CARDINAL NEWMAN
I
There are some men whose names are inseparably and exclusively a.s.sociated with movements; there are others who are for ever united in human memories with places; it is the happy fortune of the distinguished man whose name is at the top of this page to be able to make good both t.i.tles to an estate in our minds and hearts; for whilst his fierce intellectual energy made him the leader of a great movement, his rare and exquisite tenderness has married his name to a lovely place.
Whenever men"s thoughts dwell upon the revival of Church authority in England and America during this century, they will recall the Vicar of St. Mary"s, Oxford, who lived to become a Cardinal of Rome, and whenever the lover of all things that are quiet, and gentle, and true in life, and literature, visits Oxford he will find himself wondering whether snap-dragon still grows outside the windows of the rooms in Trinity, where once lived the author of the _Apologia_.
The Rev. John Wesley was a distinguished man, if ever there was one, and his name is a.s.sociated with a movement certainly as remarkable as, and a great deal more useful than, the one connected with the name of Newman.
Wesley"s great missionary tours in Devon and Cornwall, and the wild, remote parts of Lancashire, lack no single element of sublimity. To this day the memories of those apostolic journeys are green and precious, and a source of strength and joy: the portrait of the eager preacher hangs up in almost every miner"s cottage, whilst his name is p.r.o.nounced with reverence by a hundred thousand lips. "You seem a very temperate people here," once observed a thirsty pedestrian (who was, indeed, none other than the present writer) to a Cornish miner, "how did it happen?" He replied solemnly, raising his cap, "There came a man amongst us once, and his name was John Wesley." Wesley was an Oxford man, but he is not much in men"s thoughts as they visit that city of enchantment. Why is this? It is because, great as Wesley was, he lacked charm. As we read his diaries and letters, we are interested, we are moved, but we are not pleased. Now, Oxford pleases and charms. Therefore it is, that when we allow ourselves a day in her quadrangles we find ourselves thinking of Dr. Newman, and his Trinity snap-dragon, and how the Rev. William James, "some time in the year 1823," taught him the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the course of a walk round Christchurch Meadow, rather than of Wesley and his prayer-meetings at Lincoln, which were proclaimed by the authorities as savouring of sedition.
A strong personal attachment of the kind which springs up from reading an author, which is distilled through his pages, and turns his foibles, even his follies, into pleasant things we would not for the world have altered, is apt to cause the reader, who is thus affected, to exaggerate the importance of any intellectual movement with which the author happened to be a.s.sociated. There are, I know, people who think this is notably so in Dr. Newman"s case. Crusty men are to be met with, who rudely say they have heard enough of the Oxford movement, and that the time is over for penning ecstatic paragraphs about Dr. Newman"s personal appearance in the pulpit at St. Mary"s. I think these crusty people are wrong. The movement was no doubt an odd one in some of its aspects--it wore a very academic air indeed; and to be academic is to be ridiculous, in the opinion of many. Our great Northern towns lived their grimy lives amidst the whirl of their machinery, quite indifferent to the movement.
Our huge Nonconformist bodies knew no more of the University of Oxford in those days, than they did of the University of Tubingen. This movement sent no missionaries to the miners, and its tracts were not of the kind that are served suddenly upon you in the streets like legal process, but were, in fact, bulky treatises stuffed full of the dead languages. London, of course, heard about the movement, and, so far as she was not tickled by the comicality of the notion of anything really important happening outside her cab-radius, was irritated by it. Mr.
Henry Rogers poked heavy fun at it in the _Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Isaac Taylor wrote two volumes to prove that ancient Christianity was a drivelling and childish superst.i.tion, and in the opinion of some pious Churchmen succeeded in doing so. But for the most part people left the movement alone, unless they happened to be Bishops or very clerically connected. "The bishops," says Dr. Newman, "began charging against us."
But bishops" charges are amongst the many seemingly important things that do not count in England. It is said to be the duty of an archdeacon to read his bishop"s charge, but it is undoubted law that a mandamus will not be granted to compel him to do so.
But notwithstanding this aspect of the case, it was a genuine thought-movement in propagating which these long-coated parsons, with their dry jokes, strange smiles, and queer notions were engaged. They used to drive about the country in gigs, from one parsonage to another, and leave their tracts behind them. They were not concerned with the flocks--their message was to the shepherds. As for the Dissenters, they had nothing to say to them, except that their very presence in a parish was a plenary argument for the necessity of the movement.
