"I also in all things please all men, not seeking that which is profitable to myself, but to many, that they may be saved." -- Saint Paul.
THE upheaval of the sixteenth century bequeathed to the world that would embattle the Catholic Spirit a two-edged sword: one, the humanistic elevation of nature and consequent debasement of the supernatural; the other, the astringent, menacingly ascetic outlook of the Puritan. It was against the second of these that Kenelm Digby, poetic and eruditely romantic, lifted an unwieldy voice, even though the matter he dealt with was the comparatively definite and simple life of the past. Then there arose from the midst of the thinkers of Protestant England a man whose powers were resolutely devoted to conquering the first enemy and the future it seemed destined to rule; who would read the scrolls of the final atheistic laughter at God and write over them a palimpsest of Christian confidence; who would attempt to fathom the dark and complex soul of all time and set down his findings with the clearness of a logbook. Again, as the human embryo is said to mirror the growth of the race, so John Henry Newman, triumphing over modern thought by the victory gained within himself, has seemed to many a symbol of the intellectual development through which religiously unsettled moderns may have to pass.
There is little reason why we should insist here upon the greatness of Newman's influence. A dozen gifted minds have confirmed Disraeli's opinion that he was the most powerful religious thinker to appear in England during several centuries; and we have only to consider the amazing betterment in the position of English Catholicism during the last generation to realize how much, even in an outward way, was accomplished by the man who stirred Oxford. Everyone admits that he possessed a remarkable mind and quite unusual gifts of expression, but the world has rightly placed above even these the vigour of his personality. That is almost as firmly established a tradition as the genius of Napoleon. The elite of England were moved by the fervour and glory of his creed. Wherever he passed in that springtime of the Catholic revival, faith sprang up from the wayside; he was the sower of God, upon whom was the seal of election. Later, however, there came a time when his effectiveness seemed to have vanished, when his subtle, indefatigably cautious theology was doomed to be thought half-hearted allegiance by men at the controversial front, when his heart was wrung by denunciation, by sheer failure, until it seemed of little use in the world. The very triumphs of his later years were bloody from his wounds. The delicate steel of his own sensibility pierced him through.
But, whether men followed or opposed or silenced him, it was never forgotten that he was a religious teacher of tremendous significance. The active man might chafe at Newman's inaction; the pedant might try to make of him the kind of clever artist that he could understand; the short-sighted might accuse him of error or dishonesty; still, no one ever denied that he was, uniquely, Newman. A kind of marvelous wholeness distinguished his character and thought, a white light to be captured by no prism. The single apostolic purpose of his mission is evident from first to last, but the points at which it touches life are multitudinous and astonishingly varied. He considered existence from more points of view than any of the great Victorian novelists had known, but he never forgot the purpose of his examination. One feels in reading Newman that one's personal intellectual discoveries have been anticipated, that the Cardinal has been everywhere in spiritual geography, although he seems quietly to take it for granted that he should have been there and so to make nothing of it. In a sense, he is like a masterful major-domo, possessing the keys to all the chambers of the soul, even the darkest of which he has explored and aired and lighted up with a touch that betrays his watchful presence.
The universality of his mind's action images the scope of his personality. Newman's character is a mysterious blend of extraordinary qualities: to the study of experience he brought the rarest energy both of analysis and deduction; solitary, sensitive, mystically conscious of the scrutiny of God, he nevertheless read the souls about him with the same surety which distinguished his examination of himself; contemplative by nature, he still coveted, needed, action. His eye, glorying in the beauty of the world, was fixed sternly on its deepest, most ascetic, cravings. There is a sense in which Newman's appearance seems, also, a complement of his inner nature: no one ever looked more like a dignified old lady and no one was ever more of a man. Remember the "head of Caesar" that Froude speaks of; the preacher at St. Mary's, Oxford; the stillness that followed his retirement, of which Dr. Shairp says, "It was as when, to one kneeling by night, in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still"; the pilgrim, going to St. Peter's in Rome, barefoot, praying for guidance, with deep furrows tightening their grip on his countenance; the Oratorian priest, secluded in the obscurity of Birmingham, teaching boys to enact Terence and himself to be patient; the Cardinal, finally, his aged face plaintive above the magnificence of the purple garments. Remember these things and as many more if you would read Newman correctly.
