature, and are almost wholly taken 
 up with those Notes. But, then, over against 
 that large literature there is a not small and a 
 not unmasterly literature on the Notes of the 
 truly Regenerate and Gracious Soul. In Bax- 
 ter's Saints' Rest^ an English classic, there is a 
 characteristically acute chapter on those notes 
 and marks and tokens of such a soul. The 
 thorough-going student of these subjects, and 
 they will repay such a student, will do well to 
 
Appreciation 89 
 
 master Baxter alongside of the "Tracts ; and he 
 should add to Baxter an old Scottish classic re- 
 published the other day in Inverness, which 
 once read, will be often returned to — 'The Mem- 
 oirs of James Fraser of Brea, And I will not 
 prejudge this matter to such a student, but will 
 leave him to say whether or no the Tractarians 
 are as Scriptural, and as able, and as scholarly, 
 and as sanctifying, in their identification of the 
 Church, as the Puritans are in their identifica- 
 tion of the soul. Let the Anglican student 
 master Baxter and Brea, and let the Evangeli- 
 cal student master the Tracts for the Times, and 
 then they will judge for themselves between 
 the Church and the soul. 
 
 Newman's sermons, of which all the world 
 has heard the fame, are contained in twelve 
 volumes. There are eight volumes of Parochial 
 and Plain Sermons, one volume of Sermons on 
 Subjects of the Day, one volume of University 
 Sermons, and two volumes of Roman Catholic 
 Sermons — the one volume entitled Sermons to 
 Mixed Congregations, and the other Sermons 
 preached on Various Occasions, The very titles 
 of Newman's sermons are a study in homilet- 
 ics. To read and ponder his simple titles is a 
 stimulus to the mind of the ministerial reader. 
 
90 Newman's Works 
 
 A carpenter friend of mine once told me that 
 sometimes on a Sabbath night he took down a 
 volume of Newman's sermons just for the 
 benefit and the delight of reading over their 
 titles. To read Longmans' detailed catalogue 
 of Newman's Parochial, and University, and 
 Catholic Sermons is in itself a great lesson in 
 pulpit literature. Looked at as pure literature, 
 Newman's St. Mary's sermons are not far from 
 absolute perfection ; but looked at as pulpit 
 work, as preaching the Gospel, they are full 
 of the most serious, and even fatal, defects. 
 With all their genius, with all their truly noble 
 and enthralling characteristics, they are not, 
 properly speaking. New Testament preaching 
 at all. Even as pure literature their most 
 serious fault steals in and infects and stains 
 them. The very best of the sermons are con- 
 tinually tainted with some impertinent aside 
 at some Evangelical truth, or at some real, 
 or imagined, or greatly exaggerated, defects in 
 the doctrine or in the life of the Evangelical 
 preachers of his day. All the world knows 
 how poor Kingsley was annihilated. But 
 though I cannot forget his terrible punish- 
 ment, neither can I forget his extraordinarily 
 apt description of this most unpleasant feature 
 in Newman's controversial manner, especially 
 
Appreciation 91 
 
 in his sermons. Newman is too skilful a con- 
 troversialist to discharge his assault from a 
 catapult, as he accused Dr. Pusey of discharg- 
 ing his olive branch. Newman's style sings 
 round you, musical and delicate as a mosquito's 
 wing, and alights on you with feet as fine. In 
 Kingsley's very words, which so detected and 
 angered Newman, a phrase, an epithet, a lit- 
 tle barbed arrow, will be delivered on you in 
 passing as with his finger-tip. Nothing could 
 be better said of Newman's treatment of 
 Evangelical doctrines and Evangelical preach- 
 ers in many of his sermons. How often his 
 most admiring and revering reader is made to 
 feel both pain and shame as he comes across 
 such stains as these, and that on pages other- 
 wise of the most perfect truth and beauty. 
 Newman's sermons, in some respects, are sim- 
 ply incomparable in the literature of preaching. 
 As an analysis of the heart of man, and as a 
 penetrating criticism of human life, their equal 
 is nowhere to be found. But, with all that, 
 they lack the one all-essential element of all 
 true preaching — the message to sinful man con-^ 
 cerning the free grace of God. That message 
 was the one thing that differentiated the Apos- 
 tle's preaching from all the other so-called 
 preaching of his day. And that one thing 
 
92 Newman's Works 
 
 which has been the touchstone of all true 
 preaching ever since the Apostle's day, and 
 will be to the end of the world, that is all but 
 totally lacking in Newman's sermons. It is a 
 bold thing to say, but let it be said since it is 
 true, that the St. Mary's sermons are like the 
 Lyra and the 'Tracts in this, that they are the 
 outcome of a movement and of an occasion ; 
 and so far as they are that, they are neither 
 truly Catholic as sermons, nor truly classical 
 as literature. At their best they carry with them 
 the limitations and the restrictions of a school. 
 They are the manifestoes and the proclama- 
 tions of a party, and they too often exhibit the 
 spirit and the temper of a party. So much so, 
 that with all their royal right and power of 
 giving the law to English homiletical and rhe- 
 torical literature ; with all their, not seldom, 
 sovereign splendour of thought and style ; and 
 though, in all these fine qualities, they may last 
 as long as the language lasts ; at the same time, 
 they will not be fully understood where the 
 Tractarian movement is not understood. They 
 will be read for their literature, as the Lyra and 
 as some of the Tracts are read ; but thousands 
 of hints, and touches, and turns in them, di- 
 rected by the preacher against the religion of 
 the England and Scotland of his day, will only 
 
Appreciation 93 
 
 be fully apprehended and appreciated by theo- 
 logians and ecclesiastical students. When we 
 do come on a truly Pauline and Evangelical 
 sermon, or such a part of a sermon, what a 
 treat it is ; what a pure intellectual and spiritual 
 joy ! But how seldom that unmixed joy comes 
 to the reader of Newman's sermons, only they 
 know who yearn above all things to see the 
 greatest of gifts engaged in the greatest of ser- 
 vices. 
 r^ The finer and the more fastidious your mind 
 / is, the more you will enjoy Newman's sermons. 
 I But the more burdened and broken your heart 
 ) is, and especially with your secret sinfulness, 
 A the less will you find in them that which, above 
 I all things in heaven or earth, your heart needs. 
 VjHad the substance and the spirit of Newman's 
 sermons been but half as good as their style, 
 what a treasure the St. Mary's sermons would 
 have been to all time ! As it is, they are a 
 splendid literature in many respects ; but one 
 thing they are not, they are not what God in- 
 tends the Gospel of His Son to be to all sinful 
 and miserable men. After all is said in praise 
 of these extraordinary sermons, this remains, 
 that Newman's constant doctrine is that doctrine 
 which the Apostle discarded with anathemas, 
 — salvation by works, whether legal or evan- 
 
94 Newman's Works 
 
 gelical works. And almost more did he discard 
 and denounce salvation by austerities, by gratu- 
 itous self-severities, and by fear rather than by 
 faith, and that faith working by love, and peace, 
 and joy. When I am again overtaken of one 
 of my besetting sins ; when the sorrows of death 
 again compass me, and the pains of hell take 
 hold of me, I never take down Newman^s ser- 
 mons for my recovery and my comfort. Never 
 once. But I have a silver casket like that in 
 which Alexander the Great carried about Homer 
 under his pillow, and in it I keep no Lyra of 
 all the hundred and eighty, and no Tract of all 
 the ninety, but two or three little books that 
 Newman and his Tractarian school never men- 
 tion but with contempt and scorn. And one 
 of these Homers of mine is that genuine apostle 
 and minister of Jesus Christ who laid the true 
 foundation in Hursley two hundred years be- 
 fore, but on which Keble, and Froude, and 
 Newman, built up so much wood and hay and 
 stubble. The following letter will help to illus- 
 trate what I am now saying : — 
 
 " The Engadine ; Sabbath Night. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Smellie, — Though it is only 
 some ten days since I read Guthrie in your de- 
 lightful edition, I have returned to him to-day 
 
Appreciation 95 
 
 to my great reassurance and peace of mind. 
 The occasion was this. I had been working on 
 Newman all last week. And so dazzling to me 
 is his writing, and so unsettling is~ his "dbctnne 
 ""oFsaving jfaith, that he had disconcerted and 
 distressed me not a little ; indeed, far too much. 
 I am as susceptible to the influence of a great 
 author as Newman was himself. In the ab- 
 sence of public worship this morning my eye 
 fell on Guthrie again, and I have spent the day 
 with him. In his sectarian and sophistical lines 
 on ' Samaria * Newman calls our great Scottish 
 preachers a self-formed priesthood, and tells us 
 that we, through our fathers' sins at the time of 
 the Reformation, have lost the grace that runs 
 in the Apostolic line. Now, if Guthrie has lost 
 the doctrine and the life of grace, I do not know 
 who has preserved that doctrine and that life, or 
 where, among the living or the dead, I am to 
 seek for it when in my great need of that doctrine 
 and that life. Would that Newman had sancti- 
 fied his fascinating gifts to preach to England 
 the Gospel that William Guthrie preached to 
 Scotland, and will preach to her as long as Scot- 
 land lasts ! Would that his fine mind had been 
 evangelised and dedicated to such a service as 
 * The Great Interest.* I cannot tell you how 
 much I have enjoyed that noble book to-day. 
 
96 Newman's Works 
 
 I always enjoy it, as you know ; but my class- 
 studies last week had put me into a posture of 
 mind and into a state of heart which, together, 
 exceptionally prepared me for the rare enjoy- 
 ment that your Guthrie has again given me. 
 Newman's sermons are on my table, but Mar- 
 shall and Guthrie are there also to more than 
 counterbalance them. Newman is much to me ; 
 but these two books are ' my Gospel,' as Paul 
 said, and as he would say again and again if he 
 came into my room this Lord's day. I am 
 as sure they are his gospel as that I have hands 
 and feet, as Newman said about his conversion. 
 Marshall and Guthrie always melt me and draw 
 me back to Christ ; just as Newman so often 
 hardens me and darkens me and stumbles me, 
 and makes Christ look stern on me, even from 
 the crucifix. Newman, in his own way, repays 
 me all my study of him ; but it has often been 
 at great pain to me, if not great risk and cost. 
 Newman, if it were possible to me now, would 
 still set me on going about to establish my 
 own righteousness ; a folly and a madness I 
 am only too prone to fall into. But Marshall 
 and Guthrie convince and encourage me again, 
 that, on the spot, and at this moment, I 
 must simply submit myself to be justified 
 absolutely before God by the righteousness 
 
Appreciation 97 
 
 of Another than myself, and that other God*s 
 own Son. 
 
 " Forgive this Sabbath night explosion ; I 
 could not keep it back. — Dear Mr. Editor, 
 indebtedly yours, Alexander Whyte." 
 
 Newman's preaching — and I say it with 
 more pain than I can express — never once 
 touches the true core, and real and innermost 
 essence, of the Gospel. The Epistle to the 
 Romans, the " Acropolis," as Olshausen calls it, 
 of the Gospel, need never have been written as 
 far as Newman's exposition of it is concerned. 
 The righteousness of Christ, of which that 
 glorious Epistle is full, need never have been 
 worked out by Him for all that those enthralled 
 audiences in St. Mary's ever heard of it. There 
 is a whole shining chain of Gospel texts that 
 Newman never touches on, or only touches on 
 them — I shrink from saying it — to misread 
 them and misapply them. Moses was never 
 dressed up in such ornaments before; never 
 even in his own day and dispensation. The 
 old lawgiver would not know himself, he is so 
 beautified and bedecked by Newman's style. 
 But, all the time, he is Moses. All the time, 
 with all his ornaments, he still carries his whip 
 of scorpions hidden away among his beautiful 
 
98 Newman's Works 
 
 garments. Do and live ! Disobey and die ! and 
 he draws his sword on me as he says it. Mount 
 of Transfiguration and all, Moses has not 
 changed his nature one iota, nor his voice one ac- 
 cent, at least not as far as Newman's Oxford pul- 
 pit is concerned. " The soul that sinneth it shall 
 die" is, somewhere or other, and in some more or 
 less musical note or other, in every sermon of 
 Newman's. The sinner-condemning law is his 
 mark in every sermon, and tract, and Lyra 
 verse, of his. So much is this the case, that 
 when any of my class or congregation come to 
 tell me that, at last, their sin has found them 
 out, and ask me what book they will henceforth 
 keep beside them for their direction and com- 
 fort, — do you think I ever give them Newman's 
 Lectures on Justification, or even a volume of his 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons ? I wish I could. 
 I have given not a few of Newman's books 
 to young men in other circumstances, and at 
 other stages, — ^he Idea of a University y 'The 
 Historical Sketches , 'The Athanasius, The Univer- 
 sity Sermons, The Gerontius, and so on ; but 
 never one of his beautiful books to a broken- 
 hearted and inconsolable sinner. I have often 
 given to men in dead earnest, books of the 
 heart and soul that Newman and his Tractarian 
 school would scorn to name : The Pilgrim^ s 
 
Appreciation 99 
 
 Progress, Grace Abounding, "The 'Ten Virgins, 
 Christ Dying, "The Trial and 'Triumph of Faith, 
 'The Gospel Mystery, The Cardiphonia, The Force 
 of Truth, The Marrow, Chalmers's Life, Haly- 
 burton's Life, Boston's Life, M^Cheyne's Life, 
 The Olney Hymns, a sermon of Spurgeon's, 
 a tract of Ryle's ; but a volume of Newman's 
 never ; no nor the Lyra Apostolica, nor even the 
 Christian Year, 
 
 Newman's Tractarian and unevangelical 
 preaching always sends me back to his con- 
 version. You know what he says about his 
 conversion himself, and in what memorable 
 English. I will not venture to tell you all that 
 I sometimes think and feel about that con- 
 version. I will not take it upon me to say that 
 Newman never was, root and branch, mind and 
 conscience, imagination and heart, completely 
 converted and completely surrendered up to 
 Jesus Christ, the alone Redeemer and Right- 
 eousness of sinful men. Only, I have some- 
 times pictured to myself what an eloquent, im- 
 pressive, and unanswerable case the author of 
 the Apologia could have made out against him- 
 self ever having been apostolically and evangel- 
 ically converted at all, — had he set himself to 
 make out such a case. And if, in his restless 
 versatility of mind, Newman had ever turned 
 
loo Newman's Works 
 
 to be an Agnostic, say, and had he then gone 
 back, and reviewed, and examined, and repudi- 
 ated, his position and his experience as a con- 
 vert to Christ, as he has reviewed, and exam- 
 ined, and repudiated, his position and his 
 experience as an Anglican ; had he added 
 another chapter of retractation and explanation 
 to his Autobiography, he could easily have 
 made out an unanswerable case against the real- 
 ity and the validity of what he had at one time 
 rejoiced in as his complete and abiding con- 
 version. He would have admitted that he 
 became a genuine Theist, even in his boyhood, 
 if ever there was a Theist. He would have 
 copied into his second Apologia that classical 
 page in his first Apologia, in which he tells us 
 with what intensity of faith and feeling he came 
 to realise to himself the existence and the omni- 
 presence of God. And how, from that profound 
 and overpowering conviction and impression of 
 the presence of God, his heart never swerved 
 for one hour. And not only was he a great 
 believer in the existence and the nearness of 
 Almighty God ; but, as time went on, and as 
 his patristic studies began to bear their proper 
 fruit, he came to believe also, and to preach, 
 those two foundation doctrines of the Christian 
 faith — our Lord's Divine Sonship and His sub- 
 
AppreCiatitJn' ibl 
 
 stitutionary and sin-atoning death — as they have 
 seldom, if ever, been preached. But Newman 
 would have claimed for his honesty, and it 
 would have given him a fine scope for his 
 subtlety of mind and for his delight in distinc- 
 tions, to have made it out to demonstration 
 that, at his best, he never went further than 
 the strictly limited doctrine of the Fathers on 
 the Person and the Work of Christ. And the 
 real distinction, and characteristic difference, of 
 a Pauline convert, he would have pressed upon 
 us, is not that he luminously believes in the 
 existence and the nearness of his Creator, and 
 his Lawgiver, and his Judge : or even in the 
 Incarnation and Atonement of the Son of God, 
 and then submits himself to a life of self-chosen 
 austerities and self-denials ; but he is the true 
 Pauline believer who submits himself, as Paul 
 could not get his converts to do, and to continue 
 to do, to be justified before God, first and last, 
 by the imputed righteousness of the Son of 
 God, and by that alone. Newman could easily 
 have filled an unanswerable chapter of his new 
 Apologia with a long catena of passages out of 
 /his St. Mary's sermons, in which, with all his 
 Winning eloquence, and with all his silencing 
 /argumentations, he persistently put forward 
 (jvorks where Paul puts faith ; and merit where 
 
102 Newman's Works 
 
 SPaul puts grace ; and doubt and feat- where 
 T'aul puts love and hope and full assurance. 
 (Passage after passage in which he employed all 
 his incomparable powers of sarcasm against the 
 Reformation preaching of Paul's palmary doc- 
 trine of justification by faith alone ; a doctrine 
 that the chief of the Apostles protested contin- 
 ually was his special and peculiar Gospel ; and, 
 indeed, that there is no other Gospel to be 
 called a Gospel. Newman could have boldly 
 and successfully defied any Lutheran or Cal- 
 vinist of us all, to point out one single sermon 
 of his on the righteousness of Christ, or on 
 faith, or on love, that we could suppose Paul 
 preaching, or sitting still to hear preached. 
 How could a man be truly converted, Newman 
 would have triumphantly demanded, at any 
 rate, as you Lutherans and Calvinists call con- 
 version, who wrote a whole eloquent volume 
 utterly to discredit Luther, and Calvin, and the 
 other Reformers, and never retracted it ? " If 
 Luther is right," Newman would have said in 
 his own dialectic and dilemma way, " then I 
 never stood within a standing Church at all. 
 For Luther will have nothing to do, as he con- 
 tinually exclaims, with a God who is not, first 
 and last, to be found in Christ, and to be treat- 
 ed with only in Christ. And so much as the 
 
Appreciation 103 
 
 name of Christ, as all my readers must have 
 seen, is not once to be found in all the im- 
 pressive record of my supposed conversion ; 
 much less His imputed and sinner-justifying 
 righteousness." If Newman had changed 
 again, and had lived to write a chapter like 
 that, he would have written it ten times stronger 
 than that, and in a hundred times more unan- 
 swerable English. No ; Newman never was 
 converted as John Wesley, say, was converted. 
 And as a consequence, among all Newman's 
 St. Mary's sermons, he never preached a single 
 sermon like John Wesley's famous St. Mary's 
 sermon on the text, " By grace ye are saved 
 through faith." A sermon preached in all the 
 fulness and freshness of Wesley's at last full, 
 and still fresh, conversion. All men, says 
 Coleridge, are born either Platonists or Aristo- 
 telians, and what they are once born, with all 
 their changes, they remain and die. And 
 Newman, in the matter of Pauline truth, was 
 born what he died. Evangelical birth and up- 
 bringing, so-called Calvinistic conversion, and 
 all, Newman's very heart of hearts never, to 
 the day of his death, got her complete divorce, 
 to use Paul's great word, from the dominion of 
 the law. Newman's Maker, and Lawgiver, 
 and Judge was, all his days, far more self- 
 
I04 Newman's Works 
 
 luminous to Newman than his only Redeemer 
 with His sin-cleansing bloodj and with His 
 sinner-justifying righteousness. He tells us 
 himself that He who is our only peace was 
 always severe to him, even on the crucifix. 
 Newman never, to the day of his death, was 
 dead to the law by the body of Christ, as Paul 
 was, and as Luther was, that man after Paul's 
 own heart. But, then, Luther was not a 
 " Father," he was only " the founder of a 
 school." And how could Newman, a born 
 Romanist, surrender himself to the teaching of 
 the deadliest enemy that ever rose up against 
 Rome since Paul rose up and wrote his Epistles 
 to the Romans and to the Galatians ? 
 
 Every intelligent Evangelical will be forward 
 to admit how much the Evangelical pulpit 
 needed in Newman's day, and still needs, all 
 Newman's genius, all his scholarship, all the 
 winningness of his character, and all his rare 
 and splendid talents, in order to commend the 
 Gospel message to men of taste, as John Foster 
 has said. And had Newman but run as well as 
 he began, what a rank he would have attained 
 to in the Church of Christ ! Had he kept true 
 to his first faith, and had he devoted his superb 
 abilities to the enriching and the ennobling of 
 the Evangelical faith and life and literature of 
 
Appreciation 105 
 
 England, what a long-shining name he would 
 have left behind him ; and that not only in the 
 world of letters, but above all, in the true 
 Church of Christ — the Church of Christ Re- 
 formed and Evangelical ! At this point take 
 these two letters written in 1826, while as yet 
 he was preaching Evangelical sermons and 
 sending them now and then to his Huguenot 
 mother to read. " I assure you," his happy 
 mother writes, " your sermons are a real com- 
 fort and delight to me. They are what I think 
 sermons ought to be — to enlighten, to comfort, 
 to correct, to support, to strengthen. It is, 
 my dear, a great gift to see so clearly the 
 truths of religion ; still more, to be able to 
 impart the knowledge to others." "These 
 tender and happy mother's letters," says his 
 sister, in editing his Correspondence, "are 
 given for a purpose which the reader will un- 
 derstand as time advances. Even now their 
 tone is too confiding to be allowed to pass 
 without some touch of warning." And his 
 sister introduces the following passage from one 
 of Newman's letters to his mother as a touch 
 of warning : " I am pleased you like my ser- 
 mons. I am sure I need not caution you 
 against taking anything I say on trust. Do 
 not be run away with by any opinion of mine. 
 
io6 Newman's Works 
 
 I have seen cause to change my mind in some 
 respects, and I may change again." Not a 
 very happy letter for a mother to read from 
 the hand of a minister-son. But, as his sister 
 says, it was intended as a touch of warning of 
 what might come to his mother hereafter. And 
 which came, only too soon, to her great sorrow. 
 
