Selections from the prose writings of John Henry, cardinal Newman; for the use of schools

Contents

PAGE

Saul 13

Clirysostom 84

Introduction

It has come to be universally admitted that Cardinal Newman fulfills his own definition of a great author : " One whose aim is to give forth what he has within him ; and from his very earnestness it happens that whatever be the splendor 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. . . . He "writes passionately because he feels keenly ; forcibly, because he conceives vividly ; he sees too clearly to be vague ; he is too serious to be otiose ; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; 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. . , .

"He expresses what all feel but cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words, idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated 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."

Newman may be said to have handled England's prose as Shakespeare handled her verse. His language was wrought up little by little to a finish and refinement, a strength and a subtlety, thrown into the form of eloquence, beyond which no English writer of prose has gone. Nor is his excellence that of mere art in form; he possesses not only skill, which he calls an exercise of talent, but power — a second name for genius — which itself implies personality and points to inspiration.

His mind was large, logical, profoundly thoughtful, imaginative, intense, sincere, and above all, spiritual; his soul was keen, delicate, sympathetic, heroic; and his life, at once severe and tender, passionate and selfcontrolled, alone and unlonely, stands out in its loftiness and saintliness, a strange, majestic contrast to the agitation and turmoil of "confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies" amidst which it was lived.

Both by word and work did Newman lead forth his generation on the long pilgrimage to the shrine of Truth, and England of the nineteenth century has no surer claim to holiness and genius for her great sons than that set upon John Henry Newman.

He was born in London, 1801 ; studied, taught, and preached at Oxford; became the chief promoter of the Tractarian Movement of 1833 ; entered the Catholic Church in 1845; founded the Oratory at Birmingham, 1848; was created Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII, 1879; died at Edgbaston, 1890.

Any attempt to choose from the writings of Newman what seems most desirable for brief class studies is certain to be woefully embarrassed by the very wealth of matter ; and apology for risking the choice would be due, were it not lost sight of in the desire to see a literary model so pure, varied, animated, forceful, luminous — '*a thing of light and beauty '^ — given to our students.

What is more significant of the Life Book of the saintly Oxford Scholar than his self- written epitaph: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem^'?

APPRECIATIONS

Newman s best essays display a delicate and flexible treatment of language, without emphasis, without oddity, which hardly arrests the attention at first, — the reader being absorbed in the argument or statement, — but which, in course of time, fascinates, as a thing miraculous in its limpid grace and suavity. — Edmund Gosse's History of Modern English Literature.

The work of Newman reveals him as one of the great masters of graceful, scholarly, finished prose. It is individual, it has charm, and this is the secret of its power to interest. No writer of our time has reflected his mind and heart in his pages as has Newman. He has light for the intellect and warmth for the heart. — A. J. George's Types of Literary Art.

Newman towers, with only three or four compeers, above his generation; and now that the benignity of his great nature has passed from our sight, its majesty is more evident year by year.

— Scudder's Modern English Poets.

The finish and urbanity of Newman's prose have been universally commended even by those who are most strenuously opposed to his opinions.

— H. J. Nicoll.

All the resources of a master of English style are at Newman's command : pure diction, clear arrangement, delicate irony, gracious dignity, a copious command of 8 words combined with a chaste reserve in using them. All these qualities go to make up the charm of Newman's style — the finest flower that the earliest system of a purely classical education has produced.

— J. Jacobs's Literary Studies.

Newman combines a thoroughly classical training, a scholarly form, with the incommunicable and almost inexplicable power to move audiences and readers.

— George Saintsbury.

The pure style of Newman may be compared in its distinguishing quality to the atmosphere. It is at once simple and subtle, vigorous and elastic ; it penetrates into every recess of its subject ; it is transparent, allowing each object it touches to display its own proper color. — H. E. Beeching's English Prose.

There are touching passages characteristic of Newman's writings which give them a peculiar charm. They are those which yield momentary glimpses of a very tender heart that has a burden of its own, unrevealed to man. ... It is, as I have heard it described, as though he suddenly opened a book and gave you a glimpse for a moment of wonderful secrets, and then as quickly closed it. . . . In Newman's Sermons, how the old truth became new ; how it came home, as he spoke, with a meaning never felt before ! He laid his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of circumJocution and big words to state, were dropped out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what strength ! how simple, yet how suggestive ! how penetrating, yet how refined! how homely, yet how tender-hearted!