John Henry Newman was born in London on February 21, 1801, of a London banker whose wife traced descent from Huguenot émigrés. There was nothing to distinguish the family from the Victorian middle-class to which it belonged, excepting, perhaps, certain rather uncommon intellectual concerns. The life about them was tranquil and reticent, governed by the restraints, the conventions, and the practical virtues which characterized a society the individual members of which were more than a little eccentric, relatively unsocial. Religion was very far from being a dominant interest and, but for their diligent reading of the King James Version, men would have come near forgetting all about their souls. "He was a very philosophical young gentleman" is his sister's description of Newman at the age of eleven. "Philosophical" meant extraordinary reticence, gentleness, aversion to the rougher games, quick sensibility, and a taste for dreamy thinking. "Unknown influences" and "magic powers" interested him, and it is not strange that at fifteen he experienced a Calvinistic conversion from which he drew and retained the idea that "there are two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings -- myself and my Creator."
Depth of religious experience in the soul of a youth inordinately gifted is not unusual, but with Newman eagerness of mind overcame a dangerous egoism and dispelled the quietism of reverie. He could not help seeing the world, being interested in the world. His curiosity was skeptical, interrogative; and for a time he sought the response to his query in Gibbon and Locke. Nor had his religious instability vanished when, at Oxford, he turned from the study of law to enter orders, and when he was, on a memorable day in 1822, elected Fellow of Oriel College. The young Newman possessed all the reflectiveness, the sincerity, and the gaucherie of a great spirit rising out of an environment where it has not been at home. It was Whately, the massive, somewhat worldly logician, who first recognized the talent of this forbiddingly introspective youth; it was Whately who, addressing Newman as an equal, won a temporary disciple for liberalism. Nevertheless, fascinated though he might be with the dialectic of his master, Newman had now come into contact with the world, and his omnivorous intellect was never any longer at rest. More and more deeply conscious of the Spirit of God, confident of a destiny, he set out on the tireless search for Truth.
The growing mind of Newman proved unusually receptive and at the same time daringly original in the use it made of discoveries. No experience stirred him more deeply, perhaps, than the death of a favorite sister; he began to consider the material world illusory, to look for spiritual realities veiled by externals, in short, to read vastly more of Plato into his somewhat arid Christianity. With this there came naturally a new interest in the significance of personality. He began to feel strongly the power of love, and the circle of friends that formed at Oxford answered his appeal. First among these was Hurrell Froude, a fervent youngster who, like Digby, had drunk the wine of the Catholic Ages and sensed the feebleness of the prevailing creed, though his life was doomed to end before he had reached the goal. Then there was John Keble, at the height of his influence as a spiritual leader and renowned for the authorship of "The Christian Year." Keble's character was amiable and so was his religion, fed as it had been on the poetry of the older Anglican divines. To the warmth of this atmosphere, vibrant with enthusiasm, with the romantic aspiration for more generous beliefs, Newman's heart opened. It was clear that a part of Oxford, at least, had caught echoes of Chateaubriand and Walter Scott; and the ancient walls which had enshrined the scholars of Catholic England began once more to drink in whispers of Christendom. But this coterie of men was far too sincere for dilettantism. Gradually their concerns left the domain of the purely speculative and turned practical: they felt a keen interest in the life of the primitive Church, where belief and action had obviously been less formal and intensely more vital than they were in modern England. What, at this particular stage of his life's journey, were the actual aims of Newman? He was no longer the mere philosopher, absorbed in the idea of the creature's apprehension of the Creator, but a man who had discovered the immeasurable realities of love. Existence had become for him an urge to find God in the world, to seek the body of doctrine and symbol in which the Spirit had been expressed. Newman the idealist had passed; Newman the liberal realist had been a transitory figure. Envisaging the realm of his own thought, weighing with the most resolute sincerity the worth of his own convictions, he now began to penetrate the minds of others, especially of those to whom religion made no marked appeal. Conscious for the first time of a mission to teach, he instinctively adopted the invaluable method of example. "Know thyself" and "Know others" were twin and constant stars. The power of the Oxford sermons, to which men listened with bated breath, lay in the utter sincerity of the preacher's experience, thinking, and emotion. England had heard no such speech for centuries.