The Tractarians met with the usual fortune of those who peddle new ideas. Some rectors did not want to be primitive--more did not know what it meant; but enough were found pathetically anxious to read a meaning into their services and offices, to make it plain that the Tracts really were "for" and not "against" the times.
The great plot, plan, or purpose, call it what you will, of the Tractarian movement was to make Churchmen believe with a personal conviction that the Church of England was not a mere National Inst.i.tution, like the House of Commons or the game of cricket, but a living branch of that Catholic Church which G.o.d had from the beginning, endowed with sacramental gifts and graces, with a Priesthood apostolically descended, with a Creed, precise and specific, which it was the Church"s duty to teach, and man"s to believe, and with a ritual and discipline to be practised and maintained, with daily piety and entire submission.
These were new ideas in 1833. When Dr. Newman was ordained in 1824, he has told us, he did not look on ordination as a sacramental rite, nor did he ascribe to baptism any supernatural virtue.
It cannot be denied that the Tractarians had their work before them. But they had forces on their side.
It is always pleasant to rediscover the meaning of words and forms which have been dulled by long usage. This is why etymology is so fascinating.
By the natural bent of our minds we are lovers of whatever things are true and real. We hanker after facts. To get a grip of reality is a pleasure so keen--most of our faith is so desperate a "make-believe,"
that it is not to be wondered at that pious folk should have been found who rejoiced to be told that what they had been saying and doing all the years of their lives really had a meaning and a history of its own. One would have to be very unsympathetic not to perceive that the time we are speaking of must have been a very happy one for many a devout soul. The dry bones lived--formal devotions were turned into joyous acts of faith and piety. The Church became a Living Witness to the Truth. She could be interrogated--she could answer. The old calendar was revived, and Saint"s Day followed Saint"s Day, and season season, in the sweet procession of the Christian Year. Pretty girls got up early, made the sign of the Cross, and, unscared by devils, tripped across the dewy meadows to Communion. Grave men read the Fathers, and found themselves at home in the Fourth Century.
A great writer had, so it appears, all unconsciously prepared the way for this Neo-Catholicism. Dr. Newman has never forgotten to pay tribute to Sir Walter Scott.
Sir Walter"s work has proved to be of so permanent a character, his insight into all things Scotch so deep and true, and his human worth and excellence so rare and n.o.ble, that it has hardly been worth while to remember the froth and effervescence he at first occasioned; but that he did create a movement in the Oxford direction is certain. He made the old Catholic times interesting. He was not indeed, like the Tractarians, a man of "primitive" mind; but he was romantic, and it all told. For this we have the evidence not only of Dr. Newman (a very nice observer), but also of the delightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently-to-be-praised George Borrow--Borrow, the Friend of Man, at whose bidding la.s.situde and languor strike their tents and flee; and health and spirits, adventure and human comradeship, take up the reins of life, whistle to the horses, and away you go!
Borrow has indeed, in the Appendix to the _Romany Rye_, written of Sir Walter after a fashion for which I hope he has been forgiven. A piece of invective more terrible, more ungenerous, more savagely and exultingly cruel, is nowhere to be found. I shudder when I think of it. Had another written it, nothing he ever wrote should be in the same room with the _Heart of Midlothian_, _Redgauntlet_, and _The Antiquary_. I am not going to get angry with George Borrow. I say at once--I cannot afford it. But neither am I going to quote from the Appendix. G.o.d forbid! I can find elsewhere what will suit my purpose just as well. Readers of _Lavengro_ will remember the Man in Black. It is hard to forget him, the scandalous creature, or his story of the ironmonger"s daughter at Birmingham "who screeches to the piano the Lady of the Lake"s hymn to the Virgin Mary, always weeps when Mary Queen of Scots is mentioned, and fasts on the anniversary of the death of that very wise martyr, Charles I. Why, said the Man in Black, I would engage to convert such an idiot to popery in a week, were it worth my trouble. O Cavaliere Gualtereo, avete fatto molto in favore della Santa Sede."
Another precursor was Coleridge, who (amongst other things) called attention to the writings of the earlier Anglican divines--some of whom were men of primitive tempers and Catholic aspirations. Andrews and Laud, Jackson, Bull, Hammond and Thornd.y.k.e--sound divines to a man--found the dust brushed off them. The second-hand booksellers, a wily and observant race, became alive to the fact that though Paley and Warburton, Horsley and Hoadley, were not worth the brown paper they came wrapped up in, seventeenth-century theology would bear being marked high.