You might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church System, but you would be harder than most men if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul. . . . Newman's innate and intense idealism is, perhaps, his most striking characteristic. ... It is a thought of his, always deeply felt and many times repeated, that this visible world is but the outward shell of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from our view things far greater and more wonderful than any which we see, and that the unseen world is close to us and ever ready to break through the shell and manifest itself. — Shairp.

Newman's great reputation for prose and the supreme interest attaching to his life seem to have obscured the fame he might have won as a poet. He was in poetry, as in theology, a more masculine Keble, but with all the real purity of Keble, with also the indispensable flavor of earth. — H. Walker.

The Dream of Gerontius resembles Dante more than any other poetry written since the great Tuscan's time.

— Sir Henry Taylor.

The Dream is a rare poetic rendering into English verse of that high ritual which from the deathbed to the Mass of Supplication encompasses the faithful soul. . . . Newman has no marked affinities with English writers of his day. He is strikingly different from Macaulay, whose eloquence betrays the fury, as it is annealed in the fire, of the Western Celt. To Ruskin, who deliberately built up a monument, stately as the palace of Kubla Khan, he is a contrast, for the very reason that he does not handle words as if they were settings in architecture or colors in a palette ; rather, he would look upon them as transparencies which let his meaning through. He is more hke De Quincey, but again no player upon the organ for the sake of its music ; and that which is common to both is the literary tradition of the eighteenth century enhanced by a power to which abstract and concrete yielded in almost equal degree. . . . With so prompt and intense an intellect at his call, there was no subject, outside purely technical criticism, which Newman could not have mastered.

— Barry's Literary Lives.

It is when Newman exerts his flexible and vivid imagination in depicting the deepest religious passion that we are most carried away by him and feel his great genius most truly. . . . Whether tried by the test of nobility, intensity, and steadfastness of his work, or by the test of the greatness of the powers which have been consecrated to that work, Cardinal Newman has been one of the greatest of our modern great men. — R. H. Mutton's Life of Newman.

Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested in everything that was going on in science, in the highest form of politics, in literature. . . . Nothing was too large for him, nothing too trivial, if it threw light upon the central question, — what man really is and what is his destiny. — J. A. Froude.

In Newman's sketch of the influence of Abelard on his disciples is seen his belief in the immense power for good or ill of a dominating personality. And he himself supplied an object-lesson in his theory. Shairp, Froude, Church, Wilberforce, Gladstone, are only a few of those who have borne testimony to the personal magnetism which left its mark on the whole of thinking Oxford. "Cor ad cor loquitur," the motto chosen by Newman on his receiving the Cardinal's hat, expressed to him the whole reaUty of intercourse between man and man, and man and God.

— Wilfrid Ward's Prohleyns and Persons. Newman's mind swung through a wide arc, and thoughts apparently antagonistic often were to him supplemental each to each. ... A man of dauntless courage and profound thoughtfulness, while his intellect was preeminently a logical one, both the heart and the moral sense possessed with him their sacred tribunals in matters of reasoning as well as of sentiment. . . . The extreme subtlety of his intelligence opposed no hindrance to his power of exciting vehement emotion. — A. De Vere's Literary Reininiscences.

I. CHAKACTER SKETCHES

SAUL

" I gave them a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath." — Rosea xiii. 11.

The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct, indeed, of Samuel's sons was the occasion of the sin, but "an evil heart of unbelief," to use Scripture language, was the real cause 5 of it. They had ever been restless and dissatisfied, asking for flesh when they had manna, fretful for water, impatient of the wilderness, bent on returning to Egypt, fearing their enemies, murmuring against Moses. They had miracles 10 even to satiety; and then, for a change, they wished a king like the nations. This was the chief reason of their sinful demand. And further, they were dazzled with the pomp and splendor of the heathen monarchs around them, and they 15 desired some one to fight their battles, some visible succor to depend on, instead of having to wait for an invisible Providence, which came in its own way and time, by little and little, being dispensed silently, or tardily, or (as they might 20 13 consider) unsuitably. Their carnal hearts did not love the neighborhood of heaven; and; like the inhabitants of Gadara afterwards, they prayed that Almighty God would depart from their

5 coasts.

Such were some of the feelings under which they desired a king like the nations ; and God at length granted their request. To punish them, He gave them a king after their own heart, Saul, the son of

loKish, a Benjamite; of whom the text speaks in these terms, " I gave them a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath."