 "In my University Sermons there is a series 
 of discussions upon the subject of Faith and 
 Reason ; these, again, were the tentative com- 
 mencement of a great and necessary work, viz. 
 an inquiry into the ultimate basis of religious 
 faith, prior to the distinction into creeds." 
 Now, it is not the ultimate basis of faith, but 
 the proximate outcome and finishing work of 
 faith, that I specially take to do with ; and 
 neither in his University Sermons^ nor in his 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons^ does Newman 
 give me any help at all in that. I cannot 
 follow him into his philosophical discussions as 
 to all the relations of faith and reason. Dr. 
 Martineau, Dr. Fairbairn, Dr. Abbott, and 
 others, have descended into that deep arena, 
 and, to my mind, they have won the battle. 
 Let the debate be read by all who are inter- 
 ested in it, and are able to read it. The subject 
 of the ultimate basis of faith is beyond my 
 
Appreciation 1 07 
 
 powers. That is not my region at all. I lose 
 myself down there. I cannot keep my feet 
 down there. It is altogether out of my depth. 
 But as much as these champions complain to 
 have found Newman at fault in those deep 
 places, as much do I complain against him up 
 in my own field. Newman is always assailing 
 and blaming reason. Now, my reason is all 
 right. My reason partakes indeed in the uni- 
 versal debility of my whole inner man ; but the 
 seat of my evil is not in my reason, but in my 
 heart. If my heart were as sound in its offices 
 and operations as my reason, I would be noth- 
 ing short of a saint. But I have an evil heart 
 of unbelief, that even my reason continually 
 condemns and abhors. And it is in helping 
 me with the unbelief of my heart that Newman 
 so fails me. With the unbelief of my heart, 
 that is, as regards its highest and best Object, 
 Jesus Christ, as my righteousness and my 
 strength. " The relation of faith to reason,*' 
 says Dr. Martineau, " is traced by Newman 
 with a fineness and general truth of discrimina- 
 tion that remind us of Butler. Newman does 
 not narrow faith to the Lutheran dimensions, 
 that is to say, to denote a reliant affection tow- 
 ard a person ; to imply a grace peculiar to the 
 Christian and Jewish dispensations." And I 
 
io8 Newman's Works 
 
 find Baur in his great book on Paul employing 
 the very same word, though with another mo- 
 tive. " Thus," he says, " the object of faith is 
 narrowed in Paul stage by stage ; and in pro- 
 portion as this is done, the faith becomes more 
 intense and inward. From mere theoretical 
 assent it becomes a practical trust in which the 
 man's deepest needs find expression till it has 
 for its object the Blood of Christ." Now, in 
 these passages Dr. Martineau and Dr. Baur 
 have supplied me with the very expression that 
 will best bring to a point the great fault I find 
 with Newman ; and that not in his University 
 and Philosophical Sermons only, but quite as 
 much in his Parochial and Plain Sermons, No ; 
 Newman does not narrow the faith he preaches 
 to the Pauline and Lutheran dimensions. 
 Would God he did ! Would God he did nar- 
 row ; or, rather, did exalt, and did perfect, and 
 did finish, faith, and make it to find its ever- 
 lasting rest and its reliant and afiiant operation 
 and aflfection in Jesus Christ ! In that Person 
 for whom, from its ultimate basis, on to its 
 most exquisite finish and most perfect fulness, 
 faith is created in the mind and in the heart of 
 every true believer. The true and perfect 
 faith of the Pauline theology and anthropol- 
 ogy, embraces, to begin with, both Butler's 
 
Appreciation 109 
 
 and Newman^s and Martineau's philosophical 
 faith. But true saving faith still ascends 
 in Baur and in Luther, with adoring eyes and 
 uplifted hands, to embrace Jesus Christ as He 
 is offered to such faith in the Gospel. And 
 this faith, or rather the heart in which such 
 faith is seated, casts itself upon Jesus Christ 
 with a love, and an assurance, and a peace that 
 passes all understanding ; of which love and 
 assurance and peace Newman has next to noth- 
 ing to say to me in all his sermons. Saving 
 faith is such, and is so divine, both in its origin, 
 in its operations, and in its results, that noth- 
 ing, not the best thing in heaven or in earth, 
 will ever be permitted to take its place. All 
 the works, both legal and evangelical, that Jew, 
 or Greek, or Papist, or Tractarian, or Puritan, 
 ever performed, will not be permitted to take 
 the place of faith alone, and will not be allowed 
 to invade its great province, no, not by a 
 hair*s-breadth. Because that would be invad- 
 ing Christ alone. Work, fast, pray, afflict 
 body and mind and heart, and all else that 
 terror and love ever led you to do, all is but 
 loss compared with faith ; in other words, com- 
 pared with Christ. Faith first, faith last, faith 
 always, faith only ; in other words, Christ. 
 Luther and the great Puritans have taught a 
 
1 1 o Newman's Works 
 
 far away more Scriptural and a far away more 
 Evangelical doctrine of faith and of Christ than 
 is to be found in the very best of Newman's 
 sermons. And it is a faith, as I have said, 
 whose enemy and opposite is not reason at all ; 
 but is an evil heart, full of doubt and fear of 
 God, and of unbelief against God's Son. A 
 faith, indeed, that works by love ; but, better 
 than that, it works and has its greatest tri- 
 umphs, when love is dead ; for it restores our 
 dead love to newness of life. A faith that per- 
 forms feats in the soul, and for the salvation of 
 the soul, that love, at its best, could not at- 
 tempt. No ; true faith is never the enemy of 
 anything that is worthy to be called reason. 
 True faith is the enemy of a corrupt, a proud, 
 an ungodly, and an unchristian heart, and the 
 enemy of that heart alone. 
 
 Newman's two volumes of Roman Catholic 
 sermons are in many ways very unlike his 
 Anglican sermons. Over and above the new 
 note of certitude and finality that was to be 
 expected in them ; over and above the complete 
 disappearance of that provisional, precaution- 
 ary, pioneering, attitude that Newman so much 
 took up in his St. Mary's sermons ; there are 
 some other new features in his Catholic sermons 
 
Appreciation 1 1 1 
 
 that both surprise the student of Newman's 
 mind, and demand his explanation of these 
 remarkable alterations in Newman's mind and 
 work. For one thing, there is far less bitter- 
 ness and unfairness to his opponents when 
 he becomes controversial. His temper has 
 improved. He is more genial, if not more 
 generous. The too frequent tone of irritation 
 and impatience; the far too frequent slings 
 of scorn and contempt have all but van- 
 ished. Also, his pulpit wings now spread 
 out and bear the preacher aloft, as never 
 before. He has a far larger horizon before the 
 eye of his imagination, and he surveys a far 
 larger scope behind, and before, and all around. 
 At his best he was a tethered eagle in St. Mary's 
 pulpit; he is now the untrammelled sovereign of 
 the whole spiritual sky. To use his own words 
 about himself — formerly he was like a traveller 
 by night, calculating and guessing his way over 
 a morass, losing all his confidence, if not all his 
 hope. But the Kindly Light that he so pathetM 
 cally invoked when he was still in the midst of' 
 the morass, has now risen upon the wayfarer and 
 has led him to his rest, and his Catholic sermons 
 are the product and the evidence of that rest. 
 If there was a restraint of thought and of style 
 in Newman's Oxford sermons, there was in 
 
112 Newman's Works 
 
 them a refinement and a delicacy also that has 
 all but wholly disappeared from the Birmingham 
 andDubhn sermons. And in the removal of both 
 the restraint and the refinement and the delicacy, 
 there has entered in the room of these qualities 
 a new freedom of treatment, a new movement 
 as of a great drama, a new breadth and depth 
 of colour ; an abandonment, so to speak, to the 
 truth in hand ; a surrender up of himself to the 
 full possession of the passion that the sight of 
 " the last things " should produce, as he holds, 
 in every preacher. The terrific sermon on the 
 "Neglect of Divine Warnings," for instance, has 
 a sweep of imagination and a licence of utter- 
 ance in it that makes the reader shudder to 
 hold it before his eyes. Jonathan Edwards's 
 tremendous sermon on " Sinners in the Hand 
 of an Angry God " is the only sermon at all 
 like Newman's awful sermon in the English 
 language, or, I should think, in any other 
 language spoken among living men. " The 
 Mental Sufl^erings of our Lord in His Passion," 
 is another ever-memorable sermon of New- 
 man's Catholic pulpit, that has nothing at all 
 like it among his English Church sermons, 
 or only a sentence or two at most. "The 
 Motive of the Preacher," also " Paul's Gift 
 of Sympathy," and " The Religion of the 
 
Appreciation 1 1 3 
 
 Pharisee," may all be mentioned as sermons 
 full of Newman's later and more magnificent 
 manner ; full of his completely emancipated, if 
 somewhat overworked, power. And there is 
 sometimes, withal, a certain momentary return 
 to something like the kind of sermon that so 
 satisfied his mother in her son's pre-Tractarian 
 days. But that return does not long remain. 
 
 Newman's volume on Justification is to me 
 the most Newman-like of all his spoken work. 
 It gathers up into itself all his power, all his 
 beauty, all his virtues, and all his vices. What 
 English ! — I exclaim continually as I read it. 
 What iridescent, dazzling, elusive, charming 
 writing ! And, at the same time, how provok- 
 ing, and how intended to provoke ! Full of 
 that irony which he admits he was accustomed 
 to use to dull men, but always beautiful ; always 
 very beauty itself And absolutely invaluable 
 to the thorough-going divinity student ; for he 
 will find the greatest and best of all his pulpit 
 subjects here set before him in every possible 
 light. And he will find this also, that if there 
 are any loose links in his Evangelical doctrine 
 of justification by faith alone, he will find those 
 loose links detected and exposed in this book 
 with the most merciless satire, and with the 
 
114 Newman's Works 
 
 most matchless literary skill. So much so, that 
 he who holds to this supreme apostolic doctrine 
 after reading Newman, will hold it as he never 
 held it before. He will both understand, and 
 hold, and love, and preach, that doctrine of 
 doctrines as never before. And what more can 
 be said in favour of any book, true, half-true, 
 or wholly false ? From one point of view 
 Newman's Justification is an entirely dialectical 
 book ; again, it is an entirely mystical book ; 
 again, a most spiritual book ; and yet again, a 
 most sophistical and mischievous book. A per- 
 fect mirror of the nature and the working of its 
 author's many-sided, arbitrary, and anomalous 
 mind, especially when he is engaged in contro- 
 versy with Evangelical truth. How any man 
 of Newman's spirituality of mind, knowledge 
 of his own heart, and exquisiteness of insight 
 into the infinite holiness of God's law, could, in 
 any way, or at any time, or in any degree, stake 
 his standing before the judgment-seat of God, 
 on anything he could suffer, or perform, or 
 attain to, in this world, is a mystery and an 
 amazement to me, beyond what I can express. 
 Indeed, this is the supreme mystery of New- 
 man's mysterious mind to me. Had it been 
 almost any one else, I would have said that, 
 simply, the holy law of God had never really 
 
Appreciation 1 1 5 
 
 entered that man's heart who could write of sin 
 and the pardon of sin as Newman sometimes 
 writes. Again and again, he says things about 
 sin, at the reading of which I stand absolutely 
 astounded, — that Newman, of all men, should 
 say such things. Till I fall back on his self- 
 confessed way of speaking ironically, and in 
 raillery, even on the most solemn subjects ; 
 especially when he has Evangelical preaching 
 in his scornful eye. Also, the doctrinal system 
 to which he had surrendered himself has no 
 little to account for in its twist and perversion 
 of such a splendidly spiritual mind. " Know 
 ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves ser- 
 vants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye 
 obey." 
 
 Hooker is the greatest name in the English 
 Church. If the English Church has a master 
 in theology. Hooker is that universally acknowl- 
 edged master of the best English theology in 
 the best English prose. And this is his master- 
 piece passage on Justification. And a passage 
 in which he is absolutely at one with Paul and 
 Luther, even as all truly Evangelical preachers 
 are at one with him : — 
 
 " Christ hath merited righteousness 
 
 FOR AS MANY AS ARE FOUND IN HiM. AnD 
 
1 1 6 Newman's Works 
 
 IN Him God findeth us, if we be faithful ; 
 for by faith we are incorporated into 
 Him. Then, although we be in our- 
 selves ALTOGETHER SINFUL AND UNRIGHTE- 
 OUS, YET EVEN THE MAN WHO IS IN HIMSELF 
 IMPIOUS, FULL OF INIQUITY, FULL OF SIN ; 
 HIM BEING FOUND IN ChRIST THROUGH FAITH, 
 
 and having his sin in hatred through 
 repentance, him god beholdeth with a 
 gracious eye ; putteth away his sin by 
 not imputing it; taketh quite away the 
 punishment due thereunto, by pardoning 
 it; and accepteth him in Christ Jesus, 
 as perfectly righteous as if he had 
 fulfilled all that is commanded him in 
 the law ; shall i say more perfectly 
 righteous than if himself had fulfilled 
 the whole law ? i must take heed what 
 
 I SAY, BUT THE ApOSTLE SAITH, ^ GoD MADE 
 
 Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, 
 that we might be made the righteousness 
 OF God in Him/ Such we are in the sight 
 OF God the Father, as is the very Son of 
 God Himself. Let it be counted folly, 
 
 OR PHRENSY, OR FURY, OR WHATSOEVER. It 
 IS OUR WISDOM, AND OUR COMFORT I WE CARE 
 FOR NO KNOWLEDGE IN THE WORLD BUT THIS, 
 THAT MAN HATH SINNED, AND GoD HATH 
 
Appreciation 117 
 
 suffered: that God hath made Himself 
 
 THE SIN of men, AND THAT MEN ARE MADE 
 THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD." 
 
 Would that Newman had subscribed and 
 Stood to that, and had preached that in his own 
 best English ! 
 
 Newman's ostensibly controversial works 
 are a very treasure-house of good things to the 
 student who knows how to search for them. 
 The intricate man will never be fully under- 
 stood till his controversial works have been 
 consecutively and sympathetically explored. 
 There is no other writer whose controversial 
 works will prove so repaying to the student, 
 unless it is the still more repaying contro- 
 versial works of William Law. And Law 
 and Newman are alike in this, and are alone ^ 
 in this, that whatever be the immediate matter 
 in dispute, both these great writers give their 
 readers such rifts, and glimpses, and flashes, 
 into the highest truths, and bring those truths 
 to bear with such impressiveness on the matter 
 in hand. And they both display such a trained 
 and polished mind in their polemics, that their 
 controversial writings will remain English litera- 
 ture of a very high and a very rare order. One 
 great interest to us of Newman's polemical 
 
1 1 8 Newman's Works 
 
 writings lies in the continually fluid and mobile 
 state of his own mind ; while, all the time, he 
 is taking up the most fixed and the most final 
 attitude of mind toward the men and the 
 matters in debate. This also makes his con- 
 troversial works a study of himself to us ; how 
 his passions largely decide and fix his standing- 
 ground for the time ; and, then, how his im- 
 agination — and such an imagination ; and, then, 
 his argumentative talents — and such argumen- 
 tative talents — all come in to fortify, and to 
 defend, "and to make warlike and aggressive, 
 every present position of his. Dante boasts 
 somewhere that language has never led him to 
 say what he had not beforehand determined to 
 say. Now I question if Newman would have 
 been bold enough, at his boldest, to say that. 
 For, first his likes and dislikes, and then his 
 imagination, and then his self-seductive style — 
 we cannot shut our eyes as we see all these 
 things, completely sweeping Newman himself 
 away into utterances and attitudes he did not 
 intend, and almost sweeping us away with him. 
 With all that, if the student of Newman has 
 sufiicient patience, and temper, and taste for 
 letters, and a sufficient appreciation of the 
 gleams and glimpses of the loftiest truths that 
 are never long absent from anything that New- 
 
Appreciation 1 1 9 
 
 man writes, he will find his master's most sec- 
 tarian, and, at first sight, most unattractive- 
 looking, treatises full of illustrations of their 
 author's character ; full of the overflowing re- 
 sources of his mind ; and full of things the en- 
 riched student will never forget; however oc- 
 casional, and perhaps ephemeral, and even 
 worse, the character of the original controversy 
 in hand may be in itself. 
 
 It would be well worth any student of nat- 
 ural science to compare Newman and Darwin 
 in their Development books. Newman's cate- 
 gories are, to my mind, even more suggestive 
 and philosophical than Darwin's are, or those 
 of any of his successors. Newman's extraordi- 
 nary intellectual strength, originality, amazing 
 versatility, and inexhaustible resource of mind, 
 all come out in an entrancing way in this won- 
 derful, even if almost entirely baseless, book. 
 Reading the Development always makes me 
 wish that Newman had given his great gifts to 
 showing us how the doctrines of grace, as we 
 find them in Paul's Epistles, were elaborated 
 in the Apostle's mind. Under what impulses, 
 inspirations, sanctions, assistances, assurances, 
 the Apostle's mind worked, till the outcome 
 of it all is what it is, and will be to the end of 
 
I20 Newman's Works 
 
 Evangelical time. What a contribution, what 
 a Tract to all time, that would have been ! 
 Dr. Sanday has said that only Newman could 
 have written a Life of Jesus Christ to satisfy 
 us in our day. And I will add, only Newman 
 could have treated Paul, and his development 
 of doctrine, as Paul is still waiting to be treated. 
 Instead of that, — what a waste of labour ! 
 What a lost opportunity ! 
 
 Everybody has read Macaulay's Essays, and 
 Carlyle's Essays, but not one in a thousand 
 knows so much as the very existence of New- 
 man's Essays, his Historical Sketches, and his 
 Discussions and Arguments. Even to advertise 
 some of the contents of Newman's six splendid 
 volumes, and to call attention to some of the 
 rare intellectual workmanship contained in 
 those six volumes, is a service which any man 
 like myself may well be proud to perform. 
 His essay on " Aristotle's Poetics," his essay 
 on " John Davison," his essay on " John Ke- 
 ble," his 'Times articles on " The Tamworth 
 Reading-Room," his " Who's to blame for 
 the disasters of the Crimean War ? " his crit- 
 icism of Ecce Homo, his succession of papers on 
 T/ie Church of the Fathers, and his twenty 
 chapters on Universities, besides his many ec- 
 
Appreciation 121 
 
 clesiastical articles, — all make up a body of 
 literature of the very finest quality. The very 
 dedications, advertisements, and prefaces, are 
 well worth our study for their charming court- 
 esy and for their beauty of style. The adver- 
 tisement to l!he Church of the Fathers has been 
 well described as " a very gem, both of thought 
 and expression." The paragraphs on transla- 
 tion in that advertisement are simply canon- 
 ical to the classical scholar. The whole piece 
 is always to be read alongside of Matthew 
 Arnold's delightful little book on translating 
 Homer. Were Newman's Essay on Poetry, 
 or his Milman, or his Davison, or his Ecct 
 Homo, or his La Mennais, or his Tamworth 
 Letters, to appear in any periodical of our day, 
 every one would hail the entrance of a new 
 writer in the intellectual arena, soon to prove 
 himself to be the possessor of the clearest oif 
 eyes, the supplest of arms, and the noblest of 
 minds. So much so, that a young political or 
 literary aspirant could have no better advice 
 given to him than to study Newman's Essays 
 and Discussions night and day. For, let any 
 young man of real capacity once master New- 
 man's methods of exposition, discussion, and 
 argumentation ; his way of addressing himself 
 to the treatment of a subject ; his way of en- 
 
122 Newman's Works 
 
 tering upon a subject, worming his way to the 
 very heart of it, working it out, and winding 
 it up ; his exuberance of allusion, and yet every 
 word of it for illustration, and never one word 
 of it for mere embellishment ; and, withal, the 
 nobleness of his heart in all that he writes : any 
 new writer studying Newman's intellectual 
 workmanship would soon make his presence 
 and his power felt in any of our newspapers or 
 magazines. And let any theological student 
 read Davison's Remains, and his beautiful book 
 on Prophecy, and then go into Newman's re- 
 view of Davison, and a lifelong impression of 
 the best kind cannot fail to be made on that 
 student's mind. And then the splendid sketch 
 of University life in ancient Athens, — there is 
 nothing so brilliant anywhere else to be read ; 
 and that, again, will lead the reader up to the 
 universally-accepted masterpiece on that whole 
 subject, 'The Idea of a University ; the first 
 reading of which is always an epoch in every 
 university man's life. And that student of 
 letters who has not yet read the lecture on 
 " Literature," and that student of theology who 
 has not yet read the lecture on " Preaching," 
 have both a treat before them that I would 
 envy them for, were it not that the oftener I 
 read those two lectures I always enjoy them 
 
Appreciation 123 
 
 the more. For, how enlightening, how cap- 
 tivating, are those two or three pages in which 
 Newman takes Sterne's eulogium on the style 
 of Holy Scripture for a text, and then proceeds 
 to the vindication of the style of the classical 
 writers. Read attentively the lecture on " Lit- 
 erature,'* and if you are not simply captivated, 
 you need read no more in Newman. Read 
 his " University Preaching " ; and unless your 
 heart burns within you, you may depend upon 
 it you have mistaken your call to the Christian 
 pulpit. Those University papers, especially, 
 are yet another illustration of that liberating, 
 broadening out, and exuberating, of Newman's 
 mind which reveals itself in so many of his 
 Catholic compositions. If the Catholic Uni- 
 versity movement had left no other result than 
 those two brilliant volumes, not Ireland and 
 Rome only, but all the other Churches, and 
 English literature itself, would be the great and 
 lasting gainers. 
 
 As Coleridge would say. Let every theo- 
 logical student sell his bed and buy Newman's 
 Athanasius, The great antagonist of the Arians 
 was Newman's favourite Father, even more 
 than Augustine himself. Mr. Arthur Hutton 
 tells us that when Leo xiii. made sundry pro- 
 nouncements in favour of an almost exclusive 
 
124 Newman's Works 
 
 use of the writings of St. Thomas, and the 
 Cardinal was in duty bound to write to His 
 Holiness approving and praising his action, he 
 slipped in a saving clause, claiming that St. 
 Athanasius was doubtless included in the Papal 
 recommendation. Athanasius is always " the 
 great Athanasius " to Newman, and a page 
 could easily be filled with this and many other 
 epithets and titles of honour and admiration 
 that his translator and annotator has bestowed 
 upon his patristic master. But it is not so 
 much Athanasius^ with all his services, that I 
 wish all students to possess, as Newman's vol- 
 ume of Notes on the Select 'Treatises. The way 
 that Newman introduces his little articles — lit- 
 tle in bulk, but bullion itself in value — will 
 make every true student hunger to have them : 
 " I had hoped that this would be my least im- 
 perfect work, but I have done my best, bearing 
 in mind that I have no right to reckon on the 
 future." And this also : " These annotations 
 are written, pro re natdy capriciously, or, at 
 least, arbitrarily, with matter which the writer 
 happens to have at hand, or knows where to 
 find, and are composed in what may be called 
 an undress, conversational style ; and the excuse 
 for these defects is that they are mere append- 
 ages to the text, and ancillary to it." Do not 
 
Appreciation 125 
 
 believe him. Athanasius wrote in order to 
 give occasion to Newman to translate, and edit, 
 and annotate, his writings. Buy or beg New- 
 man's Annotations to the Select 'Treatises of 
 Athanasius. 
 
 No one can feel the full force of Newman's 
 great sermons on "The Incarnation,*' and on 
 " The Atoning Death of God the Son," who has 
 not gone with Newman behind the sermons and 
 up to the sources of the sermons in Athanasius, 
 and in Basil, and in Cyril. The greatest and the 
 most sure to be lasting of Newman's sermons 
 are just his rich Athanasian Christology poured 
 into the mould of his incomparable homiletic, 
 and delivered with all that overpowering solem- 
 nity to which all who ever heard those sermons 
 have testified. Such sermons would not have 
 been possible, even in Newman's pulpit, had it 
 not been that he was absolutely taken possession 
 of by the Apostolic and Athanasian Christology. 
 And this leads me to make an acknowledg- 
 ment to you that 1 have often made to myself 
 in reading Newman's more theological and 
 Christological sermons. Newman deserves this 
 acknowledgment and praise above all other ex- 
 positors of the Fathers and the great Creeds 
 that have ever spoken or written on those high 
 subjects. This acknowledgment and praise. 
 