These Oxford sermons were the result of one of those recurrent crises in Newman's life, in which his essentially contemplative mind encountered the shock of the outer world. He had come to realize the necessary existence of the Christian Church as the custodian of the spiritual life bequeathed by the Saviour, and to see that his countrymen were totally indifferent to purity of doctrine and freedom of action in that Church. Rather naively, he fancied that the return of the Anglican Communion to the belief and practice of the Fathers of the Church could be accomplished by means of certain definite reforms. Then, gradually, he awoke to the difficulties of the situation and to the poverty of his own knowledge. What were the reasons for believing? What had the Fathers taught? How had the Church of England become the inheritor of that teaching? Nothing could lessen the burning eagerness of Newman to answer these questions. In his effort to discover the reality of the Apostolic Church, he undertook tedious researches into the history of the Arians. The total indifference of his mind to affairs alien to this great spiritual quest is interestingly revealed in a letter written at the time in response to a gentleman who wished Newman to address a popular gathering. Loftily though kindly, he states that he has nothing to say on the subject proposed, being "engaged on a history of the Arians." In reality the interests of his life were world-wide, but he never compromised with his mission.
The time had come, however, when Newman's earnest apologetics could no longer avoid the reality of Rome. History revealed the continuous energy of the Papacy, and Continental thought never overlooked the importance of its modern position. But he had been born into the Church of England, had imbibed anti-Roman views with mother's milk, and had learned to love the sweetness and majesty of those early Anglican divines who had never doubted the apostolic character of their creed. And, therefore, while Newman might make increasingly larger concessions, he would not cease to repudiate the dominion of the Popes. At this time an important, seemingly Providential change in his environment considerably modified his views. Having endangered his health by too much study, Newman set out with Froude on a cruise of the Mediterranean. Catholic life impressed him very deeply: the cities he visited, the services he attended, the people he met, gave him a view of things that he had never before encompassed. Nevertheless, his convictions stood firm against Rome, and he was shocked by what he believed superstition, as well as hurt, in his Victorian propriety, by the somewhat wanton relics of Renaissance art. The best he could do was to cry out upon leaving, "O, that thy creed were sound!" Returning to England he felt surer than ever of his mission, more aware of the "Kindly Light" that would lead him onward.
It was characteristic of Newman until the end not to understand the conservatism that safeguards institutional life. No one was ever less of an egoist, and yet few men have been more absolutely individualistic. His beliefs and practices were those which he found satisfactory in the light of his own experience; and the service that he yearned for was to render easy for others the way to the splendour and peace of God as vouchsafed to him. And thus, while many Oxford men drew close to his doctrine, and the phrase "Credo in Newmannum" came to represent a definite creed, the vast machinery of the Church of England showed no unsteadiness. Bishops, indeed, muttered a rather indistinct disapproval of the "Romanizing tendencies" manifest at Oxford; certain vicars in distant country parishes responded eagerly to the fervour of Oriel College; but the great mass of Englishmen viewed the matter with stolid unconcern. There was, men said, a vague movement on foot within the Church; but it seemed very provincial, quite harmless. And then, suddenly, the peace was broken by Keble's sermon on "National Apostasy," which castigated the outspoken meddling of the State in the affairs of the Church, the issue being the suppression for political reasons of certain sees in Ireland. The spokesman received quick and courageous support. Newman was ready for battle now, and launched from the pulpit at St. Mary's a series of trenchant sermons that analyzed the depths of Christian doctrine, while the light of his own personality seemed to the intent audience a votive lamp given wholly to Truth. Disciples gathered, men listened in spite of themselves, and what had seemed only a theory suddenly lived in practice. Nevertheless, the energy of Newman did not rest here: the weapon of literature was at hand, and on September 9, 1833, he launched the first number of "Tracts for the Times."