There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural

15 man ; a plainness, austereness, and (what he considers) sadness. It is like the heavenly manna of which the Israelites complained, insipid, and at length wearisome, " like wafers made with honey." They complained that " their soul was dried

20 away." "There is nothing at all," they said, "beside this manna, before our eyes. . . . We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." ^ Such

25 were the dainty meats in which their soul delighted; and for the same reason they desired a king. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please them, they felt they were behind the world, and clamored to be put

soon a level with the heathen.

SAUL 15

Saul, the king whom God gave them, had much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind — a circumstance which seems to 5 have attracted their admiration. He is described in person as if one of those sons of Anak, before whose giant-forms the spies of the Israelites in the wilderness were as grasshoppers — "a choice young man, and a goodly; there was not among lo the children of Israel a goodlier person than he : from his shoulders and upward he w^as higher than any of the people." ^ Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an eastern monarch, and were adapted to secure the fear and 15 submission of his subjects. Pride, haughtiness, obstinacy, reserve, jealousy, caprice — these, in their way, were not unbecoming qualities in the king after whom their imaginations roved. On the other hand, the better parts of his character 20 were of an excellence sufficient to engage the affection of Samuel himself.

As to Samuel, his conduct is far above human praise. Though injuriously treated by his countrymen, who cast him off after he had served them 25 faithfully till he was " old and gray-headed," ^ and who resolved on setting over themselves a king against his earnest entreaties, still we find no trace of coldness or jealousy in his behavior towards Saul. On his first meeting with him, he ad- so

dressed him in the words of loyalty — " On whom is all the desire of Israel? is it not on thee, and on all thy father's house ?" Afterwards, when he anointed him king, he " kissed him, and said. Is it

5 not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over His inheritance?" When he announced him to the people as their king, he said, "See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people?"

10 And, some time after, when Saul had irrecoverably lost God's favor, we are told, " Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul.'^ In the next chapter he is even rebuked for immoderate

15 grief — "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?"^ Such sorrow speaks favorably for Saul as well as for Samuel; it is not only the grief of a loyal subject and a zealous prophet, but,

20 moreover, of an attached friend; and, indeed, instances are recorded, in the first years of his reign, of forbearance, generosity, and neglect of self, which sufficiently account for the feelings with which Samuel regarded him, David, under

25 very different circumstances, seems to have felt for him a similar affection.

The higher points of his character are brought out in instances such as the following: The first announcement of his elevation came upon

30 him suddenly, but apparently without unsettling

SAUL 17

him. He kept it secret, leaving it to Samuel, who had made it to him, to publish it. "Saul said unto his uncle, He" (that is, Samuel) "told us plainly that the asses were found. But of the matter of the kingdom, whereof Samuel spake, 5 he told him not." Nay, it would even seem he was averse to the dignity intended for him; for when the Divine lot fell upon him, he hid himself, and was not discovered by the people, without recourse to Divine assistance. The appointment lo was at first unpopular. "The children of Belial said, How shall this man save us ? They despised him, and brought him no presents, hut he held his peace." Soon the Ammonites invaded the country beyond Jordan, with the avowed intention of 15 subjugating it. The people sent to Saul for relief almost in despair; and the panic spread in the interior as well as among those whose country was immediately threatened. The history proceeds : " Behold, Saul came after the herd out of 20 the field; and Saul said. What aileth the people that they weep? and they told him the tidings of the men of Jabesh. And the Spirit of God came upon Saul, and his anger was kindled greatly." His order for an immediate gathering 25 throughout Israel was obeyed with the alacrity with which the multitude serve the strong-minded in times of danger. A decisive victory over the enemy followed; then the popular cry became, " Who is he that said. Shall Saul reign over us ? 30 bring the men, that we may put them to death.

And Saul said, There shall not a man he put to death this day, for to-day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel." ^

Thus personally qualified, Saul was, moreover,

5 a prosperous king. He had been appointed to subdue the enemies of Israel, and success attended his arms. At the end of the fourteenth chapter, we read : " So Saul took the kingdom over Israel and fought against all his enemies on every side,

10 against Moab, and against the children of Ammon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines; and whithersoever he turned himself, he vexed them. And he gathered an host, and smote the Amalekites,

15 and delivered Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them."