126 Newman's Works 
 
 that what he so truly says of Hooker is in 
 every syllable of it still more true of himself: 
 " About Hooker there is the charm of nature 
 and reality. He discourses not as a theologian, 
 but as a man ; and we see in him what other- 
 wise might have been hidden — poetry and phi- 
 losophy informing his ecclesiastical matter." 
 Now, read Pearson, say, a master as he is, on 
 any article of the Apostle's Creed, especially 
 any article of his on the Divine Persons, and 
 then read a sermon of Newman's on the same 
 subject, and you will get a lesson in thinking 
 and in writing and in preaching in English that 
 you will never forget. Newman delivers all his 
 readers ever after from a cold, dry, notional, 
 technical, catechetical mind, he so makes every 
 article of the Creed a very fountain of life and 
 power and beauty. He so lifts up his own 
 superb imagination to its noblest use, that he 
 makes, first himself, and then makes us to see, 
 the Divine Persons, and their Divine relations 
 and operations, as never before. Till all our 
 Creeds and Confessions and Catechisms become 
 clothed with a majesty, and instinct with a 
 beauty, and welling over with personal applica- 
 tions and comforts, new, and unexpected, and 
 ever-abiding. His two grand sermons in his 
 sixth volume — " Christ the Son of God made 
 
Appreciation 127 
 
 Man '* and " The Incarnate Son a Sufferer and 
 a Sacrifice," may be pointed out as two spleif^""! 
 did illustrations of Newman's incomparable / 
 power of making the highest doctrines imagina- T 
 tively to abide with us, and to abide full of the \ 
 most homiletical and most home-coming expo--^ 
 sitions and applications. 
 
 As to Newman's two novels, — it goes with- 
 out saying that both Loss and Gain and Cal- 
 lista contain brilliant and memorable passages. 
 Callista^ especially, contains not a few pages 
 that are entirely classical. The description of 
 the scene where the work is laid ; the oft- 
 quoted locust-passages ; and the conversation 
 on Tartarus held between Caecilius and Cal- 
 lista, — a passage that William Law himself 
 might have written; and, I am not sure that 
 even Newman would ever have written those 
 masterly pages, unless William Law had written 
 on the same subject before him. As to the 
 trustworthiness of Callista, — when the critics 
 charge its author with violating historical truth, 
 and with the importation of Popish develop- 
 ments of doctrine and life into a third century 
 sketch, Newman frankly admits the charge. 
 Indeed, he cannot deny it. This is how he 
 defends himself from a similar charge in his . 
 
1 28 Newman's Works 
 
 advertisement to 'The Church of the Fathers : 
 "It is plain that as to the matter of these 
 Sketches, though mainly historical, they are in 
 their form and character polemical, as being 
 directed against certain Protestant ideas and 
 opinions. This consideration must plead for 
 certain peculiarities which it exhibits, such as 
 its freedom in dealing with saintly persons, the 
 gratuitous character of some of its assertions, 
 and the liberality of many of its concessions. 
 It must be recollected that, in controversy, a 
 writer grants all that he can afford to grant, 
 and avails himself of all that he can get granted ; 
 in other words, if he seems to admit, it is 
 mainly for argument's sake ; and if he seems to 
 assert, it is mainly as an argumentum ad hominem. 
 As to positive statements of his own, he com- 
 mits himself to as few as he can ; just as a soldier 
 on campaign takes no more baggage than is 
 enough, and considers the conveniences of home 
 life as only impediments in his march." As 
 long as Hippocleides can write in that way, 
 what chance has Charles Kingsley, or even the 
 truth itself, with Hippocleides ! Altogether, 
 Loss and Gain and Callista are not at all worthy 
 of their author's genius and character. He 
 should have been advised against reprinting 
 them. They might pass at the time of their 
 
Appreciation 129 
 
 composition for veiled polemical pamphlets, 
 but they can do no real and abiding good. 
 They certainly do not add to Newman's repu- 
 tation, either for literary ability, or for histori- 
 cal integrity, or for controversial fairness. I 
 never took to his two novels, and 1 do not 
 recommend you to read them, unless for the 
 light they throw on their author. But, then, 
 that light is not little. For, as Dr. Abbott 
 says, Loss and Gain and Callista are " the most 
 subjective of novels." 
 
 What Coleridge has said about Jeremy 
 Taylor's composition of his Apology is exact- 
 ly, and exquisitely, and prophetically, true of 
 Newman in the composition of his book of the 
 same name. " Taylor so again and again for- 
 gets that he is reasoning against an antagonist, 
 that he falls into conversation with him as a 
 friend — I might almost say into the literary 
 chitchat and unwithholding frankness of a rich 
 genius whose sands are seed-pearl." The Apolo- 
 gia pro vitd sua could not possibly be better 
 described. It is just a literary chitchat whose 
 sands are seed-pearl. For it is a chitchat rather 
 than a studied composition. That is, it has 
 been studied and studied, and written and re- 
 written, to such a finish that it reads to us like 
 
130 Newman's Works 
 
 chitchat, so perfect, so exquisite, is its art. And, 
 like Taylor*s very richest writing, Newman's 
 Apologia has all the charm of a rich genius 
 conversing confidingly with his most intimate 
 friends. I am not to attempt the praise of 
 the Apologia as English literature. I could fill 
 a volume as large as itself with its praises 
 by the acknowledged judges of good books. 
 They are all agreed as to the Apologia being the 
 brilliant crown of a brilliant series of literary 
 masterpieces. And, besides all that, as a piece 
 of polemic ; as the apology it was intended to 
 be ; it is as conclusive and unanswerable as it is 
 incomparable as a piece of English literature. 
 The Apologia carried the whole world captive in 
 a day. Never was there such a sudden and such 
 a complete reversal of men's judgments. It may 
 well stand on the title-page of the Apologia : 
 " Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in 
 Him, and He will do it. And He will bring 
 forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment 
 as the noonday." At the same time, like so 
 much of its author's work, it bears the stamp 
 of an occasion on its face, and no work of that 
 kind will ever become immortal. The immortal 
 Ecclesiastical Polity itself is preserved to all 
 time, in virtue of those books which are im- 
 bedded in it, and which do not properly belong 
 
Appreciation 131 
 
 to it. Those books, and chapters of books, 
 which rise above time, and all its polemic, and 
 belong to eternity. Even as an autobiography 
 the Apologia does not stand in the first rank. 
 ^be Confessions does, the Grace Abounding does, 
 'The Reliquia even, in many of its chapters, does. 
 Ay, even such homely books as Halyburton, 
 and Brea, and Boston, stand in the first rank to 
 us, because, even where their style may not be 
 the most classical, and even when those writers 
 are the most homely, their subject-matter is of 
 such transcendent and everlasting importance. 
 Newman's splendid vindication of his ecclesias- 
 tical honesty is of a high importance and a rare 
 relish to all his readers ; but there is a region 
 far higher than even that, and a region into 
 which his Apologia never once enters. It glances, 
 in passing, into that region of regions, but only 
 in passing. And, never really entering into 
 that inner and upper region, it has none of the 
 interest, and none of the perennial importance 
 and power, that many autobiographies have 
 which cannot for a moment compete with the 
 Apologia in literary charm. He would be a 
 bold man who would venture to correct New- 
 man's English, even in a jot or a tittle, else I 
 would propose to read " ecclesiastical " where 
 he has written "religious" on his title-page. 
 
I 3 2 Newman's Works 
 
 For the Apologia is really a history o^ his ec- 
 clesiastical opinions, and not at all of his re- 
 ligious opinions ; or it is a history of his re- 
 ligious opinions only so far as they bear upon 
 his ecclesiastical opinions, and upon his ever- 
 shifting ecclesiastical positions. There are, to 
 be sure, single entrancing sentences of experi- 
 mental religion in the Apologia^ but the bulk of 
 the book is in the region of ecclesiastical opinion, 
 and not always the highest region of that. " The 
 Apologia^' says Froude, " is the most beautiful 
 of autobiographies, but it tells us only how its 
 writer appeared to himself." And, I will add, 
 only how its writer appeared to himself from 
 time to time as a Churchman, which is a very 
 different thing from a man, a sinful man, and 
 a Christian man. I read, and read, and read 
 again, the Apologia^ but it always leaves me 
 where first it found me so many years ago. 
 Nobody enjoys the Apologia more than I 
 enjoy it, but I get nothing beyond intellectual, 
 and artistic, and emotional, enjoyment out of 
 it. I am not a stronger or a better man after 
 again reading the Apologia, It never sends me 
 back to the stern battle of my life with my har- 
 ness better fastened on, or to my pulpit with 
 any new sense of spiritual power. It affords 
 me amusement of the rarest and finest kind ; it 
 
Appreciation 133 
 
 gives me a high intellectual and artistic treat ; 
 but it does not dwell and work within my heart 
 as some other autobiographical books dwell 
 and work, that I am ashamed to name in such 
 classical company. But I must always remem- 
 ber what, exactly, the Apologia is, and what it 
 is not. It is not a religious book at all, but an 
 ecclesiastical. It is not a spiritual book at all, but 
 a dialectical. It is not a book of the very soul, 
 but of what is to be said as between this Church 
 and that. Its author does not say, like John 
 Bunyan, " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, 
 and I will declare what He hath done for my 
 soul " ; and, therefore, I must not expect what 
 he does not promise. And thus it is that I 
 never lay down the Apologia without finding 
 myself exclaiming, — Oh, that all that so cap- 
 tivating talent had been laid out on how New- 
 man, like Paul, won Christ so as to be found 
 in Him, instead of how he won his way to 
 Rome so as to be found in her. For, then, he 
 would have produced a book that would have 
 stood beside the two or three best books of 
 that kind in all the world. Then Newman*s 
 Apologia would have stood beside Bunyan's 
 Grace Abounding. And, then, I would have 
 sung " Lead, Kindly Light," with a liberty, 
 and with a sense of communion with its author. 
 
134 Newman's Works 
 
 that, by his Apologia^ he has completely taken 
 away from me. 
 
 In the Grammar of Assent, as Mr. Augustine 
 Birrell says, Newman strikes the shield of John 
 Locke, and it is not for me to venture in be- 
 tween such combatants. But I may be per- 
 mitted to say this, that the Grammar of Assent 
 has been a prime favourite of mine ever since 
 the year 1870, when it was first published. 
 There is more of the jargon of the schools in 
 ^he Grammar than in all Newman's other books 
 taken together. But, then, to make up for 
 that, there are many passages of a high and 
 noble eloquence that he has never surpassed. 
 This very able book, when stripped of its tech- 
 nicalities, is simply an amplification, in New- 
 man's perfect English, of the truth that it is 
 with the heart, and not with the head, that a 
 man believes unto salvation. And an amplifica- 
 tion of this kindred truth also, that if any man 
 will do the will of God, he shall know the 
 doctrine. And that in these ways his peace 
 shall be as a river. Only, to have made this 
 fine book fine to the end, it should have ended, 
 not with an assent to Rome, but to this rather, 
 that neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jeru- 
 salem, shall we worship the Father ; but they 
 
Appreciation 135 
 
 that worship Him must worship Him in spirit 
 and in truth. With all its defects, ne Gram- 
 mar is a great possession to the proper pos- 
 sessor. 
 
 ^he 'Dream of Gerontius was the true cope- 
 stone for Newman to cut and to lay on the 
 literary and religious work of his whole life. 
 Had Dante himself composed 'The Bream of 
 Gerontius as his elegy on the death of some be- 
 loved friend, it would have been universally 
 received as altogether worthy of his superb 
 genius, and it would have been a jewel alto- 
 gether worthy of his peerless crown. There is 
 nothing of its kind outside of the Purgatorio 
 and the Paradiso at all equal to the Gerontius 
 for solemnising, ennobling, and sanctifying 
 power. It is a poem that every man should 
 have by heart who has it before him to die. 
 
 All students of the English language give 
 their days and nights to the Authorised Version 
 of the Bible, to Shakespeare, to Hooker, to 
 Taylor, to Milton, to Bunyan, to Johnson, to 
 Swift, to Ruskin. But if they overlook New- 
 man, they will make a great mistake, and will 
 miss both thinking and writing of the very first 
 order. The strength, the richness, the pliability, 
 
136 Newman's Works 
 
 the acuteness, the subtlety, the spiritualness, 
 the beauty, the manifold resources of the Eng- 
 lish language, are all brought out under New- 
 man's hand, as under the hand of no other 
 English author. " Athanasius is a great writer," 
 says Newman, " simple in his diction, clear, 
 unstudied, direct, vigorous, elastic, and, above 
 all, characteristic." All of which I will repeat 
 of Newman himself, and especially this — he is 
 above all characteristic. If the English language 
 has an angel residing in it and presiding over it, 
 surely Newman is that angel. Or, at the least, 
 the angel who has the guardianship of the 
 English language committed to him, must 
 surely have handed his own pen to Newman 
 as often as that master has sat down to write 
 English. No other writer in the English 
 language has ever written it quite like Newman. 
 Every preface of his, every title-page of his, 
 every dedication and advertisement of his, every 
 footnote, every parenthesis of his, has a stamp 
 upon it that at once makes you say — that is 
 Newman ! He is simply inimitable. He is 
 simply alone as a writer, and has no fellow. 
 No wonder he says that the only master of 
 style he ever had was Cicero. And Cicero had 
 a good scholar in Newman, if the scholar is 
 correct in his description of his master. " This 
 
Appreciation 1 37 
 
 is the great art of Cicero himself, who, whether 
 he is engaged in statement, argument, or raillery, 
 never ceases till he has exhausted the subject ; 
 going round about it and placing it in every 
 different light, yet without repetition to offend 
 or weary the reader." Altogether, Newman's 
 is a shelf of some thirty-eight volumes, all^ 
 opulent with ideas, all instinct with spirituahty, 
 all resplendent with beauty, and all enriching 
 and fertilising to the mind of their proper 
 reader ; with all their drawbacks, a noble inheri- 
 tance to their true heir. And now, in bringing 
 this very imperfect appreciation of Newman to 
 a close, I think I can say with a good conscience, 
 that I have done my best to speak to you about 
 this great man and rich writer on PauFs great 
 principle of believing all things, hoping all 
 things, enduring all things, and always rejoicing 
 in the truth. And on Shakespeare's great 
 principle ; for I have not knowingly extenuated 
 anything, and it was simply impossible for me 
 to set down aught in malice. And on Bengel's 
 great principle, not to judge without knowledge, 
 nor without necessity, nor without love : Sine 
 scientia, sine necessitate^ sine amove. 
 
NEWMAN'S CHOICEST PASSAGES 
 
NEWMAN'S CHOICEST PASSAGES 
 
 ON GOD 
 
 There is one God, such and such in Nature 
 and Attributes. I say " such and such," for, 
 unless I explain what I mean by " one God," 
 I use words which may mean anything or 
 nothing. I may mean a mere anima mundi ; 
 or an initial principle which once was in action 
 and now is not ; or collective humanity. I 
 speak then of the God of the Theist and the 
 Christian ; a God who is numerically One, who 
 is Personal ; the Author, Sustainer, and Finisher 
 of all things, the Life of Law and Order, the 
 Moral Governor ; One who is Supreme and 
 Sole ; like Himself, unHke all things beside 
 Himself, which all are but His creatures ; dis- 
 tinct from, independent of them all ; One who 
 is self-existing, absolutely infinite, who has 
 ever been and will be, to whom nothing is 
 past or future ; who is all perfection, and the 
 fulness and archetype of every possible ex- 
 cellence, the Truth Itself, Wisdom, Love, 
 141 
 
142 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 Justice, Holiness ; One who is All-powerful, 
 All-knowing, Omnipresent, Incomprehensible. 
 These are some of the distinctive prerogatives 
 which I ascribe, unconditionally and unre- 
 servedly, to the Great Being whom I call God. 
 — Grammar of Assent ^ chap. v. 
 
 ON GOD THE SON 
 
 And here we are brought to the second 
 
 point of doctrine which it is necessary to insist 
 
 upon, that while our Lord is God He is also 
 
 the Son of God, or rather, that He is God 
 
 because He is the Son of God. We are apt, 
 
 at first hearing, to say that He is God though 
 
 He is the Son of God, marvelling at the 
 
 mystery. But what to man is a mystery, to 
 
 God is a cause. He is God, not though^ but 
 
 C because He is the Son of God. " That which 
 
 'Sis born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born 
 
 /of the Spirit is spirit," and that which is be- 
 
 V^^otten of God is God. I do not say that we 
 
 could presume thus to reason for ourselves, 
 
 r but Scripture draws the conclusion for us. 
 
 Christ tells us Himself, " As the Father hath 
 
 'life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son 
 
 ( to have life in Himself** And St. Paul says, 
 
 that He is " the brightness of God's glory, and 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 143 
 
 the express Image of His Person." And thus, 
 though we could not presume to reason of 
 ourselves that He that is begotten of God is 
 God, as if it became us to reason at all about 
 such ineffable things, yet, by the light of 
 Scripture, we may. And after all, if the truth 
 must be said, it is surely not so marvellous 
 and mysterious that the Son of God should be 
 God, as that there should be a Son of God at 
 all. It is as little level to natural reason that 
 God should have a Son, as that, if there be 
 a Son, He must be God because He is the 
 Son. Both are mysteries ; and if we admit 
 with Scripture that there be an Only-begotten 
 Son, it is even less to admit, what Scripture 
 also teaches, that that Only-begotten Son is 
 God because He is Only-begotten. And this 
 is what makes the doctrine of our Lord's 
 Eternal Sonship of such supreme importance, 
 viz. that He is God because He is begotten 
 of God ; and they who give up the latter truth 
 are in the way to give up, or will be found 
 already to have given up, the former. The 
 great safeguard to the doctrine of our Lord's 
 Divinity is the doctrine of His Sonship ; we 
 realise that He is God only when we acknowl- 
 edge Him to be by nature and from eternity 
 Son. 
 
144 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 Nay, our Lord's Sonship is not only the 
 guarantee to us of His Godhead, but also the 
 antecedent of His Incarnation. As the Son 
 was God, so, on the other hand, was the Son 
 suitably made man ; it belonged to Him to 
 have the Father^s perfections, it became Him 
 to assume a servant's form. We must beware 
 of supposing that the Persons of the Ever- 
 blessed and All-holy Trinity differ from each 
 other only in this, that the Father is not the 
 Son, and the Son is not the Father. They 
 differ in this besides, that the Father is the 
 Father, and the Son is the Son. While they 
 are one in substance, each has distinct charac- 
 teristics which the other has not. Surery^;^liiQSS 
 sacred names have a meaning in Tliem, and 
 rnusl"not lightly be passed over. And they 
 will be found, if we reverently study them, to 
 supply a very merciful use towards our under- 
 standing Scripture ; for we shall see a fitness, 
 J. say, now that that sacred truth is revealed, 
 ^hl^the Son of God taking flesh, and w^ shall 
 thereby understand better what He says of 
 Himself in the Gospels. The Son of God 
 became the Son a second time, though not 
 a second Son, by becoming man. He was a 
 Son both before His Incarnation and, by a 
 second mystery, after it. From eternity He 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 145 
 
 had been the Only-begotten in the bosom of 
 the Father ;. and when He came on earth, this 
 essential relation to the Father remained un- 
 altered ; still. He was a Son, when in the form 
 of a servant, — still performing the will of the 
 Father, as His Father's Word and Wisdom, 
 manifesting His glory and accomplishing His 
 purposes. 
 
 I shall mention a fourth and last point in 
 this great mystery. I have said that our High 
 Priest and Saviour, the Son of God, when He 
 took our nature upon Him, acted through it, 
 without ceasing to be what He was before, 
 making it but the instrument of His gracious 
 purposes. But it must not be supposed, be- 
 cause it was an instrument, or because in the 
 text it is called a tabernacle, that therefore it 
 was not intimately one with Him, or that it 
 was merely like what is commonly meant by 
 a tabernacle which a man dwells in, and may 
 come in and out of; or like an instrument, 
 which a man takes up and lays down. Far 
 from it; though His Divine Nature was 
 sovereign and supreme when He became in- 
 carnate, yet the Manhood which He assumed 
 was not kept at a distance from Him (if I 
 may so speak) as a mere instrument, or put 
 on as a mere garment, or entered as a mere 
 
146 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 tabernacle, but it was really taken into the 
 closest and most ineffable union with Him. 
 He received it into His Divine Essence (if we 
 may dare so to speak) almost as a new attri- 
 bute of His Person ; of course, I speak by way 
 of analogy, but I mean as simply and indissolu- 
 bly. Let us consider what is meant by God's 
 justice, or mercy, or wisdom, and we shall per- 
 haps have some glimpse of the meaning of the 
 inspired writers, when they speak of the Son's 
 Incarnation. If we said that the Son of God 
 is just or merciful, we should mean that these 
 are attributes which attach to all He is or was. 
 Whatever He says, whatever He designs, what- 
 ever He works, He is just and loving, when He 
 thus says, designs, or works. There never was 
 a moment, there never was an act or provi- 
 dence, in which God wrought, without His 
 being just and loving, even though both at- 
 tributes may not be exercised at once in the 
 same act. In somewhat the same way the 
 Son of God is man ; all that is necessary to 
 constitute a perfect manhood is attached to 
 His eternal Person absolutely and entirely, 
 belonging to Him as really and fully as His 
 justice, truth, or power ; so that it would be 
 as unmeaning to speak of dividing one of 
 His attributes from Him as to separate from 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 147 
 
 Him His manhood. — Parochial and Plain 
 Sermons^ vol. vi. sermon vr"^ ' ~" " 
 
 ON THE WORD 
 
 He is a Being who, though the Highest, yet 
 in the work of creation, conservation, govern- 
 ment, retribution, makes Himself, as it were, 
 the minister and servant of all ; who, though 
 inhabiting eternity, allows Himself to take an 
 interest, and to have a sympathy, in the matters 
 of time and space. His are all beings, visi- 
 ble and invisible, the noblest and the vilest of 
 them. His are the substance, and the opera- 
 tion, and the results of that system of physical 
 nature into which we are born. His, too, are 
 the achievements of the intellectual essences on 
 which He has bestowed an independent action 
 and the gift of origination. The laws of the 
 universe, the principles of truth, the relation of 
 one thing to another, their qualities and virt- 
 ues, the order and harmony of the whole, all 
 that exists, is from Him ; and if evil is not 
 from Him, as assuredly it is not, this is because 
 evil has no substance of its own, but is only 
 defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that 
 which has substance. All we see, hear, and 
 touch, the remote sidereal firmament, as well as 
 
148 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 our own sea and land, and the elements which 
 compose them, and the ordinances they obey, 
 are His. The primary atoms of matter, their 
 properties, their mutual action, their disposition 
 and collocation, electricity, magnetism, gravita- 
 tion, light, and whatever other subtle principles 
 or operations the wit of man is detecting or 
 shall detect, are the work of His hands. From 
 Him has been every movement which has con- 
 vulsed and refashioned the surface of the earth. 
 The most insignificant or unsightly insect is 
 from Him, and good in its kind ; the ever- 
 teeming, inexhaustible swarms of animalculae, 
 the myriads of living motes invisible to the 
 naked eye, the restless, ever-spreading vegeta- 
 tion which creeps like a garment over the whole 
 earth, the lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, 
 are His. His are the tribes and families of 
 birds and beasts, their graceful forms, their wild 
 gestures, and their passionate cries. 
 