Did he realize the significance of this undertaking? Probably not. An apostle now, conscious of divine leadership, he yearned and laboured solely for the renovation of the English Church. The tracts took up one by one the practices of Apostolic Christianity, and attacked vehemently the liberalism of most Anglicans. Keble, even Pusey -- the authoritative and imposing theologian -- wrote arresting discussions, but Newman remained the leader upon whom the destinies of the combat depended. He had not reckoned, however, with either of two things: the actual organization and character of the Church to which he belonged, or the possibility that he had not yet discovered the reality which he sought -- the living, concrete institution which represented upon earth the majesty of God. The paradox upon which the Tractarian movement was based -- though its leaders did not view it as a paradox -- was that Rome, though it had best conserved the traditions of the Apostolic Church, was hopelessly wrong, and that Anglicanism, which had forgotten those traditions, was altogether right. Newman, wholly absorbed in the battle within himself for more light and the outer battle of the apostle against the world, became aware only gradually of this radical difficulty. At first he solved it to his satisfaction by proposing a via media, but events occurring in rapid succession proved to his dismay that the via media was only an illusion. There was the article by Wiseman on the Donatists, showing that the Anglicans are perilously like those unfortunate and forgotten heretics; there was the constant testimony of history to the deference with which the Fathers had looked upon the Papal authority; and finally the weight of the Anglican organization made itself felt in a series of heavy blows. Tract 90, interpreting the Thirty-nine Articles of the Book of Common Prayer in a Catholic sense, was discountenanced by the Bishops; ecclesiastical sees were created for purely political reasons; William George Ward was condemned for his book, "The Ideal of the Christian Church"; and charges of heresy and treason were leveled against the Tractarians as a body. Before the overwhelming evidence against the paradox which he now saw quite clearly, Newman yielded. He could preach at Oxford no longer, he had built his house on sand.
Littlemore, the retreat prepared during the splendour of his spiritual leadership, became his refuge in the hour of pain. There remained one great problem to solve, and, entering into semi-monastic retirement with a few friends, he set about the task resolutely, patiently, humbly. What is the visible power, the organization, to which divine Revelation has been confided? Is this a purely formal custodian, something like a manuscript library with a group of commentators, or is it a vital institution, almost a person, in which breathes the Presence of the Spirit of God? Newman had been seeking for years, somewhat unconsciously, the answer to this problem, but it had now become the sole concern of his life. The solution at which he arrived is "The Development of Christian Doctrine," a strikingly original discovery, and the supreme product, in all likelihood, of his thought. Time and effort were needed to abate his difficulties, to clear away his doubts, and to overcome his prejudices against Rome. But the angel of God had not stirred the waters in vain; quite suddenly he halted his pen at the end of the beautiful epilogue to the "Essay on Development," and then wrote the words, "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace, quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum." On October 8, 1845, Newman was received into the Catholic Church by Father Dominic of the Passionists, and some time later was confirmed by Wiseman, who had carefully noted the progress of the movement from the beginning. What it had cost this convert to break from fond associations, from tried and beloved friends like Keble and Pusey, and from the church to which his strong early manhood had sworn the noblest allegiance, has left no furrow on the hard face of time; but when one walks through the altered Littlemore of today, or seeks out at Oxford the ways that Newman went, one remembers, as something great and sorrowful, the legend of his anguish and tears.
Even when due allowance for the restraints of affection has been made, it must be admitted that Newman's spiritual development was very slow. At the close of the forty-fifth year of his life, he stood on the threshold of an utterly new departure, however thoroughly his philosophy may have been formed. Nevertheless, although his powers of thought and concentration were most unusual, the hesitancy with which he reached conclusions was the natural result of his genius. This is beyond analysis, but its tangible characteristics are noteworthy. While he was fundamentally a mystic, a contemplative, who could have found under ordinary circumstances sufficient engrossment in the relation between his spirit and its Ultimate Destiny, Newman still, on the other hand, when once aroused to the actual, the real, tried to find in it everywhere the footprints of his ideal. The surprising many-sidedness of his gaze, the faculty for viewing things not as generalities but as collections of individuals, made him alive to almost numberless points of view, difficulties, lacunas, and above all wilful sidesteppings of action. To make the individual realize the individuality of objective truth (or, as philosophers would say, to coordinate the one and the many) and act upon it, became the mission into which he threw all his powers. It needed the crisis of battle with the conventions and prejudices of surrounding society to call forth the full creative energy of Newman and to develop the flare of his intuition. And thus the Oxford Movement drew out a great share of his best work and enabled him, not indeed to overcome the organization with which he fought, but to escape from it unto Truth.