Thus was the long Polar Winter that had befallen Anglican theology broken up, and the icebergs began moving about after a haphazard and even dangerous fashion--but motion is always something.
What has come to the Movement? It is hard to say. Its great leader has written a book of fascinating interest to prove that it was not a genuine Anglican movement at all; that it was foreign to the National Church, and that neither was its life derived from, nor was its course in the direction of, the National Church. But this was after he himself had joined the Church of Rome. n.o.body, however, ventured to contradict him, nor is this surprising when we remember the profusion of argument and imagery with which he supported his case.
A point was reached, and then things were allowed to drop. The Church of Rome received some distinguished converts with her usual well-bred composure, and gave them little things to do in their new places. The Tracts for the Times, neatly bound, repose on many shelves. Tract No.
90, that fierce bomb-sh.e.l.l which once scattered confusion through clerical circles, is perhaps the only bit of Dr. Newman"s writing one does not, on thinking of, wish to sit down at once to re-read. The fact is that the movement, as a movement with a terminus _ad quem_, was fairly beaten by a power fit to be matched with Rome herself--John Bullism. John Bull could not be got to a.s.sume a Catholic demeanour. When his judges denied that the grace of Baptism was a dogma of his faith, Bull, instead of behaving as did the people of Milan when Ambrose was persecuted by an Arian Government, was hugely pleased, clapped his thigh, and exclaimed, through the mouth of Lord John Russell, that the ruling was "sure to give general satisfaction," as indeed it did.
The work of the movement can still be seen in the new spirit that has descended upon the Church of England and in the general heightening of Church principles; but the movement itself is no longer to be seen, or much of the temper or modes of thought of the Tractarians. The High Church clergyman of to-day is no Theologian--he is an Opportunist. The Tractarian took his stand upon Antiquity--he laboured his points, he was always ready to prove his Rule of Faith and to define his position. His successor, though he has appropriated the results of the struggle, does not trouble to go on waging it. He is as a rule no great reader--you may often search his scanty library in vain for the works of Bishop Jackson.
Were you to ask for them, it is quite possible he would not know to what bishop of that name you were referring. He is as hazy about the Hypostatic Union as are many laymen about the Pragmatic Sanction. He is all for the People and for filling his Church. The devouring claims of the Church of Rome do not disturb his peace of mind. He thinks it very rude of her to dispute the validity of his orders--but, then, foreigners are rude! And so he goes on his hard-working way, with his high doctrines and his early services, and has neither time nor inclination for those studies that lend support to his priestly pretensions.
This temper of mind has given us peace in our time, and has undoubtedly promoted the cause of Temperance and other good works; but some day or another the old questions will have to be gone into again, and the Anglican claim to be a Church, Visible, Continuous, Catholic, and Gifted, investigated--probably for the last time.
Cynics may declare that it will be but a storm in a teacup--a dispute in which none but "women, priests, and peers" will be called upon to take part--but it is not an obviously wise policy to be totally indifferent to what other people are thinking about--simply because your own thoughts are running in other directions.
But all this is really no concern of mine. My object is to call attention to Dr. Newman"s writings from a purely literary point of view.
The charm of Dr. Newman"s style necessarily baffles description: as well might one seek to a.n.a.lyse the fragrance of a flower, or to expound in words the jumping of one"s heart when a beloved friend unexpectedly enters the room. It is hard to describe charm. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who is a poet, gets near it:
"And what but gentleness untired, And what but n.o.ble feeling warm, Wherever seen, howe"er inspired, Is grace, is charm?"
One can of course heap on words. Dr. Newman"s style is pellucid, it is animated, it is varied; at times icy cold, it oftener glows with a fervent heat; it employs as its obedient and well-trained servant, a vast vocabulary, and it does so always with the ease of the educated gentleman, who by a sure instinct ever avoids alike the ugly pedantry of the book-worm, the forbidding accents of the lawyer, and the stiff conceit of the man of scientific theory. Dr. Newman"s sentences sometimes fall upon the ear like well-considered and final judgments, each word being weighed and counted out with dignity and precision; but at other times the demeanour and language of the judge are hastily abandoned, and, subst.i.tuted for them, we encounter the impetuous torrent--the captivating rhetoric, the brilliant imagery, the frequent examples, the repet.i.tion of the same idea in different words, of the eager and accomplished advocate addressing men of like pa.s.sions with himself.