 And so is the intellectual, moral, social, and 
 political world. Man, with his motives and 
 works, his languages, his propagation, his dif- 
 fusion, is from Him. Agriculture, medicine, 
 and the arts of life, are His gifts. Society, 
 laws, government. He is their sanction. The 
 pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance 
 and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 149 
 
 and civilisation, commerce and adventure, wars 
 when just, conquests when humane and neces- 
 sary, have His co-operation and His blessing 
 upon them. The course of events, the revolu- 
 tion of empires, the rise and fall of states, the 
 periods and eras, the progress and the retro- 
 gression of the world's history, not indeed the 
 incidental sin, ever-abundant as it is, but the 
 great outlines and the results of human affairs, 
 are from His disposition. The elements and 
 types and seminal principles and constructive 
 powers of the moral world, in ruins though it 
 be, are to be referred to Him. " He enlight- 
 eneth every man that cometh into the world." 
 His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the 
 retributive reproaches of conscience. To Him 
 must be ascribed the rich endowments of the 
 intellect, the irradiation of genius, the imagina- 
 tion of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, 
 the wisdom (as Scripture calls it) which now 
 decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in 
 proverb or in parable. The old saws of na- 
 tions, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the 
 luminous maxims of law, the oracles of indi- 
 vidual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, 
 justice, and religion, even thoughts imbedded 
 in the corruption, or alloyed with the pride, of 
 the world, betoken His original agency and 
 
150 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 His longsuffering presence. Even when there 
 is habitual rebellion against Him, or profound 
 far-spreadingj social depravity, still the under- 
 current, or the heroic outburst, of natural virt- 
 ue, as well as the yearnings of the heart after 
 what is not, and the presentiment of its true 
 remedies, are to be ascribed to the Author of 
 all good. Anticipations or reminiscences of 
 His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient 
 sage and of the pagan devotee ; His writing 
 is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, 
 or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces 
 Himself, He all but concurs, according to His 
 good pleasure, and in His selected season, in 
 the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false 
 worship, and He changes the character of acts 
 by His overruling operation. He conde- 
 scends, though he gives no sanction, to the 
 altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes 
 His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. 
 He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, 
 raises SamueFs spirit in the witch's cavern, 
 prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the 
 Sibyl, forces Python to recognise His minis- 
 ters, and baptizes by the hand of the misbe- 
 liever. He is with the heathen dramatist in 
 his denunciations of injustice and tyranny and 
 his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 151 
 
 Even on the unseemly legends of a popular 
 mythology He casts His shadow, and is dimly 
 discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled 
 water or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, 
 all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is 
 beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or 
 fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, 
 moral as well as material, comes from Him. — 
 Idea of a University ^ Discourse iii. 
 
 ON THE INFINITE 
 
 What, in fact, do we know of pure spirit ? 
 What do we know of the infinite ? Of the 
 latter just a little, by means of mathematical 
 science, that is, under the conditions of number, 
 quantity, space, distance, direction, and shape ; 
 just enough to tell us how little we know, and 
 how little we are able to draw arguments and 
 inferences when infinites are in question. 
 Mathematical science tells us that one and one 
 infinite do not, put together, make two ; that 
 there may be innumerable infinites, and that 
 all put together are not greater than one of 
 them ; that there are orders of infinites. It is 
 plain we are utterly unable to determine what 
 is possible and what is impossible in this high 
 region of realities. And then, again, in the 
 
152 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 case of infinitesimals, do not three lines become 
 one line when one is placed upon another ? 
 Yet how can we say, supposing them respec- 
 tively coloured white, red, and blue, that they 
 would not remain three, after they had 
 coalesced into one, as they were really three 
 before ? 
 
 Nor in its doctrine of infinites only does 
 mathematical science illustrate the mysteries of 
 theology. Geometry, for instance, may be used 
 to a certain point as an exponent of algebraical 
 truth ; but it would be irrational to deny the 
 wider revelations of algebra, because they do 
 not admit of a geometrical expression. The 
 fourth power of a quantity may be received as a 
 fact, though a fourth dimension in space is in- 
 conceivable. Again, a polygon or an ellipse is 
 a figure different in kind from a circle ; yet we 
 may tend towards a conception of the latter by 
 using what we know of either of the former. 
 Thus it is by economical expedients that we 
 teach and transmit the mysteries of religion, 
 separating them into parts, viewing them in 
 aspects, adumbrating them by analogies, and so 
 approximating to them by means of words 
 which say too much or too little. And if we 
 consent to such ways of thought in our scien- 
 tific treatment of " earthly things," is it wonder- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 153 
 
 fill that we should be forced to them in our 
 investigation of " heavenly " ? — Athanasius^ 11. 
 Art. 'The Holy Trinity in Unity, 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE ECONOMY 
 
 The word Economy occurs in St. PauFs 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, where it is used for 
 that series of divine appointments viewed as a 
 whole, by which the Gospel is introduced and 
 realised among mankind, being translated in 
 our version dispensation. It will evidently bear 
 a wider sense, embracing the Jewish and patri- 
 archal dispensations, or any divine procedure, 
 greater or less, which consists of means and 
 an end. Thus it is applied by the Fathers to 
 the history of Christ's humiliation, as exhibit- 
 ed in the doctrines of His incarnation, minis- 
 try, atonement, exaltation, and mediatorial sov- 
 ereignty, and as such distinguished from the 
 Theologia or the collection of truths relative to 
 His personal indwelling in the bosom of God. 
 Again, it might with equal fitness be used for 
 the general system of providence by which the 
 world's course is carried on ; or, again, for the 
 work of creation itself, as opposed to the abso- 
 lute perfection of the Eternal God, that internal 
 concentration of His Attributes in self-contem- 
 
154 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 plation, which took place on the seventh day, 
 when He rested from all the work which He 
 had made. And since this everlasting and un- 
 changeable quiescence is the simplest and truest 
 notion we can obtain of the Deity, it seems to 
 follow that, strictly speaking, all those so-called 
 economies or dispensations, which display His 
 character in action, are but condescensions to 
 the infirmity and peculiarity of our minds, 
 shadowy representations of realities, which are 
 incomprehensible to creatures such as ourselves, 
 who estimate everything by the rule of associa- 
 tion and arrangement, by the notion of a pur- 
 pose and plan, object and means, parts and 
 whole. What, for instance, is the revelation of 
 general moral laws, their infringement, their 
 tedious victory, the endurance of the wicked, 
 and the " winking at the times of ignorance," 
 but an Economia of greater truths untold, the 
 best practical communication of them which 
 our minds in their present state will admit? 
 Accordingly, we may safely admit the first 
 chapter of the Book of Job, the twenty-second 
 of the First Book of Kings, and other passages 
 of Scripture to be Economies, that is, represen- 
 tations conveying substantial truth in the form 
 in which we are best able to receive it ; and to 
 be accepted by us and used in their literal sense. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 155 
 
 as our highest wisdom, because we have no 
 powers of mind equal to the more philosophical 
 determination of them. Again, the Mosaic 
 Dispensation was an Economy, simulating (so 
 to say) unchangeableness when from the first it 
 was destined to be abolished. And our Blessed 
 Lord's conduct on earth abounds with the like 
 gracious and considerate condescension to the 
 weakness of His creatures, who would have 
 been driven either to a terrified inaction or to 
 presumption, had they known then, as after- 
 wards, the secret of His Divine Nature. — '^he 
 Ariansy i. iii. 
 
 By " Economical " I mean language relating 
 to matters beyond the direct apprehension of 
 those to whom it is addressed ; and which, in 
 order to have a chance of conveying to them 
 any idea, however faint, of the fact, must be 
 more or less of an analogous or figurative char- 
 acter, as viewed relatively to the truths which 
 it professes to report, instead of a direct and 
 literal statement of the things which have to be 
 conveyed. Thus a child's idea of a king is 
 that of a man richly dressed with a crown and 
 sceptre, sitting on a throne ; thus an attempt 
 might be made to convey to a blind man the 
 character of scarlet contrasted with other col- 
 ours by telling him that it is like the sound 
 
156 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 of a trumpet ; thus, since none of us can imag- 
 ine to ourselves a spirit and its properties, it 
 is a received economy to speak of our Lord 
 as sitting on the right hand of God, as if right 
 and left were possible in Him ; and, indeed, 
 Scripture is necessarily full of economies when 
 speaking of heavenly things, because there is 
 no other way of introducing into our minds 
 even a rude idea, even any idea at all, of mat- 
 ters so utterly out of our experience. — Athana- 
 
 siuSy II. 
 
 ON THE WORD PERSON 
 
 The word Person requires the rejection of 
 various popular senses, and a careful definition, 
 before it can serve for philosophical uses. We 
 sometimes use it for an individual as contrasted 
 with a class or multitude, as when we speak of 
 having " personal objections to another " ; 
 sometimes for the body^ in contrast to the soul, 
 as when we speak of " beauty of person." We 
 sometimes use it in the abstract, as when we 
 speak of another as " insignificant in person " ; 
 sometimes in the concrete, as when we call him 
 " an insignificant person." How divergent in 
 meaning are the derivatives, personable^ person- 
 alities, personify, personation, personage, parson- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 157 
 
 age ! This variety arises partly from our own 
 carelessness, partly from the necessary develop- 
 ments of language, partly from the exuber- 
 ance of human thought, partly from the de- 
 fects of our vernacular tongue. 
 
 Language then requires to be refashioned 
 even for sciences which are based on the senses 
 and the reason ; but much more will this be 
 the case, when we are concerned with subject- 
 matters, of which, in our present state, we can- 
 not possibly form any complete or consistent 
 conception, such as the Catholic doctrines of 
 the Trinity and Incarnation. Since they are 
 from the nature of the case above our intel- 
 lectual reach, and were unknown till the preach- 
 ing of Christianity, they required on their first 
 promulgation new words, or words used in new 
 senses, for their due enunciation. And, since 
 these were not definitely supplied by Scripture 
 or by tradition, nor for centuries by ecclesiasti- 
 cal authority, variety in the use, and confusion 
 in the apprehension of them, were unavoidable 
 in the interval. This conclusion is necessary, 
 admitting the premisses, antecedently to par- 
 ticular instances in proof. 
 
 Moreover, there is a presumption equally 
 strong, that the variety and confusion which I 
 have anticipated, would in matter of fact issue 
 
158 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 here or there in actual heterodoxy, as often as 
 the language of theologians was misunderstood 
 by hearers or readers, and deductions were 
 made from it which the teacher did not intend. 
 Thus, for instance, the word Person^ used in 
 the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, would on 
 first hearing suggest Tritheism to one who 
 made the word synonymous with individual; 
 and Unitarianism to another, who accepted 
 it in the classical sense of a mask or character. 
 
 Even to this day our theological language is 
 wanting in accuracy ; thus, we sometimes speak 
 of the controversies concerning the Person of 
 Christ, when we mean to include in them those 
 also which belong to the two natures which are 
 predicated of Him. — T^he Arians, Fourth Edi- 
 tion, Appendix, Note iv. 
 
 ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 In what way inspiration is compatible with 
 that personal agency on the part of its instru- 
 ments, which the composition of the Bible 
 evidences, we know not ; but if anything is cer- 
 tain, it is this — that though the Bible is in- 
 spired, and therefore, in one sense, written by 
 God, yet very large portions of it, if not far 
 the greater part of it, are written in a free and 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 159 
 
 unconstrained manner, and (apparently) with as 
 little consciousness of a supernatural dictation 
 or restraint, on the part of His earthly instru- 
 ments, as if He had no share in the work. 
 As God rules the will, yet the will is free — as 
 He rules the course of the world, yet men 
 conduct it — so He has inspired the Bible, yet 
 men have written it. Whatever else is true 
 about it, this is true — that we may speak of 
 the history or mode of its composition, as truly 
 as of that of other books ; we may speak of its 
 writers having an object in view, being influ- 
 enced by circumstances, being anxious, taking 
 pains, purposely omitting or introducing things, 
 leaving things incomplete, or supplying what 
 others had so left. Though the Bible be in- 
 spired, it has all such characteristics of dialect 
 and style, the distinct effects of times and 
 places, youth and age, of moral and intellect- 
 ual character ; and I insist on this, lest in 
 what I am going to say I seem to forget (what 
 I do not forget), that in spite of its human 
 form, it has in it the spirit and the mind of 
 God. 
 
 I observe, then, that Scripture is not one 
 book ; it is a great number of writings, of 
 various persons, living at different times, put 
 together into one, and assuming its existing 
 
i6o Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 form as if casually and by accident. It is as 
 if you were to seize the papers or correspond- 
 ence of leading men in any school of philoso- 
 phy or science, which were never designed 
 for publication, and bring them out in one 
 volume. You would find probably in the 
 collection so resulting many papers begun and 
 not finished ; some parts systematic and didactic, 
 but the greater part made up of hints or of 
 notices, which assumed first principles instead 
 of asserting them, or of discussions upon par- 
 ticular points which appeared to require their 
 attention. I say that the doctrines, the first 
 principles, the rules, the objects of the school, 
 would be taken for granted, alluded to, implied, 
 not stated. You would have some trouble to 
 get at them ; you would have many repeti- 
 tions, many hiatuses, many things which looked 
 like contradictions ; you would have to work 
 your way through heterogeneous materials, and 
 after your best efforts, there would be much 
 hopelessly obscure ; or, on the other hand, you 
 might look in vain in such a casual collection 
 for some particular opinion which the writer 
 was known nevertheless to have held, nay, to 
 have insisted on. 
 
 Such, I conceive, is the structure of the 
 Bible. — 'Tract Ixxxv. p. 30. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages i6i 
 
 ON CONSCIENCE 
 
 What is the main guide of the soul, given 
 to the whole race of Adam, outside the true 
 fold of Christ as well as within it, given from 
 the first dawn of reason, given to it in spite of 
 that grievous penalty of ignorance which is 
 one of the chief miseries of our fallen state ? 
 It is the light of conscience, "the true Light," 
 as the same Evangelist says in the same pas- 
 sage, " which lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world." Whether a man be born 
 in pagan darkness, or in some corruption of 
 revealed religion ; whether he has heard the 
 Name of the Saviour of the world or not; 
 whether he be the slave of some superstition, 
 oris in possession of some portions of Scripture, 
 in any case, he has within his breast a certain 
 commanding dictate, not a mere sentiment, not 
 a mere opinion, or impression, or view of things, 
 but a law, an authoritative voice, bidding him do 
 certain things and avoid others. It is more 
 than a man's self The man himself has not 
 power over it, or only with extreme difficulty ; 
 he did not make it, he cannot destroy it. He 
 may silence it in particular cases or directions ; 
 he may distort its enunciations ; but he cannot 
 — or it is quite the exception if he can — he 
 
1 62 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 cannot emancipate himself from it. He can 
 disobey it, he may refuse to use it; but it 
 remains. 
 
 This is conscience ; and, from the nature 
 of the case, its very existence carries on our 
 minds to a Being exterior to ourselves ; else, 
 whence its strange, troublesome peremptori- 
 ness ? I say its very existence throws us out 
 of ourselves, and beyond ourselves, to go and 
 seek for Him in the height and depth, whose 
 voice it is. As the sunshine implies that the 
 sun is in the heavens, though we may see it 
 not ; as a knocking at our doors at night implies 
 the presence of one outside in the dark who 
 asks for admittance, so this Word within us 
 necessarily raises our minds to the idea of a 
 Teacher, an unseen Teacher. And thus it is, 
 that to those who use what they have, more is 
 given. At the same time, the more a person 
 tries to obey his conscience, the more he gets 
 alarmed at himself for obeying it so im- 
 perfectly. His sense of duty will become 
 more keen, and his perception of transgression 
 more delicate ; and he will understand more and 
 more how many things he has to be forgiven. 
 And the voice of conscience has nothing gentle, 
 nothing of mercy in its tone. It is severe, 
 and even stern. It does not speak of for- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 163 
 
 giveness, but of punishment. It suggests to 
 the sinner a future judgment ; it does not tell 
 him how he can avoid it. Moreover, it does 
 not tell him how he is to get better ; he feels 
 himself very sinful at the best; he feels himself 
 in bondage to a tyranny which, alas ! he loves 
 too well, even while he hates it. And then 
 he is in great anguish, and cries out in the 
 Apostle's words, " Unhappy man that I am, 
 who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death ? " — Sermons, Various, v. 
 
 Conscience suggests to us many things about 
 that Master, whom by means of it we conceive, 
 but its most prominent teaching, and its cardi- 
 nal and distinguishing truth is that He is our 
 Judge. In consequence, the special Attribute 
 under which it brings Him before us, to which 
 it subordinates all other Attributes, is that of 
 justice, retributive justice. We learn from its 
 information to conceive of the Almighty, pri- 
 marily, not as a God of wisdom, of knowledge, 
 of power, of benevolence, but as a God of jus- 
 tice and of judgment ; as one who ordains that 
 the offender shall suffer for his offence. Hence 
 its effect is to burden and sadden the religious 
 mind, and is in contrast with the enjoyment 
 derivable from the exercise of the affections, 
 and from the perception of beauty, whether in 
 
164 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 the material universe, or in the creations of 
 the intellect. This is that fearful antagonism 
 brought out, with such soul-piercing reality, by 
 Lucretius, when he speaks so dishonourably of 
 what he considers the heavy yoke of religion, 
 and the aternas fcenas in morte timendum^ and, 
 on the other hand, rejoices in his Alma VenuSy 
 qua rerum naturam sola gubernas. And we may 
 appeal to him for the fact, while we repudiate 
 his view of the fact. — Grammar , chap. x. 
 
 The rule and measure of duty is not utility, 
 nor expedience, nor the happiness of the great- 
 est number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, 
 order, and the pulcbrum. Conscience is not a 
 long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be con- 
 sistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from 
 Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks 
 to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us 
 by His representatives. Conscience is the abo- 
 riginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its in- 
 formations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a 
 priest in its blessings and anathemas ; and even 
 though the eternal priesthood throughout the 
 Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal 
 principle would remain, and would have a 
 sway. — Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 165 
 
 ON FEAR AND LOVE 
 
 In heaven, love will absorb fear ; but in this 
 world, /^^r and love must go together. No one 
 can love God aright without fearing Him ; 
 though many fear Him, and yet do not love 
 Him. Self-confident men, who do not know 
 their own hearts, or the reasons they have for 
 being dissatisfied with themselves, do not fear 
 God, and they think this bold freedom is to 
 love Him. Deliberate sinners fear but cannot 
 love Him. But devotion to Him consists in 
 love and fear, as we may understand from our 
 ordinary attachment to each other. No one 
 really loves another who does not feel a certain 
 reverence towards him. When friends trans- 
 gress this sobriety of affection, they may indeed 
 continue associates for a time, but they have 
 broken the bond of union. It is a mutual re- 
 spect which makes friendship lasting. So again, 
 in the feelings of inferiors towards superiors. 
 Fear must go before love. Till he who has 
 authority shows he has it and can use it, his 
 forbearance will not be valued duly ; his kind- 
 ness will look like weakness. We learn to 
 contemn what we do not fear ; and we cannot 
 love what we contemn. So in religion also. 
 We cannot understand Christ's mercies till we 
 
1 66 Newman*s Choicest Passages 
 
 understand His power, His glory. His un- 
 speakable holiness, and our demerits ; that is, 
 until we first fear Him. Not that fear comes 
 first, and then love ; for the most part they will 
 proceed together. Fear is allayed by the love 
 of Him, and our love is sobered by our fear of 
 Him. — Sermons, vol. i. pp. 303, 304. 
 
 ON MAN 
 
 O Lord, how wonderful in depth and height. 
 But most in man, how wonderful Thou art ! 
 
 With what a love, what soft persuasive might 
 Victorious o*er the stubborn fleshly heart, 
 
 Thy tale complete of saints Thou dost provide, 
 
 To fill the throne which angels lost through 
 pride ! 
 
 He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground. 
 Polluted in the blood of his first sire. 
 
 With his whole essence shattered and unsound. 
 And coil'd around his heart a demon dire. 
 
 Which was not of his nature, but had skill 
 
 To bind and form his opening mind to ill. 
 
 Then was I sent from heaven to set right 
 The balance in his soul of truth and sin. 
 
 And 1 have waged a long relentless fight. 
 Resolved that death-environ*d spirit to win. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 167 
 
 Which from its fallen state, when all was lost. 
 Had been repurchased at so dread a cost. 
 
 Oh, what a shifting parti-colour'd scene 
 Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay. 
 
 Of recklessness and penitence, has been 
 The history of that dreary, life-long fray ! 
 
 And oh, the grace to nerve him and to lead. 
 
 How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need ! 
 
 O man, strange composite of heaven and earth. 
 Majesty dwarf 'd to baseness, fragrant flower 
 Running to poisonous seed ! and seeming worth 
 Cloaking corruption ! weakness mastering 
 power ! 
 Who never art so near to crime and shame 
 As when thou hast achieved some deed of 
 name. — 
 
 How should ethereal natures comprehend 
 
 A thing made up of spirit and of clay. 
 Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend, 
 Link'd one to one throughout its mortal 
 day? 
 More than the Seraph in his height of place. 
 The Angel-guardian knows and loves the 
 ransom'd race. 
 
 Dream of Gerontius, 
 
1 68 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 ON THE WORLD OF MEN 
 
 Starting then with the being of a God 
 (which, as I have said, is as certain to me as 
 the certainty of my own existence, though 
 when I try to put the grounds of that cer- 
 tainty into a logical shape, I find a difficulty in 
 doing so in mood and figure to my satisfaction), 
 I look out of myself into the world of men, 
 and there I see a sight which fills me with 
 unspeakable distress. The world seems simply 
 to give the lie to that great truth, of which 
 my whole being is so full ; and the eflFect upon 
 me is, in consequence, as a matter of neces- 
 sity, as confusing as if it denied that I am in 
 existence myself. If I looked into a mirror, 
 and did not see my face, I should have the sort 
 of feeling which actually comes upon me, when 
 I look into this living busy world, and see no 
 reflection of its Creator. This is, to me, one of 
 those great difficulties of this absolute primary 
 truth, to which I referred just now. Were it 
 not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my 
 conscience and my heart, I should be an 
 atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, when I 
 looked into the world. I am speaking of my- 
 self only ; and I am far from denying the real 
 force of the arguments in proof of a God, 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 169 
 
 drawn from the general facts of human society, 
 and the course of history, but these do not 
 warm me or enlighten me ; they do not take 
 away the winter of my desolation, or make the 
 buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, 
 and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the 
 world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, 
 full of " la menta tions, and mourning, and woeT*"^ 
 
 To consider the world in its length and 
 breadth, its various history, the many races of 
 men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual 
 alienations, their conflicts ; and then their 
 ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; 
 their enterprises, their aimless courses, their 
 random achievements and acquirements, the 
 impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the 
 tokens so faint and broken of a superintending 
 design, the blind evolution of what turn out to 
 be great powers or truths, the progress of things, 
 as if from unreasoning elements, not towards 
 final causes, the greatness and littleness of 
 man, his short duration, the curtain hung over 
 his futurity, the disappointment of life, the 
 defeat of good, the success of evil, physical 
 pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and inten- 
 sity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the cor- 
 ruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that 
 condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet 
 
170 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 so exactly described in the Apostle*s words, 
 " Having no hope and without God in the 
 world," — all this is a vision to dizzy and ap- 
 pal ; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a 
 profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond 
 human solution. 
 