On May 30, 1847, Newman was ordained a priest, and shortly after resolved to establish an English oratory under a modification of St. Philip Neri's rule. Thus he came under the patronage of the simple and kindly saint, the worth of whose example he was to feel throughout life. The Birmingham Oratory was opened in 1848, under bright and promising conditions, though Newman himself felt old and weary, rather strangely at ease in comparison with the rich activity of his Oxford years. Henceforth his life would be concerned with many things, but the broad principles of his mental action would remain the same. His object was still the arousal, the conversion, of the individual; opposition would come, as always, from the organization to which he had belonged. Newman, though conservative, was utterly indifferent to conventions: he could see no worth in words from which the living, energizing thought had departed. Now during those years of the nineteenth century the theological defense of the Church was virtually a stubbornly armed resistance. The Catholic Spirit, resolutely entrenched behind traditional apologetics and philosophy, beheld with dismay the rise of a multitude of heretical opinions, of revolutionary teachings, of naturalist dogmas, which were the harvest of the great humanistic revolts that had broken out in succession since the fifteenth century. New views were, therefore, scrutinized rigorously, and Roman theologians took on much of the character of military police, inclined to treat roughly any apparition not obviously orthodox. This state of affairs was brought home to Newman by the misunderstanding that greeted certain passages in the "Essay on Development." He was to encounter it again and again; the sternness of a struggle in which no quarter was given scarcely respected the sensitiveness of a mind that moved always above the battle. There was, however, an all-important difference between his attitude as a Catholic and his Anglican position. However much he might resent the curbing of his influence, the blindness of officials, or the constraints imposed by a too anxious authority, he never swerved in his allegiance or in his confidence that the difficulty would, in the end, be adjusted. In fact, these recurrent brushes with the outposts of the Catholic Spirit were really tocsins that summoned the best of his powers, tocsins to which he responded with the valour and self-sacrifice of a hero.
At no time in Newman's life did the fine mettle of his character prove itself more genuine than during the early days of his priesthood. Giving himself utterly to that missionary work he could do so well, and no less wholly to the needs of his young community, he strengthened himself also with meditation and prayer. The "Sermons to Mixed Congregations" and "Sermons Preached on Various Occasions," wherein the style grows steadily more eloquent and more serene, give an outward stamp to the satisfaction he drew from religion. Then the Gorham Case, a celebrated instance in which the authority of the English bishops had been brusquely ignored by the Privy Council, having provided the opportunity, he attacked Anglicanism directly in the ringing, unusually outspoken lectures which have since been entitled, "On the Difficulties of Anglicans." These were followed by some of his very best oratorical efforts, the addresses "On the Present Position of Catholics," which did much to quell the "No-Popery" outbursts, so easy to stimulate in a populace that does not understand. All of this controversial work is brilliant, witty, even satirical, but its chief distinction is the admirable deference with which Newman the convert treats the convictions of those who were once his brethren. He does not mince matters, but he meets deftly and lovingly those whom he has abandoned, holding even that the Anglican position is worth while as a bulwark against infidelity. Retrospective controversy is always a dangerous undertaking, and Newman's genius found the exact combination of courtesy and manliness needed for the task.
Naturally enough, he longed constantly for apostolic labour, for a position which would bring with it that vast influence upon souls which he felt able to exert. He would not have been human had he forgotten the glory of Oxford; he would not have been a man of God had he been willing to forgo a similar opportunity after Catholic truth had been vouchsafed him. Suddenly the idea of a Catholic University to be erected in Dublin was brought forth by Doctor Cullen, with the suggestion that Newman direct the enterprise. There seemed to be unlimited opportunities here of the sort which, when developed, leave their impress upon a whole society; there were also enormous difficulties and almost forbidding requirements. It was characteristic of Newman to see all of these things with exceptional clearness and to hope for success. Again he followed the light of his mission, trusting because "Peter had spoken" and could not have misjudged the issue, and again he failed to take into account the actual condition of the organization with which he would have to deal. Another Englishman would have halted upon considering the relations existing between his country and Ireland, but Newman was beyond all of that. At the price of intense personal hardship he traveled throughout the island, admired the people, and expressed unqualifiedly his sympathy with their national aspirations. The introductory Dublin lecture, with its portrait of the amiable sharing of interests that had once distinguished England and Ireland, was utterly sincere. Unfortunately the University was still-born; Cullen proved to be a narrow and officious prelate whose views, too small to merit any earnest attention, tied Newman hand and foot; many who had acclaimed the project most boisterously when it was broached showed no practical interest in it as a reality: and the impassioned hope, the noble vision, of Newman's "Idea of a University" became great literature but no school in the concrete. Again the organization had triumphed over the serenity of a great man's dream, and Newman came back to the oratory wasted in health and quite broken in spirit -- a disillusioned man.