Dr. Newman always aims at effect, and never misses it. He writes as an orator speaks, straight at you. His object is to convince, and to convince by engaging your attention, exciting your interest, enlivening your fancy. It is not his general practice to address the pure reason.
He knows (he well may) how little reason has to do with men"s convictions. "I do not want," he says, "to be converted by a smart syllogism." In another place he observes: "The heart is commonly reached not through the reason--but through the imagination by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history and by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, books subdue us, deeds inflame us." I have elsewhere ventured upon a comparison between Burke and Newman. Both men, despite their subtlety and learning and super-refinement, their love of fine points and their splendid capacity for stating them in language so apt as to make one"s admiration breathless, took very broad, common-sense, matter-of-fact views of humanity, and ever had the ordinary man and woman in mind as they spoke and wrote. Politics and Religion existed in their opinion, for the benefit of plain folk, for Richard and for Jane, or, in other words, for living bundles of hopes and fears, doubts and certainties, prejudices and pa.s.sions. Anarchy and Atheism are in their opinion the two great enemies of the Human Race. How are they to be frustrated and confounded, men and women being what they are? Dr. Newman, recluse though he is, has always got the world stretched out before him; its unceasing roar sounds in his ear as does the murmur of ocean in the far inland sh.e.l.l. In one of his Catholic Sermons, the sixth of his Discourses to Mixed Congregations, there is a gorgeous piece of rhetoric in which he describes the people looking in at the shop-windows and reading advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers. Many of his pages positively glow with light and heat and colour. One is at times reminded of Fielding. And all this comparing, and distinguishing, and ill.u.s.trating, and appealing, and describing, is done with the practised hand of a consummate writer and orator. He is as subtle as Gladstone, and as moving as Erskine; but whereas Gladstone is occasionally clumsy and Erskine is frequently crude, Newman is never clumsy, Newman is never crude, but always graceful, always mellowed.
Humour he possesses in a marked degree. A quiet humour, of course, as befits his sober profession and the gravity of the subjects on which he loves to discourse. It is not the humour that is founded on a lively sense of the incongruous. This kind, though the most delightful of all, is apt, save in the hands of the great masters, the men whom you can count upon your fingers, to wear a slightly professional aspect. It happens unexpectedly, but all the same we expect it to happen, and we have got our laughter ready. Newman"s quiet humour always takes us unawares, and is accepted gratefully, partly on account of its intrinsic excellence, and partly because we are glad to find that the
"Pilgrim pale with Paul"s sad girdle bound"
has room for mirth in his heart.
In sarcasm Dr. Newman is pre-eminent. Here his extraordinary powers of compression, which are little short of marvellous in one who has also such a talent for expansion, come to his aid and enable him to squeeze into a couple of sentences, pleadings, argument, judgment, and execution. Had he led the secular life, and adopted a Parliamentary career, he would have been simply terrific, for his weapons of offence are both numerous and deadly. His sentences stab--his invective destroys. The pompous high-placed imbecile mouthing his plat.i.tudes, the wordy sophister with his oven full of half-baked thoughts, the ill-bred rhetorician with his tawdry aphorisms, the heartless hate-producing satirist, would have gone down before his sword and spear. But G.o.d was merciful to these sinners: Newman became a Priest and they Privy Councillors.
And lastly, all these striking qualities and gifts float about in a pleasant atmosphere. As there are some days even in England when merely to go out and breathe the common air is joy, and when, in consequence, that grim tyrant, our bosom"s lord
"Sits lightly in his throne,"
so, to take up almost any one of Dr. Newman"s books, and they are happily numerous--between twenty and thirty volumes--is to be led away from "evil tongues," and the "sneers of selfish men," from the mud and the mire, the shoving and pushing that gather and grow round the pig-troughs of life, into a diviner ether, a purer air, and is to spend your time in the company of one who, though he may sometimes astonish, yet never fails to make you feel (to use Carlyle"s words about a very different author), "that you have pa.s.sed your evening well and n.o.bly, as in a temple of wisdom, not ill and disgracefully as in brawling tavern supper-rooms with fools and noisy persons."
The tendency to be egotistical noticeable in some persons who are free from the faintest taint of egotism is a tendency hard to account for--but delightful to watch.
"Anything," says glorious John Dryden, "though ever so little, which a man speaks of himself--in my opinion, is still too much." A sound opinion most surely, and yet how interesting are the personal touches we find scattered up and down Dryden"s n.o.ble prefaces. So with Newman--his dignity, his self-restraint, his taste, are all the greatest stickler for a stiff upper lip and the consumption of your own smoke could desire, and yet the personal note is frequently sounded. He is never afraid to strike it when the perfect harmony that exists between his character and his style demands its sound, and so it has come about that we love what he has written because he wrote it, and we love him who wrote it because of what he has written.