 What shall be said to this heart-piercing, 
 reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, 
 that either there is no Creator, or this living 
 society of men is in a true sense discarded 
 from His presence. Did I see a boy of good 
 make and mind, with the tokens on him of a 
 refined nature, cast upon the world without 
 provision, unable to say whence he came, his 
 birth-place or family connexions, I should 
 conclude there was some mystery connected 
 with his history, and that he was one, of 
 whom, from one cause or other, his parents 
 were ashamed. Then only should I be able 
 to account for the contrast between the prom- 
 ise and the condition of his being. And so 
 I argue about the world : — if there be a God, 
 since there is a God, the human race is im- 
 plicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. 
 It is out of joint with the purposes of its 
 Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the 
 fact of its existence ; and thus the doctrine of 
 what is theologically called original sin becomes 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 171 
 
 to me almost as certain as that the world ex- 
 ists, and as the existence of God. — Apologia^ 
 chap. V. 
 
 ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Now, unless we have some just idea of our 
 hearts and of sin, we can have no right idea of 
 a Moral Governor, a Saviour or a Sanctifier, 
 that is, in professing to believe in Them, we 
 shall be using words without attaching distinct 
 meaning to them. Thus self-knowledge is at 
 the root of all real religious knowledge ; and it 
 is in vain — worse than vain — it is a deceit and 
 a mischief, to think to understand the Christian 
 doctrines as a matter of course, merely by being 
 taught by books, or by attending sermons, or 
 by any outward means, however excellent, taken 
 by themselves. For it is in proportion as we 
 search our hearts and understand our own 
 nature, that we understand what is meant by 
 an Infinite Governor and Judge; in proportion 
 as we comprehend the nature of disobedience 
 and our actual sinfulness, that we feel what is 
 the blessing of the removal of sin, redemption, 
 pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are mere 
 words. God speaks to us primarily in our 
 hearts. Self-knowledge is the key to the pre- 
 
172 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 cepts and doctrines of Scripture. The very 
 utmost any outward notices of religion can do, 
 is to startle us and make us turn inward and 
 search our hearts ; and then, when we have ex- 
 perienced what It Is to read ourselves, we shall 
 profit by the doctrines of the Church and the 
 Bible. — Sermons, vol. i. pp. 42, 43. 
 
 But let a man persevere in prayer and watch- 
 fulness to the day of his death, yet he will never 
 get to the bottom of his heart. Though he 
 know more and more of himself as he becomes 
 more conscientious and earnest, still the full 
 manifestation of the secrets there lodged is re- 
 served for another world. And at the last day 
 who can tell the affright and horror of a man 
 who lived to himself on earth, indulging his 
 own evil will, following his own chance notions 
 of truth and falsehood, shunning the cross and 
 the reproach of Christ, when his eyes are at 
 length opened before the throne of God, and 
 all his innumerable sins, his habitual neglect of 
 God, his abuse of his talents, his misapplication 
 and waste of time, and the original unexplored 
 sinfulness of his nature, are brought clearly 
 and fully to his view ? Nay, even to the true 
 servants of Christ, the prospect is awful. " The 
 righteous," we are told, " will scarcely be saved." 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 173 
 
 Then will the good man undergo the full sight 
 of his sins, which on earth he was labouring to 
 obtain, and partly succeeded in obtaining, though 
 life was not long enough to learn and subdue 
 them all. Doubtless we must all endure that 
 fierce and terrifying vision of our real selves, 
 that last fiery trial of the soul before its accept- 
 ance, a spiritual agony and second death to all 
 who are not then supported by the strength of 
 Him who died to bring them safe through it, 
 and in whom on earth they have believed. — 
 Sermons, vol. i. pp. 48, 49. 
 
 ON A WRONG CURIOSITY 
 
 O my brethren, do you not confess to the 
 truth of much of what I have been saying ? 
 Is it not so, that, when your mind began to 
 open, in proportion as it opened, it was by that 
 very opening made rebellious against what you 
 knew to be duty? In matter of fact, was not 
 your intellect in league with disobedience ? 
 Instead of uniting knowledge and religion, as 
 you might have done, did you not set one 
 against the other ? For instance, was it not one 
 of the first voluntary exercises of your mind, to 
 indulge a wrong curiosity ? — a curiosity which 
 you confessed to yourselves to be wrong, which 
 
174 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 went against your conscience, while you indulged 
 it. You desired to know a number of things 
 which it could do you no good to know. This 
 is how boys begin ; as soon as their mind begins 
 to stir, it looks the wrong way, and runs upon 
 what is evil. This is their first wrong step ; 
 and their next use of their intellect is to put 
 what is evil into words : this is their second 
 wrong step. They form images, and entertain 
 thoughts, which should be away, and they stamp 
 them upon themselves and others by expressing 
 them. And next, the bad turn which they do 
 to others, others retaliate on them. One wrong 
 speech provokes another ; and thus there grows 
 up among them from boyhood that miserable 
 tone of conversation — hinting and suggesting 
 evil, jesting, bantering on the subject of sin, 
 supplying fuel for the inflammable imagination 
 — which lasts through life, which is wherever 
 the world is, which is the very breath of the 
 world, which the world cannot do without, 
 which the world " speaks out of the abundance 
 of its heart," and which you may prophesy will 
 prevail in every ordinary assemblage of men, as 
 soon as they are at their ease and begin to talk 
 freely, — a sort of vocal worship of the Evil 
 One, to which the Evil One listens with special 
 satisfaction, because he looks on it as the prepa- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 175 
 
 ration for worse sin ; for from bad thoughts and 
 bad words proceed bad deeds. 
 
 Bad company creates a distaste for good ; and 
 hence it happens that when a youth has gone the 
 length I have been supposing, he is repelled, 
 from that very distaste, from those places and 
 scenes which would do him good. He begins 
 to lose the delight he once had in going home. 
 By little and little he loses his enjoyment in 
 the pleasant countenances, and untroubled 
 smiles, and gentle ways, of that family circle 
 which is so dear to him still. At first he says 
 to himself that he is not worthy of them, 
 and therefore keeps away ; but at length the 
 routine of home is tiresome to him. He has 
 aspirations and ambitions which home does 
 not satisfy. He wants more than home can 
 give. His curiosity now takes a new turn ; he 
 listens to views and discussions which are ' 
 inconsistent with the sanctity of religious faith. 
 At first he has no temptation to adopt them ; 
 only he wishes to know what is " said." As 
 time goes on, however, living with companions 
 who have no fixed principle, and who, if they 
 do not oppose, at least do not take for granted, 
 any the most elementary truths, or worse, 
 hearing or reading what is directly against 
 religion, at length, without being conscious of 
 
176 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 it, he admits a sceptical influence upon his 
 mind. He does not know it, he does not 
 recognise it, but there it is ; and, before he 
 recognises it, it leads him to a fretful, impa- 
 tient way of speaking of the persons, conduct, 
 words, and measures of religious men, or of 
 men in authority. This is the way in which 
 he relieves his mind of the burden which is 
 growing heavier and heavier every day. And 
 so he goes on, approximating more and more 
 closely to sceptics and infidels, and feeling more 
 and more congeniality with their modes of 
 thinking, till some day suddenly, from some 
 accident, the fact breaks upon him, and he sees 
 clearly that he is an unbeliever himself. — Ser- 
 monSy VariouSy i. 
 
 ON REALISING WHAT WE READ 
 
 Let us consider how differently young and 
 old are affected by the words of some classic 
 author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages 
 which to a boy are mere rhetorical common- 
 places, neither better nor worse than a hundred 
 others which any clever writer might supply, 
 which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, 
 and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, in his 
 own flowing versification, at length come home 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 177 
 
 to him, when long years have passed, and 
 he has had experience of life, and pierce him, 
 as if he had never before known them, with 
 their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. 
 Then he comes to understand how it is that 
 lines, the birth of some chance morning or 
 evening at an Ionian festival, or among the 
 Sabine hills, have lasted generation after genera- 
 tion, for thousands of years, with a power over 
 the mind, and a charm, which the current 
 literature of his own day, with all its obvious 
 advantages, is utterly unable to rival. Perhaps 
 this is the reason of the mediaeval opinion 
 about Virgil, as if a prophet or magician ; his 
 single words and phrases, his pathetic half linesj 
 giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, 
 to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better 
 things, which is the experience of her children 
 in every time. 
 
 ^Ajidwhat the experience of the world effects 
 for thelllus^ration^^^ authors, that 
 
 office the religious sense, carefully cuTtivatecf, 
 fulfils towards Holy Scripture. To the devout 
 and spiritual, the Divine Word speaks of things, 
 not merely of notions. And, again, to the dis- 
 consolate, the tempted, the perplexed, the suffer- 
 ing, there comes, by means of their very trials, 
 an enlargement of thought, which enables them 
 
178 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 to see in it what they never saw before. Hence- 
 forth there is to them a reality in its teachings, 
 which they recognise as an argument, and the 
 best of arguments, for its divine origin. Read- 
 ing, as we do, thejGospfeb from our youth- 
 up, we are in danger of becoming so familiar 
 with them as to be dead to their force, and to 
 view them as a mere history. The purpose, 
 then, of meditation is to realise them ; to make 
 the facts which they relate stand out before our 
 minds as objects, such as may be appropriated 
 by a faith as living as the imagination which 
 apprehends them. 
 
 It is obvious to refer to the unworthy use made 
 of the more solemn parts of the sacred volume 
 by the mere popular preacher. His very mode 
 of reading, whether warnings or prayers, is as if 
 he thought them to be little better than fine 
 writing, poetical in sense, musical in sound, 
 and worthy of inspiration. The most awful 
 truths are to him but sublime or beautiful con- 
 ceptions, and are adduced and used by him, in 
 season and out of season, for his own purposes, 
 for embellishing his style or rounding his pe- 
 riods. But let his heart at length be ploughed 
 by some keen grief or deep anxiety, and Script-^ 
 ure is a new book to him.. This is the change 
 which so often takes place in what is called 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 179 
 
 religious conversion, and it is a change so far 
 simply for the better, by whatever infirmity or 
 error it is in the particular case accompanied. 
 And it is strikingly suggested to us, to take 
 a saintly example, in the confession of the 
 patriarch Job, when he contrasts his appre- 
 hension of the Almighty before and after his 
 afflictions. He says he had indeed a true 
 apprehension of the Divine Attributes before 
 them as well as after ; but with the trial came 
 a great change in the character of that appre- 
 hension : — " With the hearing of the ear," he 
 says, " I have heard Thee, but now mine eye 
 seeth Thee ; therefore I reprehend myself, and 
 do penance in dust and ashes." — Grammar of 
 Assent, chap. iv. 
 
 ON THE UNBELIEF OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 
 
 The reason may be this : the humility and 
 teachableness which the Scripture precepts in- 
 culcate are connected with principles more 
 solemn and more awful than those which are 
 necessary for the temper of mind in which 
 scientific investigation must be conducted ; and 
 though the Christian spirit is admirably fitted 
 to produce the tone of thought and inquiry 
 which leads to the discovery of truth, yet a 
 
1 80 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 slighter and less profound humility will do the 
 same. The philosopher has only to confess 
 that he is liable to be deceived by false appear- 
 ances and reasonings, to be biassed by preju- 
 dice, and led astray by a warm fancy; he is 
 humble because sensible he is ignorant, cautious 
 because he knows himself to be fallible, docile 
 because he really desires to learn. But Chris- 
 tianity, in addition to this confession, requires 
 him to acknowledge himself to be a rebel in 
 the sight of God, and a breaker of that fair and 
 goodly order of things which the Creator once 
 estabhshed. The philosopher confesses him- 
 self to be imperfect ; the Christian feels himself 
 to be sinful and corrupt. The infirmity of 
 which the philosopher must be conscious is but 
 a relative infirmity — imperfection as opposed 
 to perfection, of which there are infinite degrees. 
 Thus he believes himself placed in a certain 
 point of the scale of beings, and that there are 
 beings nearer to perfection than he is, others 
 farther removed from it. But the Christian 
 acknowledges that he has fallen away from that 
 rank in creation which he originally held ; that 
 he has passed a line, and is in consequence not 
 merely imperfect, but weighed down with posi- 
 tive, actual evil. Now there is little to lower a 
 man in his own opinion, in his believing that 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages i8i 
 
 he holds a certain definite station in an immense 
 series of creatures, and is in consequence re- 
 moved, by many steps, from perfection ; but 
 there is much very revolting to the minds of 
 many, much that is contrary to their ideas of 
 harmony and order, and the completeness of 
 the system of nature, and much at variance 
 with those feelings of esteem with which they 
 are desirous of regarding themselves, in the 
 doctrine that man is disgraced and degraded 
 from his natural and original rank ; that he 
 has, by sinning, introduced a blemish into the 
 work of God ; that he is guilty in the court of 
 heaven, and is continually doing things odious 
 in the sight of the Divine holiness. And as 
 the whole doctrine of the Christian faith de- 
 pends upon this doctrine, since it was to re- 
 deem man from deserved punishment that 
 Christ suffered on the cross, and in order to 
 strengthen him in his endeavours to cleanse 
 himself from sin, and prepare for heaven, that 
 the Holy Spirit has come to rule the Church, 
 it is not wonderful that men are found, admi- 
 rable for their philosophical temper and their 
 success in investigating nature, and yet are un- 
 worthy disciples in the school of the Gospel. — 
 University Sermons, i. 
 
1 82 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 ON THE ENTERPRISE OF OUR RACE 
 
 This, then, is the people for private enter- 
 prise; and of private enterprise alone have I 
 been speaking all along. What a place is 
 London in its extent, its complexity, its myriads 
 of dwellings, its subterraneous works ! It is 
 the production, for the most part, of individual 
 enterprise. Waterloo Bridge was the greatest 
 architectural achievement of the generation be- 
 fore this ; it was built by shares. New regions, 
 with streets of palaces and shops innumerable, 
 each shop a sort of shrine or temple of this or 
 that trade, and each a treasure-house of its own 
 merchandise, grew silently into existence, the 
 creation of private spirit and speculation. The 
 gigantic system of railroads rises and asks for 
 its legal status : prudent statesmen decide that 
 it must be left to private companies, to the ex- 
 clusion of Government. Trade is to be en- 
 couraged : the best encouragement is, that it 
 should be free. A famine threatens ; one 
 thing must be avoided, — any meddling on the 
 part of Government with the export and import 
 of provisions. 
 
 Emigration is in vogue : out go swarms of 
 colonists, not, as in ancient times, from the 
 Prytaneum, under State guidance and with 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 183 
 
 religious rites, but each by himself, and at his 
 own arbitrary and sudden will. The ship 
 is wrecked ; the passengers are cast upon a 
 rock, — or made the hazard of a raft. In the 
 extremest peril, in the most delicate and anx- 
 ious of occupations, every one seems to find 
 his place, as if by magic, and does his work, 
 and subserves the rest with coolness, cheerful- 
 ness, gentleness, and without a master. Or 
 they have a fair passage, and gain their new 
 country ; each takes his allotted place there, 
 and works in it in his own way. Each acts 
 irrespectively of the rest, takes care of number 
 one, with a kind word and deed for his 
 neighbour, but still as fully understanding that 
 he must depend for his own welfare on him- 
 self Pass a few years, and a town has risen 
 on the desert beach, and houses of business 
 are extending their connexions and influence 
 up the country. At length, a company of 
 merchants make the place their homestead, 
 and they protect themselves from their enemies 
 with a fort. They need a better defence than 
 they have provided, for a numerous host is 
 advancing upon them, and they are likely to 
 be driven into the sea. Suddenly a youth, the 
 castaway of his family, half-clerk, half-soldier, 
 puts himself at the head of a few troops, de- 
 
184 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 fends posts, gains battles, and ends in founding 
 a mighty empire over the graves of Mahmood 
 and Aurungzebe. 
 
 It is the deed of one man ; and so, where- 
 ever we go, all over the earth, it is the solitary 
 Briton, the London agent, or the Milordos, 
 who is walking restlessly about, abusing the 
 natives, and raising a colossus, or setting the 
 Thames on fire, in the East or the West. He 
 is on the top of the Andes, or in a diving-bell 
 in the Pacific, or taking notes at Timbuctoo, 
 or grubbing at the Pyramids, or scouring over 
 the Pampas, or acting as prime minister to 
 the King of Dahomey, or smoking the pipe 
 of friendship with the Red Indians, or hutting 
 at the Pole. No one can say beforehand what 
 will come of these various specimens of the 
 independent, self-governing, self-reliant Eng- 
 lishman. Sometimes failure, sometimes open- 
 ings for trade, scientific discoveries, or political 
 aggrandisements. His country and his gov- 
 ernment have the gain ; but it is he who is the 
 instrument of it, and not poHtical organisation, 
 centralisation, systematic plans, authoritative 
 acts. The policy of England is what it was 
 before, — the Government weak, the Nation 
 strong, — strong in the strength of its multi- 
 tudinous enterprise, which gives to its Gov- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 185 
 
 ernment a position in the world, which that 
 Government could not claim for itself by any 
 prowess or device of its own. — Discussions and 
 Arguments^ v. 
 
 ON THE WORLD S BENEFACTORS 
 
 Our lesson, then, is this ; that those men 
 are not necessarily the most useful men in 
 their generation, nor the most favoured by 
 God, who make the most noise in the world, 
 and who seem to be principals in the great 
 changes and events recorded in history ; on 
 the contrary, that even when we are able to 
 point to a certain number of men as the real 
 instruments of any great blessings vouchsafed 
 to mankind, our relative estimate of them, one 
 with another, is often very erroneous : so that, 
 on the whole, if we would trace truly the hand 
 of God in human affairs, and pursue His 
 bounty as displayed in the world to its original 
 sources, we must unlearn our admiration of 
 the powerful and distinguished, our reliance on 
 the opinion of society, our respect for the 
 decisions of the learned or the multitude, and 
 turn our eyes to private life, watching in all 
 we read or witness for the true signs of God's 
 presence, the graces of personal holiness mani- 
 
1 86 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 fested in His elect ; which, weak as they may 
 seem to mankind, are mighty through God, 
 and have an influence upon the course of His 
 Providence, and bring about great events in 
 the world at large, when the wisdom and 
 strength of the natural man are of no avail. 
 
 Now, first, observe the operation of this 
 law of God's government, in respect to the 
 introduction of those temporal blessings which 
 are of the first importance in securing our 
 wellbeing and comfort in the present life. 
 For example, who was the first cultivator of 
 corn ? Who first tamed and domesticated the 
 animals whose strength we use, and whom we 
 make our food ? Or who first discovered the 
 medicinal herbs which, from the earliest times, 
 have been our resource against disease? If it 
 was mortal man, who thus looked through the 
 vegetable and animal worlds, and discriminated 
 between the useful and the worthless, his name 
 is unknown to the millions whom he has bene- 
 fited. It is notorious, that those who first 
 suggest the most happy inventions, and open a 
 way to the secret stores of nature, — those who 
 weary themselves in the search after Truth, 
 who strike out momentous principles of action, 
 who painfully force upon their contemporaries 
 the adoption of beneficial measures, or, again. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 187 
 
 who are the original cause of the chief events 
 in national history, are commonly supplanted, 
 as regards celebrity and reward, by inferior 
 men. Their works are not called after them ; 
 nor the arts and systems which they have given 
 to the world. Their schools are usurped by 
 strangers ; and their maxims of wisdom circu- 
 late among the children of their people, form- 
 ing, perhaps, a nation's character, but not em- 
 balming in their own immortality the names of 
 their original authors. — Parochial Sermons^ 11. i. 
 
 ON THE world's RELIGION 
 
 _What^is the world's religion now? It has 
 taken the BHghlef ' side- 5F the Oospcl, — -its 
 tidings of comfort, its precepts of love ; all 
 darker, deeper views of man's condition and 
 prospects being comparatively forgotten. This 
 is the religion natural to a civilised age, and 
 well has Satan dressed and completed it into an 
 idol of the Truth. As the reason is cultivated, 
 the taste formed, the affections and sentiments 
 refined, a general decency and grace will of 
 course spread over the face of society, quite in- 
 dependently of the influence of Revelation. 
 That beauty and delicacy of thought, whichlT^ 
 so attractive in books, then extends to the con- 
 
1 88 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 duct of life, to all we have, all we do, all we are. 
 Our manners are courteous ; we avoid giving 
 pain or offence ; our words become correct ; our 
 relative duties are carefully performed. Our 
 sense of propriety shows itself even in our do- 
 mestic arrangements, in the embellishments of 
 our houses, in our amusements, and so also in 
 our religious profession. Vice now becomes 
 unseemly and hideous to the imagination, or, as 
 it is sometimes familiarly said, " out of taste." 
 Thus elegance is gradually made the test and 
 standard of virtue, which is no longer thought 
 to possess an intrinsic claim on our hearts, or to 
 exist, further than it leads to the quiet and com- 
 fort of others. Conscience is no longer recog- 
 nised as an independent arbiter of actions, its 
 authority is explained away ; partly it is super- 
 seded in the minds of men by the so-called 
 moral sense, which is regarded merely as the 
 love of the beautiful ; partly by the rule of ex- 
 pediency, which is forthwith substituted for it 
 in the details of conduct. Now conscience is a 
 stern, gloomy principle ; it tells us of guilt and 
 of prospective punishment. Accordingly, when 
 its terrors disappear, then disappear also, in the 
 creed of the day, those fearful images of Divine 
 wrath with which the Scriptures abound. They 
 are explained away. Everything is bright and 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 189 
 
 cheerful. Religion is pleasant and easy ; be- 
 nevolence is the chief virtue ; intolerance, 
 bigotry, excess of zeal, are the first of sins. 
 Austerity is an absurdity; — even firmness is 
 looked on with an unfriendly, suspicious eye. 
 On the other hand, all open profligacy is dis- 
 countenanced ; drunkenness is accounted a 
 disgrace ; cursing and swearing are vulgarities. 
 Moreover, to a cultivated mind, which recreates 
 itself in the varieties of literature and knowledge, 
 and is interested in the ever-accumulating dis- 
 coveries of science, and the ever-fresh accessions 
 of information, political or otherwise, from for- 
 eign countries, religion will commonly seem 
 to be dull, from want of novelty. Hence ex- 
 citements are eagerly sought out and rewarded. 
 New objects in religion, new systems and plans, 
 new doctrines, new preachers, are necessary to 
 satisfy that craving which the so-called spread 
 of knowledge has created. The mind becomes 
 morbidly sensitive and fastidious ; dissatisfied 
 with things as they are, desirous of a change as 
 such, as if alteration must of itself be a relief. — 
 Parochial Sermons y vol. i. pp. 31 1-3 13. 
 