Failure began to haunt him. The retirement in which he now lived was more trying by far than the traditional isolation of genius, for it was the result of a virtual repudiation of his work and mission, a casting out of his thought as well-nigh unclean. Envisaging the minds of thousands upon thousands of Englishmen, divining their spiritual needs and difficulties with impartial realism, he saw with dismay that the appointed leaders of Catholic thought were considering other matters. His plan to make a new English version of the Scriptures was first encouraged and then peremptorily snuffed out. His resolve to aid young Catholics at Oxford by establishing a mission there was foiled, chiefly through Manning's agency. Finally, the position of conciliation which he assumed on the question of Papal Infallibility incurred opposition both from the belligerent supporters of an absolute Papacy -- one of whom, W.G. Ward of the Dublin Review, declared that he should like a new bull each morning with his breakfast, -- and from liberals who, like Capes and Lord Acton, had been influenced by Germanic criticism to the point where they very nearly denied the traditional authority of Rome. Newman's views on the Infallibility and the Temporal Power were quite generally misinterpreted, and Rome was led to consider him a lukewarm supporter, if not a positive enemy.
There is no room here for an examination of the controversy, but it may safely be affirmed that the real cause for all these difficulties lay in the contrasted temperaments of Newman and Cardinal Manning. The Archbishop of Westminster lacked breadth of vision and artistic power, but he possessed an energy in direction and a diplomatic skill quite military in character; scorning what he believed to be speculative heckling with all the brusqueness of a soldier, he strained every sinew in an effort to dominate the here and now. It is interesting to note that time has vindicated the views of Newman on these subjects which Manning frowned upon: our view of Papal Infallibility is, practically, Newman's, there is a mission at Oxford, and a new version of the Scriptures has been undertaken. On the other hand, the genuine service rendered by Manning is attested to by the soundness of his views on labour, his correct appraisal of Church administration, and his schemes for popular missionary work -- all of them views alien, in their practical aspects, to the mind of Newman.
So deep was the humiliation of the great Oratorian, and so confined was he to the simple duties of a parish priest and rector of a boys' academy, that in 1860 his return to the Anglican Church was announced as probable, even imminent. He was, indeed, quite discouraged, but he put down these reports in a flaming letter which did not reveal, of course, the ascetic religious life from which he drew strength. Even though the sensibility that was interwoven with his poet's nature might have been bruised and beaten, though his mission to other minds might have been hampered, the inner Newman, the contemplative, the visionary, the man of religion, remained unaltered. Il faut souffrir pour être beau; and the aging priest, crushed by the hostility of his environment, was never more kindly, more fervent, more distinctly the seer. This was the Newman of the "Meditations," of "The Dream of Gerontius," of the myriad letters so instinct with sympathy and understanding. It was not, however, the creative Newman, master of controversy and convincing motive, the Newman who would appear only when contact with the outer world was large and free.
Then, at Christmas time, 1863, Charles Kingsley the novelist stated in Macmillan's Magazine: "The truth for its own sake has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not be." At first the accused was disposed to view here only another petty annoyance, and contented himself with a protest. To this Kingsley paid little attention; in fact he issued a vigorous denunciatory pamphlet entitled, "What, Then, Does Dr, Newman Mean?" This was plainly not the fruit of personal resentment, but aimed at pillorying an example, at making allegations of dishonesty that would apply to the Catholic priesthood as a whole. Newman was aroused to the full meaning of the issue and resolutely took up the cudgels of debate, all the better fitted by reason of his long rest. In a celebrated attack he rushed Kingsley off his ground and riddled the unfortunate pamphlet with something akin to fury. Then, in a number of articles written at white heat, where the swift thought and virility of emotion give English words an almost uncanny vitality, he told the intimate narrative of his soul. Kingsley was hopelessly crushed and left to stand naked and desolate before public opinion; and the universal recognition of Newman's success has scarce an equal in the history of controversy. The character of the Oxford Movement had been vindicated forever, and, no matter what opinions men might in the future hold concerning the Catholic faith, they could not decently or openly accuse its ministers of dishonesty. It is worth noting that the victory achieved by the "Apologia pro Vita Sua" was purely literary; that for the first time in his career Newman had gained a cause without the aid of oratory. This was to hold true of all his later work.