I now approach by far the pleasantest part of my task, namely, the selection of two or three pa.s.sages from Dr. Newman"s books by way of ill.u.s.trating what I have taken the liberty to say are notable characteristics of his style.
Let me begin with a chance specimen of the precision of his language.
The pa.s.sage is from the prefatory notice the Cardinal prefixed to the Rev. William Palmer"s _Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years 1840, 1841_. It is dated 1882, and is consequently the writing of a man over eighty years of age: "William Palmer was one of those earnest-minded and devout men, forty years since, who, deeply convinced of the great truth that our Lord had inst.i.tuted, and still acknowledges and protects, a Visible Church--one, individual, and integral; Catholic, as spread over the earth, Apostolic, as coeval with the Apostles of Christ, and Holy, as being the dispenser of His Word and Sacraments--considered it at present to exist in three main branches, or rather in a triple presence, the Latin, the Greek, and the Anglican, these three being one and the same Church distinguishable from each other by secondary, fortuitous, and local, though important characteristics. And whereas the whole Church in its fulness was, as they believed, at once and severally Anglican, Greek, and Latin, so in turn each one of those three was the whole Church; whence it followed that, whenever any one of the three was present, the other two, by the nature of the case, was absent, and therefore the three could not have direct relations with each other, as if they were three substantive bodies, there being no real difference between them except the external accident of place. Moreover, since, as has been said, on a given territory there could not be more than one of the three, it followed that Christians generally, wherever they were, were bound to recognise, and had a claim to be recognised by that one; ceasing to belong to the Anglican Church, as Anglican, when they were at Rome, and ignoring Rome, as Rome, when they found themselves at Moscow. Lastly, not to acknowledge this inevitable outcome of the initial idea of the Church, viz., that it was both everywhere and one, was bad logic, and to act in opposition to it was nothing short of setting up altar against altar, that is, the hideous sin of schism, and a sacrilege. This I conceive to be the formal teaching of Anglicanism."
The most carefully considered judgments of Lord Westbury or Lord Cairns may be searched in vain for finer examples of stern accuracy and beautiful aptness of language.
For examples of what may be called Newman"s oratorical rush, one has not far to look--though when torn from their context and deprived of their conclusion they are robbed of three-fourths of their power. Here is a pa.s.sage from his second lecture addressed to the Anglican Party of 1833.
It is on the Life of the National Church of England.
"Doubtless the National religion is alive. It is a great power in the midst of us, it wields an enormous influence; it represses a hundred foes; it conducts a hundred undertakings; it attracts men to it, uses them, rewards them; it has thousands of beautiful homes up and down the country where quiet men may do its work and benefit its people; it collects vast sums in the shape of voluntary offerings, and with them it builds Churches, prints and distributes innumerable Bibles, books, and tracts, and sustains missionaries in all parts of the earth. In all parts of the earth it opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as anti-christian, bribes the world against her, obstructs her influence, apes her authority, and confuses her evidence. In all parts of the world it is the religion of gentlemen, of scholars, of men of substance, and men of no personal faith at all. If this be life, if it be life to impart a tone to the Court and Houses of Parliament, to Ministers of State, to law and literature, to universities and schools, and to society, if it be life to be a principle of order in the population, and an organ of benevolence and almsgiving towards the poor, if it be life to make men decent, respectable, and sensible, to embellish and reform the family circle, to deprive vice of its grossness and to shed a glow over avarice and ambition; if, indeed, it is the life of religion to be the first jewel in the Queen"s crown, and the highest step of her throne, then doubtless the National Church is replete, it overflows with life; but the question has still to be answered: life of what kind?"
For a delightful example of Dr. Newman"s humour, which is largely, if not entirely, a playful humour, I will remind the reader of the celebrated imaginary speech against the British Const.i.tution attributed to "a member of the junior branch of the Potemkin family," and supposed to have been delivered at Moscow in the year 1850. It is too long for quotation, but will be found in the first of the _Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England_. The whole book is one of the best humoured books in the English language.
Of his sarcasm, the following example, well-known as it is, must be given. It occurs in the _Essay on the Prospects of the Anglican Church_, which is reprinted from the _British Critic_ in the first volume of the _Essays Critical and Historical_.