190 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 ON GREEK AND LATIN 
 
 Greek is celebrated for its copiousness in 
 vocabulary, for its perspicuity, and its repro- 
 ductive power ; and its consequent facility of 
 expressing the most novel or abstruse ideas 
 with precision and elegance. Hence the Attic 
 style of eloquence is plain and simple, because 
 simplicity and plainness were not incompatible 
 with clearness, energy, and harmony. But it 
 was a singular want of judgment, an ignorance 
 of the very principles of composition, which 
 induced Brutus, Calvus, Sallust, and others to 
 imitate this terse and severe beauty in their 
 own defective language, and even to pronounce 
 the opposite kind of diction deficient in taste 
 and purity. In Greek, indeed, the words fall, 
 as it were, naturally, into a distinct and har- 
 monious order ; and, from the exuberant rich- 
 ness of the materials, less is left to the ingenuity 
 of the artist. But the Latin language is com- 
 paratively weak, scanty, and unmusical ; and 
 requires considerable skill and management toj 
 render it expressive and graceful. \ Simplicity 
 in Latin is scarcely separable from baldness ; 
 and justly as Terence is celebrated for chaste and 
 unadorned diction, yet, even he, compared with 
 Attic writers, is flat and heavy. Again, the 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 191 
 
 perfection of strength is clearness united to 
 brevity ; but to this combination Latin is ut- 
 terly unequal. From the vagueness and un- 
 certainty of meaning which characterises its 
 separate words, to be perspicuous it must be 
 full. What Livy, and much more Tacitus, 
 have gained in energy, they have lost in lucidity 
 and elegance ; the correspondence of Brutus 
 with Cicero is forcible, indeed, but harsh and 
 abrupt. Latin, in short, is not a philosoph- 
 ical language, not a language in which a deep 
 thinker is likely to express himself with purity 
 or neatness. Cicero found it barren and dis- 
 sonant, and as such he had to deal with it. His 
 good sense enabled him to perceive what could 
 be done, and what it was vain to attempt ; and 
 happily his talejits answered precisely to the 
 purpose required. He may be compared to a 
 clever landscape gardener, who gives depth and 
 richness to narrow and confined premises by 
 ingenuity and skill in the disposition of his 
 trees and walks. Cicero rather made a language 
 than a style ; yet not so much by the invention 
 as by the combination of words. Some terms, 
 indeed, his philosophical subjects obliged him 
 to coin ; but his great art lies in the application 
 of existing materials, in converting the very dis- 
 advantages of the language into beauties, in 
 
192 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 enriching it with circumlocutions and metaphors, 
 in pruning it of harsh and uncouth expressions, 
 in systematising the structure of a sentence. 
 This is that copia dicendi which gained Cicero 
 the high testimony of Caesar to his inventive 
 powers, and which, we may add, constitutes 
 him the greatest master of composition that the 
 world has seen. — Historical Sketches^ ii., Cicero, 
 12. 
 
 ON ATHENS 
 
 A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its 
 greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth ; 
 two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle ; 
 three prominent mountains, commanding the 
 plain, — Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus ; an 
 unsatisfactory soil ; some streams, not always 
 full ; — such is about the report which the agent 
 of a London company would have made of 
 Attica. He would report that the climate was 
 mild ; the hills were limestone ; there was plenty 
 of good marble ; more pasture land than at first 
 survey might have been expected, sufficient 
 certainly for sheep and goats ; fisheries pro- 
 ductive ; silver mines once, but long since 
 worked out ; figs fair ; oil first-rate ; olives in 
 profusion. But what he would not think of 
 noting down was, that that olive tree was so 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 193 
 
 choice in nature and so noble in shape that it 
 excited a religious veneration ; and that it took 
 so kindly to the light soil, as to expand into 
 woods upon the open plain, and to climb up 
 and fringe the hills. He would not think of 
 writing word to his employers, how that clear 
 air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet 
 blended and subdued, the colours on the marble, 
 till they had a softness and harmony, for all 
 their richness, which in a picture looks exagger- 
 ated, yet is after all within the truth. He 
 would not tell, how that same delicate and 
 brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, 
 till the olive forgot its monotony, and its 
 cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the 
 Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the 
 thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which 
 carpeted Hymettus ; he would hear nothing of 
 the hum of its bees ; nor take much account 
 of the rare flavour of its honey, since Gozo and 
 Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. 
 He would look over the iEgean from the height 
 he had ascended ; he would follow with his eye 
 the chain of islands, which, starting from the 
 Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled 
 divinities of Attica, when they would visit their 
 Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across 
 the sea ; but that fancy would not occur to him, 
 
194 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 nor any admiration of the dark violet billows 
 with their white edges down below ; nor of those 
 graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, 
 which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the 
 deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and 
 shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist 
 of foam ; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving 
 and panting of the whole liquid plain ; nor of 
 the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line 
 of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow 
 shore, — he would not deign to notice that rest- 
 less element at all, except to bless his stars that 
 he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, 
 nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful out- 
 line and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, 
 nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium 
 by the declining sun ; — our agent of a mercan- 
 tile firm would not value these matters even at 
 a low figure. Rather we must turn for the 
 sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come 
 from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner 
 of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take 
 his fill of gazing on those emblems and corus- 
 cations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It 
 was the stranger from a remote province, from 
 Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so 
 different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, 
 or of his fiery, choking sands, learned at once 
 
Newman*s Choicest Passages 195 
 
 what a real University must be, by coming to 
 understand the sort of country, which was its 
 suitable home. 
 
 Nor was this all that a University required, 
 and found in Athens. No one, even there, 
 could live on poetry. If the students at that 
 famous place had nothing better than bright 
 hues and soothing sounds, they would not 
 have been able or disposed to turn their resi- 
 dence there to much account. Of course they 
 must have the means of living, nay, in a certain 
 sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an 
 Alma Mater at the time, or to remain after- 
 wards a pleasant thought in their memory. 
 And so they had : be it recollected Athens 
 was a port, and a mart of trade, perhaps the 
 first in Greece ; and this was very much to the 
 point, when a number of strangers were ever 
 flocking to it, whose combat was to be with 
 intellectual, not physical difficulties, and who 
 claimed to have their bodily wants supplied, 
 that they might be at leisure to set about fur- 
 nishing their minds. Now, barren as was the 
 soil of Attica, and bare the face of the country, 
 yet it had only too many resources for an 
 elegant, nay, luxurious abode there. So abun- 
 dant were the imports of the place, that it was 
 a common saying, that the productions, which 
 
196 Newman's Choicest PassagCvS 
 
 were found singly elsewhere, were brought 
 all together in Athens. Corn and wine, the 
 staple of subsistence in such a climate, came 
 from the isles of the ^gean ; fine wool and 
 carpeting from Asia Minor ; slaves, as now, 
 from the Euxine, and timber too; and iron 
 and brass from the coasts of the Mediterranean. 
 The Athenian did not condescend to manufact- 
 ures himself, but encouraged them in others; 
 and a population of foreigners caught at the 
 lucrative occupation both for home consump- 
 tion and for exportation. Their cloth, and 
 other textures for dress and furniture, and 
 their hardware — for instance, armour — were 
 in great request. Labour was cheap ; stone 
 and marble in plenty; and the taste and skill 
 which at first were devoted to public buildings, 
 as temples and porticos, were in course of time 
 applied to the mansions of public men. If 
 nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable 
 that art did much more. — Historical Sketches^ 
 I. iii. 
 
 ON A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 
 
 If, then, a practical end must be assigned 
 to a University course, I say it is that of train- 
 ing good members of society. Its art is the 
 art of social hfe, and its end is fitness for the 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 197 
 
 world. It neither confines its views to par- 
 ticular professions on the one hand, nor cre- 
 ates heroes or inspires geniuses on the other. 
 Works indeed of genius fall under no art ; 
 heroic minds come under no rule ; a Univer- 
 sity is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal 
 authors, of founders of schools, leaders of 
 colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does 
 not promise a generation of Aristotles, or 
 Newtons, or Napoleons, or Washingtons, of 
 Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles 
 of nature it has before now contained within 
 its precincts. Nor is it content, on the other 
 hand, with forming the critic or the experimen- 
 talist, the economist or the engineer, though 
 such too it includes within its scope. But a 
 { University training is the great ordinary means 
 ^ to a great but ordinary end ; it aims at raising 
 the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating 
 the public mind, at purifying the national taste, 
 at supplying true principles to popular enthu- 
 siasm, and fixed aims to popular aspirations, at 
 giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of 
 the age, at facilitating the exercise of political 
 power, and refining the intercourse of private 
 life. ♦"'.'It is the education which gives a man a 
 clear conscious view of his own opinions and 
 judgments, a truth in developing them, an 
 
198 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 eloquence in expressing them, and a force in 
 urging them. It teaches him to see things as 
 they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle 
 a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, 
 and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares 
 him to fill any post with credit, and to master 
 any subject with facility. It shows him how to 
 accommodate himself to others, how to throw 
 himself into their state of mind, how to bring 
 before them his own, how to influence them, 
 how to come to an understanding with them, 
 how to bear with them. He is at home 
 in any society ; he has common ground with 
 every class ; he knows when to speak and 
 when to be silent ; he is able to converse ; 
 he is able to listen ; he can ask a question 
 pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when 
 he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever 
 ready, yet never in the way ; he is a pleasant 
 companion, and a comrade you can depend 
 upon ; he knows when to be serious and when 
 to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables 
 him to trifle with gracefulness and to be seri- 
 ous with effect. He has the repose of a mind 
 which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, 
 and which has resources for its happiness at 
 home when it cannot go abroad. He has a 
 gift which serves him in public, and supports 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 199 
 
 him in retirement, without which good fortune 
 is but vulgar, and with which failure and dis- 
 appointment have a charm. The art which 
 tends to make a man all this, is in the object 
 which it pursues as useful as the art of wealth 
 or the art of health, though it is less suscep- 
 tible of method, and less tangible, less certain, 
 less complete in its result. — Idea of a University ^ 
 Discourse vii. 
 
 ON GRAMMAR 
 
 By Grammar, it is hardly necessary to say, 
 was not meant, in ancient times, as now, the 
 mere analysis or rules of language, as denoted 
 by the words etymology, syntax, prosody ; but 
 rather it stood for scholarship, that is, such an 
 acquaintance with the literature of a language 
 as is implied in the power of original compo- 
 sition and the vivd voce use of it. Thus 
 Cassiodorus defines it to be " skill in speak- 
 ing elegantly, gained from the best poets and 
 orators " ; St. Isidore, " the science of speaking 
 well " ; and Raban, " the science of interpreting 
 poets and historians, and the rule of speaking 
 and writing well." In the monastic school, the 
 language, of course, was Latin ; and in Latin 
 literature first came Virgil ; next, Lucan and 
 
200 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 Statius ; Terence, Sallust, Cicero ; Horace, 
 Persius, Juvenal ; and of Christian poets, Pru- 
 dentius, Sedulius, Juvencus, Aratus. Thus 
 we find that the monks of St. Alban's, near 
 Mayence, had standing lectures in Cicero, 
 Virgil, and other authors. In the school of 
 Paderborne there were lectures in Horace, 
 Virgil, Statius, and Sallust. Theodulf speaks 
 of his juvenile studies in the Christian authors, 
 Sedulius and Paulinus, Aratus, Fortunatus, 
 Juvencus, and Prudentius, and in the classical, 
 Virgil and Ovid. Gerbert, afterwards Sylves- 
 ter the Second, after lecturing his class in 
 logic, brought it back again to Virgil, Statius, 
 Terence, Juvenal, Persius, Horace, and Lu- 
 can. A work is extant of St. Hildebert's, sup- 
 posed to be a school exercise ; it is scarcely 
 more than a cento of Cicero, Seneca, Hor- 
 ace, Juvenal, Persius, Terence, and other 
 writers. Horace he must have almost known 
 by heart. . . . 
 
 Grammar, moreover, in the sense in which 
 we have defined it, is no superficial study, nor 
 insignificant instrument of mental cultivation, 
 and the school-task of the boy became the life- 
 long recreation of the man. Amid the serious 
 duties of their sacred vocation the monks did 
 not forget the books which had arrested and 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 201 
 
 refined their young imagination. Let us turn 
 to the familiar correspondence of some of these 
 more famous Benedictines, and we shall see 
 what were the pursuits of their leisure, and 
 the indulgences of their relaxation. Alcuin, in 
 his letters to his friends, quotes Virgil again 
 and again ; he also quotes Horace, Terence, 
 Pliny, besides frequent allusions to the heathen 
 philosophers. Lupus quotes Horace, Cicero, 
 Suetonius, Virgil, and Martial. Gerbert quotes 
 Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Terence, and Sallust. 
 Petrus Cellensis quotes Horace, Seneca, and 
 Terence. Hildebert quotes Virgil and Cicero, 
 and refers to Diogenes, Epictetus, Croesus, 
 Themistocles, and other personages of ancient 
 history. Hincmar of Rheims quotes Horace. 
 Paschasius Radbert's favourite authors were 
 Cicero and Terence. Abbo of Fleury was 
 especially familiar with Terence, Sallust, Vir- 
 gil, and Horace ; Peter the Venerable, with 
 Virgil and Horace ; Hepidann of St. Gall took 
 Sallust as a model of style. 
 
 Nor is their anxiety less to enlarge the range 
 of their classical reading. Lupus asks Abbot 
 Hatto through a friend for leave to copy Sue- 
 tonius's Lives of the CasarSy which is in the 
 monastery of St. Boniface in two small codices. 
 He sends to another friend to bring with him 
 
202 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 the Catilinarian and Jugurthan wars of Sallust, 
 the Verrines of Cicero, and any other volumes 
 which his friend happens to know either he has 
 not, or possesses only in faulty copies, bidding 
 him withal beware of robbers on his journey. 
 Of another friend he asks the loan of Cicero's 
 de Rhetoricdy his own copy of which is incom- 
 plete, and of Aulus Gellius. In another letter 
 he asks the Pope for Cicero's de Oratore, the 
 Institutions of Quintilian, and the Commentary 
 of Donatus upon Terence. In like manner 
 Gerbert tells Abbot Gisilbert that he has the be- 
 ginning of the Ophthalmicus of the philosopher 
 Demosthenes, and the end of Cicero's Pro Rege 
 Deiotaro ; and he wants to know if he can as- 
 sist in completing them for him. He asks 
 a friend at Rome to send him by Count Guido 
 the copies of Suetonius and Aurelius, which 
 belong to the Archbishop and himself; he re- 
 quests Constantine, the lecturer (scholasticus) 
 at Fleury, to bring him Cicero's Verrines and 
 de Republicd ; and he thanks Remigius, a monk 
 of Treves, for having begun to transcribe for 
 him the Achilleid of Statius, though he had 
 been unable to proceed with it for want of a 
 copy. To other friends he speaks of Pliny, 
 Caesar, and Victorinus. Alcuin's Library con- 
 tained Pliny, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Statius, 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 203 
 
 and Lucan ; and he transcribed Terence with 
 
 his own hand. — Historical Sketches^ iii. The 
 Benedictine Schools, 
 
 ON THE UNREALITY OF LITERATURE 
 
 And lastly, if this unreality may steal over 
 the Church itself, which is in its very essence a 
 practical institution, much more is it found in 
 the philosophies and literature of men. Litera- 
 ture is almost in its essence unreal ; for it is 
 the exhibition of thought disjoined from prac- 
 tice. Its very home is supposed to be ease 
 and retirement ; and when it does more than 
 speak or write, it is accused of transgressing 
 its bounds. This indeed constitutes what is 
 considered its true dignity and honour, viz. 
 its abstraction from the actual affairs of life ; 
 its security from the world's currents and 
 vicissitudes ; its saying without doing. A 
 man of literature is considered to preserve his 
 dignity by doing nothing ; and when he pro- 
 ceeds forward into action, he is thought to 
 lose his position, as if he were degrading his 
 calling by enthusiasm, and becoming a politi- 
 cian or a partisan. Hence mere literary men 
 are able to say strong things against the opin- 
 ions of their age, whether religious or political. 
 
204 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 without offence, because no one thinks they 
 mean anything by them. They are not ex- 
 pected to go forward to act upon them, and 
 mere words hurt no one. — SermonSy vol. v. iii. 
 
 ON A GENTLEMAN 
 
 It is almost a definition of a gentleman to 
 say he is one who never inflicts pain. This 
 description is both refined and, as far as it goes, 
 accurate. . . . The true gentleman carefully 
 avoids whatever may cause a jolt or ajar in the 
 minds of those among whom he is cast ; — all 
 clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all 
 restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment ; 
 his great concern being to make every one at 
 their ease and at home. He has his eyes on 
 all his company ; he is tender toward the bash- 
 ful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful 
 toward the absurd ; he can recollect to whom 
 he is speaking ; he guards against unseason- 
 able allusions, or topics which may irritate ; 
 he is seldom prominent in conversation, and 
 never wearisome. He makes light of favours 
 while he does them, and seems to be receiving 
 when he is conferring. He never speaks of 
 himself except when compelled, never defends 
 himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 205 
 
 slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing 
 motives to those who interfere with him, and 
 interprets everything for the best. He is 
 never mean or little in his disputes, he never 
 takes unfair advantage, never mistakes per- 
 sonalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or 
 insinuates evil which he dare not say out. 
 Nowhere shall we find greater candour, con- 
 sideration, indulgence ; he throws himself into 
 the minds of his opponents, he accounts for 
 their mistakes. — Idea of a University^ Discourse 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ON MUSIC 
 
 Let us take another instance of an outward 
 and earthly form, or economy, under which 
 great wonders unknown seem to be typified : 
 I mean musical sounds, as they are exhib- 
 ited most perfectly in instrumental harmony. 
 There are seven notes in the scale ; make 
 them fourteen ; yet what a slender outfit for 
 so vast an enterprise ! What science brings 
 so much out of so little ? Out of what poor 
 elements does some great master in it create 
 his new world! Shall we say that all this 
 exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or 
 trick of art, like some game or fashion of the 
 day, without meaning, without reality ? We 
 
2o6 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 may do so ; and then, perhaps, we shall also 
 account the science of theology to be a matter 
 of words ; yet, as there is a divinity in the 
 theology of the Church, which those who feel 
 cannot communicate, so is there also in the 
 wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of 
 which I am speaking. To many men the very 
 names which the science employs are utterly 
 incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or 
 a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to 
 speak of the views it opens upon us to be 
 childish extravagance ; yet is it possible that 
 that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of 
 notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so 
 regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be 
 a mere sound, which is gone and perishes? 
 Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of 
 heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings 
 after we know not what, and awful impressions 
 from we know not whence, should be wrought 
 in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and 
 goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not 
 so ; it cannot be. No ; they have escaped 
 from some higher sphere ; they are the out- 
 pourings of eternal harmony in the medium 
 of created sound ; they are echoes from our 
 Home ; they are the voice of Angels, or the 
 Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 207 
 
 divine Governance, or the Divine Attributes ; 
 something are they besides themselves, which 
 we cannot compass, which we cannot utter, — 
 though mortal man, and he perhaps not other- 
 wise distinguished above his fellows, has the 
 power of eliciting them. — University Sermons ^ 
 
 XV. 
 
 Music, I suppose, though this is not the 
 place to enlarge upon it, has an object of its 
 own ; as mathematical science also, it is the ex- 
 pression of ideas greater and more profound 
 than any in the visible world, ideas, which 
 centre indeed in Him whom Catholicism mani- 
 fests, who is the seat of all beauty, order, and 
 perfection whatever, still ideas after all, which 
 are not those on which Revelation directly and 
 principally fixes our gaze. If then a great 
 master in this mysterious science (if I may speak 
 of matters which seem to lie out of my own 
 province) throws himself on his own gift, trusts 
 its inspirations, and absorbs himself in those 
 things which, though they come to him in the 
 way of nature, belong to things above nature, 
 it is obvious he will neglect everything else. 
 Rising in his strength, he will break through 
 the trammels of words, he will scatter human 
 voices, even the sweetest, to the winds ; he will 
 
2o8 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 be borne upon nothing less than the fullest 
 flood of sounds which art has enabled him to 
 draw from mechanical contrivances ; he will go 
 forth as a giant, as far as ever his instruments 
 can reach, starting from their secret depths 
 fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur 
 as he goes, and pouring them together into still 
 more marvellous and rapturous combinations ; 
 — and well indeed and lawfully, while he keeps 
 to that line which is his own ; but, should he 
 happen to be attracted, as he well may, by the 
 sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic 
 doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred 
 themes, should he resolve by means of his art 
 to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine Office, 
 — (he cannot have a more pious, a better pur- 
 pose, and Religion will gracefully accept what 
 he gracefully offers ; but) — is it not certain, from 
 the circumstances of the case, that he will be 
 carried on rather to use Religion than to minister 
 to it, unless Religion is strong on its own ground, 
 and reminds him that, if he would do honour to 
 the highest of subjects, he must make himself 
 its scholar, must humbly follow the thoughts 
 given him, and must aim at the glory, not of 
 his own gift, but of the Great Giver. — Idea of 
 a University^ Discourse iv. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 209 
 
 ON DEFINITENESS IN PREACHING 
 
 My second remark is, that it is the preacher's 
 duty to aim at imparting to others, not any 
 fortuitous, unpremeditated benefit, but some 
 definite spiritual good. It is here that design 
 and study find their place ; the more exact and 
 precise is the subject which he treats, the more 
 impressive and practical will he be ; whereas no 
 one will carry off much from a discourse which 
 is on the general subject of virtue, or vaguely 
 and feebly entertains the question of the de- 
 sirableness of attaining Heaven, or the rashness 
 of incurring eternal ruin. As a distinct image 
 before the mind makes the preacher earnest, so 
 it will give him something which it is worth 
 while to communicate to others. Mere sym- 
 pathy, it is true, is able, as I have said, to 
 transfer an emotion or sentiment from mind to 
 mind, but it is not able to fix it there. He 
 must aim at imprinting on the heart what will 
 never leave it, and this he cannot do unless 
 he employ himself on some definite subject, 
 which he has to handle and weigh, and then, 
 as it were, to hand over from himself to 
 others. . . . 
 