While England accepted joyfully Newman's vindication, his relations with extremists among Catholics did not become easier. So thorough a lack of prestige may have continued to sadden, but did not any longer curb him. In 1870 he began another purely literary mission, which when completed was called very modestly "An Essay towards a Grammar of Assent." Newman's objective here was a defense of the ultimate grounds for reasonable faith, against which he saw more and more clearly that the forces of skepticism were beginning to move. His battle is with souls that have lost themselves far away from the domain of religious belief, who have, in fact, almost forgotten what belief is like. Never had his thought, his charity, his fervent missionary spirit, gone so far: and in the subtle labyrinth of innermost human psychology he struggled with the most tenacious and skillful of demons. The effort of this wrestling cost Newman more energy than anything else he had undertaken, but his success was immediate and sustained. Everyone recognized the importance and originality of the work, and it won unstinted praise from even his Catholic opponents. The shadow lay upon him still, but now it was of the texture of twilight, not of the desolate night that had seemed unending. Personally, he felt certain that his work had been wrought in the grace of his Master.
The Church, it seemed to the aging priest, would never trust him fully, and he was prepared to go down to his grave in that atmosphere of faint suspicion which to a zealous Catholic apostle is the most harrowing form of bondage. Then, almost in the twinkling of an eye, there was wrought one of those profound changes in the direction of the Church by which the Spirit of God seems to guard her from decay, and Leo XIII came from seclusion to the throne of Peter. He had long been aware of Newman's importance, and when a petition came from the leaders of English Catholicism asking that their aged guide be elevated to the Cardinalate, the Holy Father gladly acceded to the request. The aged Oratorian understood well the meaning of the dignity: "The cloud has been lifted from me forever," was his grateful recognition. After the formal ceremony in Rome, May 12, 1879, he returned to his beloved Birmingham whence he stirred only on certain occasions. Serene, deeply interested in the rhythm of life throughout the world, he waited calmly for the end, which came after a brief illness, on August 11, 1890. On the pall over his coffin were embroidered the words he had chosen for his shield: "Cor ad Cor Loquitur." And, indeed, the numbers who attended his burial, the multitude of souls for whom he had been a patient spiritual father, felt that they summed up the blessed secret of his life.
No portrait of Newman can be complete, and this one is only a poor sketch. We will not close, however, without some attempt to indicate the little human things that stressed his individuality and made him lovable. He was, of course, an apostle first of all, with intense convictions and absolute purity of sentiment. Then, too, he was a poet, with all the delicate sensibility of an artistic nature born to the nuances of loveliness and pain. But though the affection he offered his friends was regally crowned by the greatness of his mission, though the majesty of his personality was felt by all who entered his life, he was also tender, solicitous, and charming. No letters to children are more delicately child-like than his; no debater was ever more magnanimous to his opponents; no friend ever stood nearer to a friend than he did to Hurrell Froude or Ambrose St. John. The light of the peace in his heart was unflinching. Nature he fathomed as deeply as Wordsworth; he divined with satisfaction the inner harmony of great art; music was his constant solace, and he played on the violin those great visions of Beethoven and Mozart to which his spirit responded with the gentleness of perfect understanding. "His soul was in his voice," says Canon Holland, "as a bird is in its song." Gifted with a ready, though delicate, sense of humour, he would occasionally run the rapier of satire through an unwary impertinence. He could even be sternly acrid and snub Monsignor Talbot, his officious though masked opponent in Rome, with something akin to the cruelty of vengeance. In many ways, of course, he remained a staid Victorian, but, more than any of his contemporaries realized, he was a daring innovator, the bearer of a new beacon, the apostle of tomorrow. The mystery of sanctification in his private life made of his career a rounded whole. In the words of Chaucer,
"Christus' lore and His apostles twelve He taught, but first he followed it himselve."