 Nay, I would go the length of recommending 
 a preacher to place a distinct categorical propo- 
 
2IO Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 sition before him, such as he can write down in 
 a form of words, and to guide and Hmit his 
 preparation by it, and to aim in all he says to 
 bring it out, and nothing else. This seems to 
 be impHed or suggested in St. Charles's direc- 
 tion : " Id omnino studebit, ut quod in concione 
 dicturus est antea bene cognitum habeat." Nay, 
 is it not expressly conveyed in the Scripture 
 phrase of "preaching the word^^\ for what is 
 meant by "the word" but a proposition ad- 
 dressed to the intellect ? Nor will a preacher's 
 earnestness show itself in anything more un- 
 equivocally than in his rejecting, whatever be 
 the temptation to admit it, every remark, how- 
 ever original, every period, however eloquent, 
 which does not in some way or other tend to 
 bring out this one distinct proposition which he 
 has chosen. Nothing is so fatal to the effect 
 of a sermon as the habit of preaching on three 
 or four subjects at once. I acknowledge I am 
 advancing a step beyond the practice of great 
 Catholic preachers when I add that, even though 
 we preach on only one at a time, finishing and 
 dismissing the first before we go to the second, 
 and the second before we go to the third, still, 
 after all, a practice like this, though not open 
 to the inconvenience which the confusing of one 
 subject with another involves, is in matter of 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 211 
 
 fact, nothing short of the delivery of three 
 sermons in succession without break between 
 them. — Idea of a University : " University 
 Preaching." 
 
 ON EARNESTNESS IN PREACHING 
 
 A nd here, in order to prevent misconception, 
 two remarks must be made, which will lead 
 us further into the subject we are engaged 
 upon. The first is, that, in what I have been 
 saying, I do not mean that a preacher must 
 aim at earnestness, but that he must aim at his 
 object, which is to do some spiritual good to 
 his hearers, and which will at once make him 
 earnest. It is said that, when a man has to 
 cross an abyss by a narrow plank thrown 
 over it, it is his wisdom, not to look at the 
 plank, along which lies his path, but to fix his 
 eyes steadily on the point in the opposite 
 precipice at which the plank ends. It is by 
 gazing at the object which he must reach, and 
 ruling himself by it, that he secures to himself 
 the power of walking to it straight and steadily. 
 The case is the same in moral matters ; no 
 one will become really earnest by aiming di- 
 rectly at earnestness; any one may become 
 
212 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 earnest by meditating on the motives, and by- 
 drinking at the sources, of earnestness. We 
 may of course work ourselves up into a pre- 
 tence, nay, into a paroxysm, of earnestness ; as 
 we may chafe our cold hands till they are 
 warm. But when we cease chafing, we lose the 
 warmth again ; on the contrary, let the sun 
 come out and strike us with his beams, and we 
 need no artificial chafing to be warm. The 
 hot words, then, and energetic gestures of a 
 preacher, taken by themselves, are just as much 
 signs of earnestness as rubbing the hands or 
 flapping the arms together are signs of warmth; 
 though they are natural where earnestness al- 
 ready exists, and pleasing as being its spon- 
 taneous concomitants. To sit down to com- 
 pose for the pulpit with a resolution to be 
 eloquent is one impediment to persuasion ; but 
 to be determined to be earnest is absolutely 
 fatal to it. 
 
 He who has before his mental eye the Four 
 Last Things will have the true earnestness, the 
 horror, or the rapture, of one who witnesses 
 a conflagration, or discerns some rich and sub- 
 lime prospect of natural scenery. His coun- 
 tenance, his manner, his voice, speak for him, 
 in proportion as his view has been vivid and 
 minute. The great English poet has described 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 2 1 3 
 
 this sort of eloquence when a calamity had 
 befallen : — 
 
 Yea, this man*s brow, like to a title-page. 
 Foretells the nature of a tragic volume. 
 Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek 
 Is aptcr than thy tongue to tell thy errand. 
 
 — Idea of a University : " University Preach- 
 ing." 
 
 ON A LOST SOUL BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 Oh, what a moment, when, breathless with 
 the journey, and dizzy with the brightness, 
 and overwhelmed with the strangeness of what 
 is happening to him, and unable to realise 
 where he is, the sinner hears the voice of the 
 accusing spirit, bringing up all the sins of his 
 past life, which he has forgotten, or which he 
 has explained away, which he would not allow 
 to be sins, though he suspected they were. . . . 
 And, oh ! still more terrible, still more dis- 
 tracting, when the Judge speaks, and consigns 
 the soul to the jailors, till it shall pay the 
 endless debt which lies against it ! " Im- 
 possible, I a lost soul ! I separated from hope 
 and from peace for ever ! It is not I of whom 
 the Judge so spake ! There is a mistake 
 
214 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 somewhere : Christ, Saviour, hold Thy hand, — 
 one minute to explain it I My name is Demas ; 
 I am but Demas, not Judas. What ? hopeless 
 pain ! for me ! impossible, it shall not be ! " 
 And the poor soul struggles and wrestles in the 
 grasp of the mighty demon which has hold 
 of it, and whose every touch is torment. " Oh, 
 atrocious ! " it shrieks in agony, and in anger 
 too, as if the very keenness of the affliction 
 were a proof of its injustice. " A second ! 
 and a third ! I can bear no more ! Stop, 
 horrible fiend, give over: I am a man, and 
 not such as thou ! I am not food for thee, 
 or sport for thee ! I never was in hell as 
 thou ; I have not on me the smell of fire, nor 
 the taint of the charnel-house ! I know what 
 human feelings are ; I have been taught religion ; 
 I have had a conscience ; I have a cultivated 
 mind ; I am well versed in science and art ; 1 
 have been refined by literature ; I have had an 
 eye for the beauties of nature ; I am a philoso- 
 pher, or a poet, or a shrewd observer of men, 
 or a hero, or a statesman, or an orator, or a man 
 of wit and humour. . . ." Alas ! poor soul ; 
 and whilst it thus fights with that destiny which 
 it has brought upon itself, and with those com- 
 panions whom it has chosen, the man*s name is 
 perhaps solemnly chanted forth, and his memory 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 215 
 
 decently cherished among his friends on earth. 
 His readiness in speech, his fertility in thought, 
 his sagacity, or his wisdom, are not forgotten. 
 Men talk of him from time to time ; they ap- 
 peal to his authority ; they quote his words ; 
 perhaps they even raise a monument to his 
 name, or write his history. " So comprehensive 
 a mind ! Such a power of throwing light on a 
 perplexed subject, and bringing conflicting ideas 
 or facts into harmony ! " " Such a speech it 
 was that he made on such and such an occasion ; 
 I happened to be present, and never shall forget 
 it! " or, "It was the saying of a very sensible 
 man " ; or, " A great personage whom some of 
 us knew"; or, "It was a rule with a very 
 excellent and sensible friend of mine, now no 
 more " ; or, " Never was his equal in society, 
 so just in his remarks, so versatile, so unob- 
 trusive " ; or, " I was fortunate to see him once 
 when I was a boy " ; or, " So great a benefactor 
 to his country and his kind " ; " His discoveries 
 so great "; or, " His philosophy so profound." 
 Oh, vanity ! vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! 
 What profiteth it? What profiteth it? His 
 soul is in hell. Oh, ye children of men, while 
 thus ye speak, his soul is in the beginning of 
 those torments in which his body will soon have 
 part, and which will never die. . . 
 
21 6 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 " Deus misereatur nostril et henedicat nobis " ; 
 " God have mercy on us, and bless us ; and 
 cause His face to shine upon us, and have 
 mercy on us. God, even our God, bless us ; 
 may God bless us ; and may all the ends of the 
 earth fear Him." — 'Discourses to Mixed Congre- 
 gationsy ii. 
 
 ON THOMAS MOZLEY S WASTE OF TIME 
 
 I am truly rejoiced to find your desire for 
 parochial employment has not diminished, and 
 your opinion of your own health not such as 
 to deter you. For myself, since I heard your 
 symptoms I have not been alarmed, but some 
 persons have been very anxious about you. I 
 trust you are to be preserved for many good 
 services in the best of causes. I am sure you 
 have that in you which will come to good if 
 you cherish and improve it. You may think 
 I am saying a strange thing, perhaps an im- 
 pertinent and misplaced, and perhaps founded 
 on a misconception, yet let me say it, and blame 
 me if it be harsh — viz. that, had it pleased God 
 to have visited you with an illness as serious as 
 the Colchester people thought it, it would al- 
 most have seemed a rebuke for past waste of 
 time. I believe that God often cuts off those 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 217 
 
 He loves, and who are really His, as a judg- 
 ment, not interfering with their ultimate safety, 
 but as passing them by as unworthy of being 
 made instruments of His purposes. It is an 
 idea which was strong upon the mind of my 
 brother during his illnesses of the last year, while 
 he did not doubt that his future interests were 
 essentially secure. I doubt not at all that you 
 have all along your illness had thoughts about 
 it far better than I can suggest ; and I reflect 
 with thankfulness that the very cause of it was 
 an endeavour on your part to be actively em- 
 ployed, to the notion of which you still cling ; 
 yet I cannot but sorrowfully confess to myself 
 (how much soever I wish to hide the fact from 
 my own mind) that you have lost much time in 
 the last four or five years. I say I wish to hide 
 it from myself, because, in simple truth, in it I 
 perceive a humiliation to myself. I have ex- 
 pected a good deal from you, and have said I 
 expected it. Hitherto I have been disappointed, 
 and it is a mortification to me. I do expect 
 it still, but in the meanwhile time is lost as 
 well as hope delayed. Now you must not 
 think it unkind in me noticing this now, of all 
 times of the year. I notice it, not as if you 
 needed the remark most now, rather less, but 
 because you have more time to think about it 
 
21 8 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 now. It is one special use of times of illness 
 to reflect about ourselves. Should you, how- 
 ever, really acquit yourself in your own mind, 
 thinking that the course you have pursued of 
 letting your mind take its own way was the 
 best for yourself, I am quite satisfied and will 
 believe you, yet shall not blame myself for 
 leading you to the question, since no one can 
 be too suspicious about himself. Doubtless 
 you have a charge on you for which you must 
 give account. You have various gifts and you 
 have good principles — for the credit of those 
 principles, for the sake of the Church, and for 
 the sake of your friends, who expect it of you, 
 see that they bring forth fruit. I have often 
 had — nay, have — continually anxious thoughts 
 about you, but it is unpleasant to obtrude 
 them, and now I have hesitated much before 
 I got myself to say what I have said, lest I 
 should only be making a fuss ; yet, believe me, 
 to speak with very much affection towards you. 
 Two men who know you best, Golightly and 
 Christie, appear to me to consider you not 
 at all improved in your particular weak points. 
 I differ from them. Perhaps I am exaggerat- 
 ing their opinion, and men speak generally 
 and largely when they would readily on con- 
 sideration make exceptions, etc. But if this be 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 219 
 
 in any measure true, think what it impHes ? 
 What are we placed here for, except to over- 
 come the evTrepiaraTOf; afiapria^ whatever it be 
 in our own case ? — Ever yours affectionately, 
 
 J. H. Newman. 
 — Mozley's Reminiscences y vol. ii.. Addenda. 
 
 ON DAVID 
 
 Latest born of Jesse's race. 
 Wonder lights thy bashful face, 
 While the Prophet's gifted oil 
 Seals thee for a path of toil. 
 We, thy Angels, circling round thee. 
 Ne'er shall find thee as we found thee. 
 When thy faith first brought us near 
 In thy lion-fight severe. 
 
 Go ! and 'mid thy flocks awhile 
 At thy doom of greatness smile ; 
 Bold to bear God's heaviest load. 
 Dimly guessing of the road — 
 Rocky road, and scarce ascended. 
 Though thy foot be angel-tended. 
 
 Twofold praise thou shalt attain. 
 In royal court and battle plain; 
 Then comes heartache, care, distress. 
 Blighted hope, and loneliness ; 
 
220 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 Wounds from friend and gifts from foe. 
 Dizzied faith, and guilt, and woe : 
 Loftiest aims by earth defiled. 
 Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled. 
 Sated power's tyrannic mood. 
 Counsels shared with men of blood. 
 Sad success, parental tears. 
 And a dreary gift of years. 
 
 Strange, that guileless face and form 
 
 To lavish on the scarring storm ! 
 
 Yet we take thee in thy blindness 
 
 And we buflfet thee in kindness ; 
 
 Little chary of thy fame, — 
 
 Dust unborn may bless or blame, — 
 
 But we mould thee for the root 
 
 Of man's promised healing Fruit, 
 
 And we mould thee hence to rise. 
 
 As our brother, to the skies. — Verses (Ixi.) 
 
 ON PAUL 
 
 A heathen poet has said, " Homo sum, humani 
 nil mi alienum puto " — " I am a man ; nothing 
 human is without interest to me," and the senti- 
 ment has been widely and deservedly praised. 
 Now this, in a fulness of meaning which a 
 heathen could not understand, is, I conceive. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 221 
 
 the characteristic of this great Apostle. He is 
 ever speaking, to use his own words, " human 
 things," and " as a man," and " according to 
 man," and " foolishly" — that is, human nature, 
 the common nature of the whole race of Adam, 
 spake in him, acted in him, with an energetical 
 presence, with a sort of bodily fulness, always 
 under the sovereign command of divine grace, 
 but losing none of its real freedom and power 
 because of its subordination. And the conse- 
 quence is that, having the nature of man so 
 strong in him, he is able to enter into human 
 nature, and to sympathise with it, with a gift 
 peculiarly his own. 
 
 Now the most startling instance of this is 
 this — that, though his life prior to his conver- 
 sion seems to have been so conscientious and 
 so pure, nevertheless he does not hesitate to 
 associate himself with the outcast heathen, and 
 to speak as if he were one of them. St. Philip 
 before he communicated used to say, "Lord, I 
 protest before Thee that I am good for nothing 
 but to do evil." At confession he used to say, 
 " I have never done one good action." He 
 often said, " I am past hope." To a penitent 
 he said, " Be sure of this ; I am a man like my 
 neighbours, and nothing more." Well, I mean, 
 that somewhat in this way Paul felt all his 
 
222 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 neighbours, all the whole race of Adam, to be 
 existing in himself. He knew himself to be 
 possessed of a nature ; he was conscious of 
 possessing a nature which was capable of running 
 into all the multiplicity of emotions, of devices, 
 of purposes, and of sins, into which it had 
 actually run in the wide world, and in the 
 multitude of men ; and in that sense he bore the 
 sins of all men, and associated himself with them, 
 and spoke of them and himself as one. He 
 not only counts himself, as his birth made him, 
 in the number of " children of wrath," but he 
 classes himself with the heathen as " conversing 
 in the desires of the flesh," " and fulfilling the 
 desires of the flesh and the mind." And in 
 another Epistle he speaks of himself, at the 
 time he writes, as if " carnal, sold under sin " ; 
 he speaks of " sin dwelling in him," and of his 
 "serving with the flesh the law of sin " ; this, I 
 say, when he was an Apostle confirmed in grace. 
 Meanwhile, may this glorious Apostle, this 
 sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching 
 and winning of teachers, may he do me some 
 good turn, who has ever felt such a special de- 
 votion towards him ! May this great saint, this 
 man of large mind, of various sympathies, of 
 affectionate heart, have a kind thought for every 
 one of us here according to our respective 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 223 
 
 needs ! He has carried his human thoughts 
 and feelings with him to the throne above; 
 and, though he sees the Infinite and Eternal 
 Essence, he still remembers well that troublous 
 ocean below, of hopes and fears, of impulses 
 and aspirations, of efforts and failures, which 
 is now what it was when he was here. Let us 
 beg him to intercede for us with the Majesty 
 on high, that we too may have some portion 
 of that tenderness, compassion, mutual affec- 
 tion, love of brotherhood, abhorrence of strife 
 and division, in which he excelled. — Sermons^ 
 VariouSy vii. 
 
 ON A GREAT AUTHOR 
 
 A great author is not one who merely has a 
 cofia verhorum whether in prose or verse, and 
 can, as it were, turn on at his will any number 
 of splendid phrases and swelling sentences ; but 
 he is one who has something to say and knows 
 how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, 
 any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, 
 or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of 
 human nature, or experience of human life, 
 though these additional gifts he may have, and 
 the more he has of them the greater he is ; but 
 I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a 
 
224 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 large sense the faculty of Expression. He is 
 master of the twofold Logos, the thought and 
 the word, distinct, but inseparable from each 
 other. He may, if so be, elaborate his com- 
 positions, or he may pour out his improvisa- 
 tions, but in either case he has but one aim, 
 which he keeps steadily before him, and is con- 
 scientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That 
 aim is to give forth what he has within him ; 
 and from his very earnestness it comes to pass 
 that, whatever be the splendour of his diction 
 or the harmony of his periods, he has with 
 him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. 
 Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats 
 it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, 
 " nil molitur ineptir If he is an orator, then 
 too he speaks, not only " distincte " and 
 " splendide," but also " apth^^ His page is the 
 lucid mirror of his mind and life — 
 
 ** Quo fit, ut omnis 
 Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
 Vita senis.'* 
 
 He writes passionately, because he feels 
 keenly ; forcibly, because he conceives vividly ; 
 he sees too clearly to be vague ; he is too seri- 
 ous to be otiose ; he can analyse his subject, 
 and therefore he is rich ; he embraces it as a 
 whole and in its parts, and therefore he is con- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 225 
 
 sistent ; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore 
 he is luminous. When his imagination wells 
 up, it overflows in ornament ; when his heart 
 is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always 
 has the right word for the right idea, and never 
 a word too much. If he is brief, it is because 
 few words suffice ; when he is lavish of them, 
 still each word has its mark, and aids, not em- 
 barrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. 
 He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say ; 
 and his sayings pass into proverbs among his 
 people, and his phrases become household 
 words and idioms of their daily speech, which 
 is tesselated with the rich fragments of his 
 language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles 
 of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and 
 pavements of modern palaces. 
 
 Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among 
 ourselves ; such pre-eminently Virgil among 
 the Latins ; such in their degree are all those 
 writers who in every nation go by the name of 
 Classics. To particular nations they are neces- 
 sarily attached from the circumstance of the 
 variety of tongues, and the peculiarities of each ; 
 but so far they have a catholic and ecumenical 
 character, that what they express is common to 
 the whole race of man, and they alone are able 
 to express it. 
 
226 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 If, then, the power of speech is a gift as 
 great as any that can be named, — if the origin 
 of language is by many philosophers even con- 
 sidered to be nothing short of divine, — if by 
 means of words the secrets of the heart are 
 brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hid- 
 den grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, 
 counsel imparted, experience recorded, and 
 wisdom perpetuated, — if by great authors the 
 many are drawn up into unity, national char- 
 acter is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the 
 future, the East and the West are brought into 
 communication with each other, — if such men 
 are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of 
 the human family, — it will not answer to make 
 light of Literature or to neglect its study ; 
 rather we may be sure that, in proportion as 
 we master it in whatever language, and imbibe 
 its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own 
 measure the ministers of like benefits to others, 
 be they many or few, be they in the obscurer 
 or the more distinguished walks of life, — who 
 are united to us by social ties, and are within 
 the sphere of our personal influence. — Idea of 
 a University : " Literature.*' 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 227 
 
 ON SOME GREAT AUTHORS 
 
 Cicero 
 
 His copious, majestic, musical flow of lan- 
 guage, even if sometimes beyond what the sub- 
 ject-matter demands, is never out of keeping 
 with the occasion or with the speaker. It is the 
 expression of lofty sentiments in lofty sentences, 
 the " mens magna in corpore magnoJ"^ It is the 
 development of the inner man. Cicero vividly 
 realised the status of a Roman senator and 
 statesman, and the " pride of place " of Rome, in 
 all the grace and grandeur which attached to her ; 
 and he imbibed, and became, what he admired. 
 As the exploits of Scipio and Pompey are the 
 expression of this greatness in deed, so the 
 language of Cicero is the expression of it in 
 word. And, as the acts of the Roman ruler or 
 soldier represent to us, in a manner special to 
 themselves, the characteristic magnanimity of 
 the lords of the earth, so do the speeches and 
 treatises of her accomplished orator bring it 
 home to our imagination as no other writing 
 could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus, nor 
 Terence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quin- 
 tilian, is an adequate spokesman for the im- 
 perial city. They write Latin : Cicero writes 
 Roman. — Idea of a University : " Literature." 
 
228 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 This is the great art of Cicero himself, who, 
 whether he is engaged in statement, argument, 
 or raillery, never ceases till he has exhausted 
 the subject ; going round about it, and placing 
 it in every different light, yet without repetition 
 to offend or weary the reader. . . . We see 
 Cicero resigning his high station to Cato, who, 
 with half his abilities, little foresight, and no 
 address, possessed that first requisite for a 
 statesman — firmness. Cicero, on the contrary, 
 was irresolute, timid, and inconsistent. He 
 talked, indeed, largely of preserving a middle 
 course, but he was continually vacillating from 
 one to the other extreme ; always too confident 
 or too dejected ; incorrigibly vain of success, 
 yet meanly panegyrising the government of a 
 usurper. His foresight, sagacity, practical good 
 sense, and singular tact, were lost for want of 
 that strength of mind which points them stead- 
 ily to one object. He was never decided, never 
 (as has sometimes been observed) took an im- 
 portant step without afterwards repenting of it. 
 — Historical Sketches^ Cicero. 
 
 Horace 
 
 The poems of Horace are most melancholy 
 to read, but they bring before us most vividly 
 and piteously our state by nature ; they increase 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 229 
 
 in us a sense of our utter dependence and 
 natural helplessness ; they arm us against the 
 fallacious promises of the world, especially at 
 this day — the promises of science and literature 
 to give us light and liberty. Horace tries to 
 solace himself with the pleasures of sense, and 
 how stern a monitor he has within him, telling 
 him that death is coming. Have you seen 
 Conington's translations of Horace? If not, 
 will you accept them from me ? Horace is 
 untranslatable, but I think they will interest 
 you. — Letters y ii. p. 481. 
 
 Juvenal 
 
 Juvenal is perhaps the only ancient author 
 who habitually substitutes declamation for po- 
 etry. — EssaySy i. i. 
 
 Lucretius 
 
 Lucretius, too, had great poetical genius ; 
 but his work evinces that his miserable philos- 
 ophy was rather the result of a bewildered 
 judgment than a corrupt heart. — Essays, i. i. 
 
 Athanasius 
 
 The great saint in whose name I began to 
 write years ago, and with whom I end. Atha- 
 nasius is a great writer, simple in his diction. 
 
230 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 clear, unstudied, direct, vigorous, elastic, and, 
 above all, characteristic. This renowned Father 
 is in ecclesiastical history the special doctor of 
 the sacred truth which Arius denied, bringing it 
 out into shape and system so fully and lumi- 
 nously that he may be said to have exhausted his 
 subject, as far as it lies open to the human in- 
 tellect. — Athanasius^ ii. 
 
 And royal-hearted Athanase 
 
 With Paurs own mantle blest. 
 
 Verses, 
 
 Origen 
 
 Origen, that labour-loving man. — Athana- 
 siusy i. 47. 
 
 Origen, that man of strong heart, who has 
 paid for the unbridled freedom of his specu- 
 lations on other subjects of theology, by the 
 multitude of grievous and unfair charges which 
 burden his name with posterity. 
 
 Hooker 
 
 About Hooker there is the charm of nature 
 and reality ; he discourses, not as a theologian, 
 but as a man ; and we see in him what oth- 
 erwise might have been hidden, poetry and 
 philosophy informing his ecclesiastical matter. 
 — EssaySy i. iv. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 231 
 
 Bull 
 
 Bull, again, is, beyond his other traits, re- 
 markable for discursiveness. He is full of di- 
 gressions, which can only be excused because 
 they are so instructive and beautiful. If he is 
 often rhetorical, he is never dry ; and never 
 tires, except from the abundance of his matter. 
 — EssaySy i. iv. 
 
 Butler 
 
 The study of Butler has been to so many, 
 as it was to me, an era in their religious 
 opinions. — Apologia, chap. i. 
 
 Byron 
 
 Byron had very little versatility or elasticity 
 of genius ; he did not know how to make 
 poetry out of existing materials. He declaims 
 in his own way, and has the upper hand as 
 long as he is allowed to go on ; but if inter- 
 rogated on principles of nature and good sense, 
 he is at once put out, and brought to a stand. 
 While we do not deny the incidental beauty 
 of a poem, we are ashamed and indignant on 
 witnessing the unworthy substance in which that 
 beauty is imbedded. This remark applies 
 
232 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 strongly to the immoral compositions to which 
 Lord Byron devoted his last years. — Essays^ 
 I. i. 
 
 Burns 
 
 Burns was a man of inconsistent life : still, 
 it is known, of much really sound principle 
 at bottom. Thus his acknowledged poetical 
 talent is in no wise inconsistent with the truth 
 of our doctrine, which will refer the beauty 
 which exists in his compositions to the remains 
 of a virtuous and diviner nature within him. 
 Nay, further than this, our theory holds good, 
 even though it be shown that a depraved man 
 may write a poem. As motives short of the 
 purest lead to actions intrinsically good, so 
 frames of mind, short of virtuous, will pro- 
 duce a partial and limited poetry. But even 
 where this is instanced, the poetry of a vicious 
 mind will be inconsistent and debased. — Essays^ 
 I. i. 
 
 Scott 
 
 Curious, I have just been reading Lockhart's 
 Life of Scott, Curious, too, I feel so different 
 about it from you. It has brought more tears 
 into my eyes than any book I ever read, but 
 withal has left an impression on me like a bad 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 233 
 
 dream. I cannot get the bitter taste out of my 
 mouth. I mean it is so like vanity of vanities, 
 except that I really do trust he has done a worky 
 and may be an instrument in the hands of 
 Providence for the revival of Catholicity. — 
 Letter to Keble, in Letters^ ii. 
 
 T^hackeray 
 
 I write to express the piercing sorrow that 
 I feel in Thackeray's death. You know I 
 never saw him, but you have interested me in 
 him, and one saw in his books the workings of 
 his mind — and he has died with such awful 
 suddenness. 
 
 A new work of his had been advertised, and 
 I had looked forward with pleasure to reading 
 it ; and now the drama of his life is closed, and 
 he himself is the greatest instance of the text of 
 which he was so full, vanitas vanitatum, omnia 
 vanitas, I wonder whether he has known his 
 own decay, for a decay I think there has been. 
 I thought his last novel betrayed lassitude and 
 exhaustion of mind, and he has lain by apparent- 
 ly for a year. His last (fugitive) pieces in the 
 Cornhill have been almost sermons. One should 
 be very glad to know that he had presentiments 
 of what was to come. What a world is this ! 
 
234 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 How wretched they are who take it for their 
 portion ! Poor Thackeray ! it seems but the 
 other day since we became Catholics ; now all 
 his renown has been since that — he has made 
 his name, has been much made of, has been 
 feted, and has gone out, all since 1 846 or 1 847. 
 — Letters^ ii. 
 
 ON HIMSELF 
 
 (i) On his Conversion 
 
 When I was fifteen, a great change of thought 
 came over me. I fell under the influence of a 
 definite creed, and received into my intellect 
 impressions of dogma, which, through God's 
 mercy, have never been effaced or obscured. 
 Here I make a remark : persistence in a given 
 belief is no sufficient test of its truth, but de- 
 parture from it is at least a slur upon the man 
 who has felt so certain about it. In proportion, 
 then, as I had in 1832 a strong persuasion of 
 opinions which I have since given up, so far a 
 sort of guilt attaches to me, not only for that 
 vain confidence, but for all the various proceed- 
 ings which were the consequences of it. But 
 under this first head I have the satisfaction of 
 feeling that I have nothing to retract and nothing 
 to repent of. The main principle of the move- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 235 
 
 ment is as dear to me now as it ever was. I 
 have changed in many things : in this I have 
 not. From the age of fifteen, dogma has been 
 the fundamental principle of my religion. I 
 know no other religion ; religion, as a mere 
 sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. 
 As well can there be filial love without the fact 
 of a father as devotion without the fact of a 
 Supreme Being. What I held in 1 8 1 6, 1 held 
 in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God, I 
 shall hold it to the end. — Apologia, chaps, i. 
 and ii. 
 
 (2) On his own Style 
 
 For myself, when I was fourteen or fifteen, 
 I imitated Addison ; when I was seventeen, I 
 wrote in the style of Johnson ; about the same 
 time I fell in with the twelfth volume of Gibbon, 
 and my ears rang with the cadences of his sen- 
 tences, and I dreamed of it for a night or two. 
 Then I began to make an analysis of Thucyd- 
 ides in Gibbon's style. 
 
 It is simply the fact that I have been obliged 
 to take great pains with everything I have 
 written, and I often write chapters over and over 
 again, besides innumerable corrections and in- 
 terleaved additions. I am not stating this as a 
 
236 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 merit, only that some persons write their best 
 first, and I very seldom do. Those who are 
 good speakers may be supposed to be able to 
 write off what they want to say. I, who am not 
 a good speaker, have to correct laboriously what 
 I put on paper. However, I may truly say that 
 I never have been in the practice, since I was a 
 boy, of attempting to write well, or to form an 
 elegant style. I think I never have written 
 for writing's sake ; but my one and single 
 desire and aim has been to do what is so 
 difficult, viz. to express clearly and exactly 
 my meaning : this has been the motive prin- 
 ciple of all my corrections and re-writings. 
 When I have read over a passage which I had 
 written a few days before, I have found it so 
 obscure to myself that I have either put it 
 altogether aside, or fiercely corrected it ; for I 
 don't get any better for practice. I am as much 
 obliged to correct and re-write as I was thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 As to patterns for imitation, the only master 
 of style I have ever had (which is strange, con- 
 sidering the differences of the languages) is 
 Cicero. I think I owe a great deal to him, 
 and as far as I know to no one else. His 
 great mastery of Latin is shown especially in 
 his clearness. — Letters^ ii. 477. 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 237 
 
 (3) On a Picnic 
 
 When I was down at Darlington for the first 
 time in July 1831, I saw a number of young 
 girls collected together, blooming, and in high 
 spirits, " and all went merry as a marriage-bell." 
 And I sadly thought what changes were in 
 store ; what hard trial and discipline were in- 
 evitable ! I cannot trace their history, but 
 Phyllis and Mary Froude married, and died 
 quickly. Hurrell died. One, if not two, of 
 the young Champernownes died. My sermon 
 " Scripture a Record of Human Sorrow " {Pa- 
 rochial Sermons, vol. i.) was dictated at the sight 
 and the foreboding. At that very visit Hurrell 
 caught and had his influenza upon him, which 
 led him by slow steps to the grave. Influenza 
 was about, the forerunner of the cholera. It 
 went through the parsonage of Darlington. 
 Every morning the sharp merry party, who 
 somewhat quizzed me, had hopes it would seize 
 upon me. But I escaped, and sang my warn- 
 ing from the pulpit. — Letters y ii. 83. 
 
 (4) On his Gaucherie 
 
 Twice in my life have I, when worn with 
 work, gone to a friend's house to recruit. 
 
238 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 The first time was the above, in 1831; the 
 second in 1852-3, to Abbotsford. I there, 
 tt prof OS of nothing, and with such little con- 
 sideration that I am aghast how I could have 
 done it, urged on Hope Scott that the families 
 of literary men did not last. It is to me 
 incomprehensible how I could have been so 
 gauche, or what I was thinking of. Since then 
 the owner, young Scott Lockhart, is dead, 
 Mrs. Hope Scott, her infant son and daughter. 
 And the Duke of Norfolk, who, with his 
 family, was in the house, is at this moment hang- 
 ing between life and death. — Letters, ii. 83. 
 
 (5) On his Unvenerableness 
 
 As to myself, be quite sure that, if you saw 
 me again, you would just feel as you did when 
 you saw me before. I am not venerable, and 
 nothing can make me so. I am what I am. 
 I am very much like other people, and I do 
 not think it necessary to abstain from the 
 feelings and thoughts, not intrinsically sinful, 
 which other people have. I cannot speak 
 words of wisdom ; to some it comes naturally. 
 Do not suffer any illusive notion about me to 
 spring up in your mind. No one ever treats 
 me with deference and respect who knows me, 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 239 
 
 and from my heart I trust and pray no one 
 ever may. I have never been in office or sta- 
 tion, people have never bowed to me, and I 
 could not endure it. I tell you, frankly, my 
 infirmity, I believe, is to be rude to persons 
 who are deferential in manner to me. — Letters^ 
 
 (6) On his own Character 
 
 Next day the self-reproaching feelings in- 
 creased. I seemed to see more and more my 
 utter hollowness. I began to think of all my 
 professed principles, and felt they were mere 
 intellectual deductions from one or two admitted 
 truths. I compared myself with Keble, and 
 felt that I was merely developing his, not my, 
 convictions. Indeed, this is how I look on 
 myself; very much (as the illustration goes) as 
 a pane of glass, which transmits heat, being 
 cold itself I have a vivid perception of the 
 consequences of certain admitted principles, 
 have a considerable intellectual capacity of 
 drawing them out, have the refinement to 
 admire them, and a rhetorical or histrionic 
 power to represent them ; and, having no great 
 (i,e, no vivid) love of this world, whether 
 riches, honours, or anything else, and some 
 firmness and natural dignity of character, take 
 
240 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 the profession of them upon me, as I might 
 sing a tune which I liked — loving the Truth, 
 but not possessing it, for I believe myself at 
 heart to be nearly hollow, i,e. with little love, 
 little self-denial. I believe I have some faith, 
 that is all ; and, as to my sins, they need my 
 possessing no little amount of faith to set against 
 them, and gain their remission. By the bye, 
 this statement will account for it, how I can 
 preach the Truth without thinking much of my- 
 self. Arnold, in his letter to Grant about me, 
 accuses me among others of identifying high 
 excellence with certain peculiarities of my own, 
 — i.e, preaching myself. — Letters y i. 416. 
 
 M^^^' 
 
 ON LEAVING THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ' O mother of saints ! O school of the wise ! 
 
 O nurse of the heroic ! Of whom went forth, 
 
 in whom have dwelt, memorable names of old, 
 
 to spread the truth abroad, or to cherish and 
 
 illustrate it at home ! O thou, from whom 
 
 ^ r surrounding nations lit their lamps ! O virgin 
 
 3^^^ sof Israel ! wherefore dost thou now sit on 
 
 i/the ground and keep silence, like one of the 
 
 f foolish women who were without oil on the 
 
 coming of the Bridegroom ? Where is now 
 
 the ruler in Zion, and the doctor in the Tem- 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 241 
 
 pie, and the ascetic on Carmel, and the herald 
 in the wilderness, and the preacher in the mar- 
 ket-place ? where are thy " effectual fervent 
 prayers,'' offered in secret, and thy alms and 
 good works coming up as a memorial before 
 God ? . . . O my mother, whence is this 
 unto thee, that thou hast good things poured 
 out upon thee and canst not keep them, and 
 bearest children, yet darest not own them ? why 
 hast thou not the skill to use their services, 
 nor the heart to rejoice in their love ? how is it 
 that whatever is generous in purpose, and ten- 
 der or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy 
 promise, falls from thy bosom, and finds no 
 home within thine arms ? Who hath put this 
 note upon thee, to have a " miscarrying womb, 
 and dry breasts," to be strange to thine own 
 flesh, and thine eye cruel towards thy little 
 ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy 
 womb, who love thee and would toil for thee, 
 thou dost gaze upon them with fear, as though 
 a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence ; — 
 at best thou dost but endure, as if they had no 
 claim but on thy patience, self-possession, and 
 vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou 
 mayest. Thou makest them " stand all the 
 day idle," as the very condition of thy bearing 
 with them; or thou biddest them be gone, 
 
242 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 where they will be more welcome ; or thou 
 sellest them for nought to the stranger that 
 passes by. And what wilt thou do in the end 
 thereof? . . . Scripture is a refuge in any 
 trouble ; only let us be on our guard against 
 seeming to use it further than is fitting, or doing 
 more than sheltering ourselves under its shadow. 
 Let us use it according to our measure. It is 
 far higher and wider than our need ; and its 
 language veils our feelings while it gives ex- 
 pression to them. It is sacred and heavenly ; 
 and it restrains and purifies, while it sanc- 
 tions them. — Sermons on Subjects of the Dayy 
 xxvi. 
 
 ON LEAVING HIS CONGREGATION 
 
 And, O my brethren, O kind and affec- 
 tionate hearts, O loving friends, should you 
 know any one whose lot it has been, by 
 writing or by word of mouth, in some de- 
 gree to help you thus to act ; if he has 
 ever told you what you knew about your- 
 selves, or what you did not know ; has read 
 to you your wants or feelings, and com- 
 forted you by the very reading ; has made 
 you feel that there was a higher life than this 
 daily one, and a brighter world than that you 
 see ; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or 
 
Newman's Choicest Passages 243 
 
 opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed 
 the perplexed ; if what he has said or done 
 has ever made you take interest in him, and 
 feel well inclined towards him ; remember such 
 a one in time to come, though you hear him 
 not, and pray for him, that in all things he 
 may know God's will, and at all times he may 
 be ready to fulfil it. — Sermons on Subjects of the 
 Day^ xxvi. 
 
 ON HIS SECESSION TO ROME 
 
 Good friends, you have not far to seek ; 
 
 hahetis confitentem reum ; he pleads guilty ; he 
 has given up a fellowship and a living ; he has 
 damaged his reputation for judgment and dis- 
 cernment; he has cheerfully made himself a 
 scoiF, submitted himself as a prey to the news- 
 papers, has made himself strange to his 
 brethren ; and besides and amid all this, it is 
 true, he has said a strong word he had better 
 not have said — or uttered a sarcasm — his suc- 
 cessive disclosures have not severely kept time 
 with the growth of his misgivings, — he has 
 spoken to those with whom he should have 
 been reserved, and has been silent when he 
 should have spoken ; at times he has not 
 known where he stood, and perhaps promised 
 
244 Newman's Choicest Passages 
 
 what he could not perform. Of his sacrifices 
 he thinks and says nothing ; what he does 
 know and does painfully think of, is in sub- 
 stance just that which you so rhetorically urge 
 against him, yes, and before you urge it. His 
 self-scrutiny has preceded your dissection of 
 him. What you proclaim to the world, he 
 confesses without grudging, viz. that he has 
 but acted secundum captum suum, according to 
 what he is, not as an Angel, but as a man. In 
 the process of his conversion he has had to 
 struggle with uncertainty of mind, with the 
 duties of an actual position, with misgivings 
 of its untenableness, with the perplexity of 
 fulfilling many duties and of reconciling con- 
 flicting ones. He is not perfect; no one is 
 perfect ; not they who accuse him ; he could 
 retaliate upon them ; he could gratuitously 
 suggest reasons for their retaining their stations, 
 as they can suggest reasons for his relinquish- 
 ing his own ; it is easy to impute motives ; but 
 it would be unworthy of him to do so. He 
 leaves his critics to that Judgment to which he 
 himself appeals. May they who have spoken 
 or written harshly of recent converts to the 
 Catholic Church receive at the Great Day 
 more lenient measure than they have in this 
 case given ! — Essays, vol. ii. : " John Keble." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Dec. 15, 1883. 
 
 My dear Dr. Whyte, — I thank you for your 
 Commentary which you have sent me. It has in- 
 terested me greatly ; it rejoices me to meet with so 
 much in it which I can sympathise and concur in ; 
 and I thank you heartily for the kind references you 
 make to me in the course of it, and for the words 
 you have written in its first page. 
 
 But it pains me that so large a heart as yours 
 should so little enter into the teaching of the Catho- 
 lic Church, let alone agreeing to it. Thus you say 
 that we consider that we physically eat our Lord's 
 flesh and drink His blood in the Holy Eucharist. It 
 might be quite as truly said that in John vi. our 
 Lord speaks of " eating His flesh and drinking His 
 blood " physically, as that we so speak. We con- 
 sider the substance of His body and blood to be in 
 the Sacrament, and thereby to be given to us ; and 
 you truly say (p. 17), speaking of the Holy Trinity, 
 that the " substance " is that " awful, mysterious 
 Essence of which the qualities are not extension, or 
 colour, or figure," etc., that is, not the " phenomena" 
 which we call physis or nature, and which we could 
 only receive " physically," but that unknown Reality 
 
 247 
 
248 Newman 
 
 to which sensible qualities attach themselves and be- 
 long, without being it. 
 
 Excuse this outbreak of controversy, and believe 
 me to be most truly yours, 
 
 John H. Card. Newman. 
 
 The Rev. A. Whyte, D.D. 
 
 Dec. 21, 1883. 
 
 My dear Dr. Whyte, — It is very kind in you 
 to ask me to suggest an emendation in the passage 
 I pointed out to you, now that a second edition is 
 called for. I hope I shall propose nothing that you 
 cannot accept. Anyhow, I shall quite understand 
 any difficulty which may arise, and shall be sure that 
 you grant me as much as you can. I quote some 
 sentences from our authoritative documents as refer- 
 ences^ but, of course, only in justification of any 
 changes in your text, not as if I wanted them in- 
 troduced into it. — Very sincerely yours, 
 
 John H. Card. Newman. 
 
 P.S. — I ought, in my first letter, to have expressed 
 my sense of the service you are doing to the cause 
 of Christian charity by your quotations from authors 
 external to your own Communion. 
 
 edition I. OF catechism, pp. 184-5. 
 
 "This is directed against the Popish doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation. According to that doctrine the 
 bread and wine are changed into the very flesh and 
 
Appendix 249 
 
 blood of Christ, so that all communicants literally 
 and physically eat the flesh and drink the blood of 
 Christ." 
 
 PROPOSED CORRECTION. 
 
 This is directed against the Popish doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation. According to this doctrine the 
 substance of the bread and wine is converted into 
 the substance of the very flesh and blood of Christ, 
 so that all communicants literally and substantially 
 partake His flesh and blood. {Vide supr.^ pp. 1 7 and 
 
 18.) 
 
 B'm., Dec. a6, 1883. 
 
 Dear Dr. Whyte, — I am sorry to have given 
 you the trouble of a correspondence, and feel I have 
 to ask your pardon. 
 
 As to your kind proposal to insert my letter into 
 your second edition, I will not dream of consenting 
 to it. 
 
 It would be a poor return on my part to your 
 courteous treatment of me in your book, to turn 
 your catechism into a controversy. Nor will I do 
 it. The two ideas are quite distinct. Nor would it 
 be fair to myself, as if I felt sore personally when my 
 faith was misconceived. What claim have I to in- 
 troduce myself into your volume ? My only possi- 
 ble claim would be your thinking that I had made a 
 case. To consider that I had not^ yet to insert my 
 letter, would be granting more than you have a right 
 to grant, in justice to yourself. 
 
250 Newman 
 
 Nothing, then, can make me approve a course 
 which, though generous in you, does you harm with- 
 out doing me good. — Your faithful servant, 
 
 John H. Card. Newman. 
 
 B'm., Dec. 31, 1883. 
 
 My dear Dr. Whyte, — You are treating me 
 with extreme kindness, and if any word of mine to 
 you implies annoyance in me, I assure you it mis- 
 represents me, and the nearest approach I have had 
 to any feeling of pain has been a great anxiety lest I 
 should have quoted our profession of doctrine incom- 
 pletely, and that I had left out any authoritative tes- 
 timonies or popular beliefs which would give to our 
 tenet a different aspect. 
 
 But indeed I sincerely think such a different as- 
 pect cannot be found. Not the most ignorant or 
 stupid Catholic thinks that he eats physically the 
 body of our Lord. What we all believe is that we 
 partake the Body and Blood that hung upon the 
 Cross, and that, in the words of the Anglican ser- 
 vice, " that our sinful bodies may be made clean by 
 his Body, and our souls washed through the most 
 precious Blood " ; but as to the how He brings this 
 to pass, it is a mystery. 
 
 To strengthen my feeling that I had acted quite 
 fairly by you, I put my hands on a copy of our 
 authoritative Penny Catechism taught in our schools, 
 and I now send it, if you will kindly accept it. You 
 will find the passages bearing on the point at pp. 42-44. 
 
Appendix 251 
 
 Inverted commas are all that can be needed, and 
 are a happy thought. — Most truly yours, 
 
 J. H. Card. Newman. 
 
 B'm., Jan. 2, 1884. 
 
 Dear Dr. Whyte, — Since I sent to you my 
 letter, agreeing to your printing " substance," etc., 
 in inverted commas, I have been teazed with the 
 thought I have not been fair to you, as I will ex- 
 plain. 
 
 You say " this is directed against the Popish doc- 
 trine." I am right in saying that the " Popish 
 doctrine " is not what you have stated it to be, but I 
 am not fair to yourself when I allow you to propose 
 to say that " the Shorter Catechism " directs its 
 words against the doctrine (really ours) of " the 
 change of substance^ Is it not more likely that its 
 writers knew little, or thought little, of the decrees of 
 the Council of Trent, and were aiming at the extreme 
 notions of the multitude who were in many places 
 superstitious and sadly in want of instruction ? 
 
 This doubt has made me quite miserable, since 
 you have been so very kind to me ; and I so confide 
 in that kindness that I would rather put the matter 
 entirely into your hands without me. 
 
 Excuse this bad writing, but the power to hold a 
 pen is going from me. — Very sincerely yours, 
 
 John H. Card. Newman. 
 
252 Newman 
 
 Dec. 31, 1885. 
 
 My dear Dr. Whyte, — I am very glad that you 
 give me the opportunity (as you do by your gift of 
 Mr. Mackintosh's volume) of wishing you a Happy 
 New Year, which I do with all my heart. 
 
 Your recommendation will go very far in making 
 me take an interest in it ; but you must recollect my 
 age. I read and write very slowly, and the day is 
 ended ere it has well begun. And, though I do so 
 little, I am soon tired, and am always ready for the 
 indulgence of a sound sleep. 
 
 I hope you will allow it, if I send to you and to all 
 who are dear to you my Christmas blessing. — Most 
 truly yours, J. H. Card. Newman. 
 

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