Such was Saul's character and success ; his character faulty, yet not without promise ; his success in arms as great as his carnal subjects

20 could have desired. Yet, in spite of Samuel's private liking for him, and in spite of the good fortune which actually attended him, we find that from the beginning the prophet's voice is raised both against people and king in warnings and

25 rebukes, which are omens of his destined destruction, according to the text, " I gave them a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath." At the very time that Saul is publicly received as king, Samuel protests, " Ye have this day rejected

30 your God, who Himself saved you out of all your

SAUL 19

adversities and your tribulations." ^ In a subsequent assembly of the people, in which he testified his uprightness, he says, " Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord, and He shall send thunder and rain ; that ye may per- 5 ceive and see that your wickedness is great, in asking you a king." Again, " If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king." ^ And after this, on the first instance of disobedience and at first sight no very heinous sin, the sentence lO of rejection is passed upon him: "Thy kingdom shall not continue; the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart." ^

Here, then, a question may be raised — Why was Saul thus marked for vengeance from the 15 beginning? Why these presages of misfortune, which from the first hung over him, gathered, fell in storm and tempest, and at length overwhelmed him? Is his character so essentially faulty that it must be thus distinguished for reprobation 20 above all the anointed kings after him? Why, while David is called a man after God's own heart, should Saul be put aside as worthless?

This question leads us to a deeper inspection of his character. Now, we know, the first duty of 25 every man is the fear of God — a reverence for His word, a love of Him, and a desire to obey Him ; and, besides, it was peculiarly incumbent on the king of Israel, as God's vicegerent, by virtue of his office, to promote His glory whom his subjects had rejected. 30

20 CTIARACTER SKETCHES

Now Saul "lacked this one thing." His character, indeed, is obscure, and we must be cautious while considering it; still, as Scripture is given us for our instruction, it is surely right to make the 5 most of what we find there, and to form our judgment by such lights as we possess. It would appear, then, that Saul was never under the abiding influence of religion, or, in Scripture language, " the fear of God," however he might be at times

10 moved and softened. Some men are inconsistent in their conduct, as Samson; or as Eli, in a different way; and yet may have lived by faith, though a weak faith. Others have sudden falls, as David had. Others are corrupted by pros-

I5perity, as Solomon. But as to Saul, there is no proof that he had any deep-seated religious principle at all ; rather, it is to be feared, that his history is a lesson to us, that the " heart of unbelief" may exist in the very sight of God, may rule a man

20 in spite of many natural advantages of character, in the midst of much that is virtuous, amiable, and commendable.

Saul, it would seem, was naturally brave, active, generous, and patient; and what nature

25 made him, such he remained, that is, without improvement ; with virtues which had no value, because they required no effort, and implied the influence of no principle. On the other hand, when we look for evidence of his faith, that is, his

30 practical sense of things unseen, we discover instead a deadness to all considerations not con-

SAUL 21

nected with the present world. It is his habit to treat prophet and priest with a coldness, to say the least, which seems to argue some great internal defect. It would not be inconsistent with the Scripture account of him, even should the real 5 fact be, that (with some general notions concerning the being and providence of God) he doubted of the divinity of the Dispensation of which he was an instrument. The circumstance which first introduces him to the inspired history is not in hisio favor. While in search of his father's asses, which were lost, he came to the city where Samuel was ; and though Samuel was now an old man, and from childhood known as the especial minister and prophet of the God of Israel, Saul 15 seems to have considered him as a mere diviner, such as might be found among the heathen, who, for "the fourth part of a shekel of silver," would tell him his way.

The narrative goes on to mention, that after his 20 leaving Samuel "God gave him another heart," and on meeting a company of prophets, "the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them." Upon this, "all that knew him beforetime" said, " What it this that is come unto 25 the son of Kish : is Saul also among the prophets ? . . . therefore it became a proverb." From this narrative we gather, that his carelessness and coldness in religious matters were so notorious, that, in the eyes of his acquaintance, there was 30 a certain strangeness and incongruity, which at once struck the mind; in his being associated with a school of the prophets.

Nor have we any reason to believe, from the after history, that the Divine gift, then first im- 5 parted, left any religious effect upon his mind. At a later period of his life we find him suddenly brought under the same sacred influence on his entering the school where Samuel taught; but, instead of softening him, its effect upon his out-

10 ward conduct did but testify the fruitlessness of Divine grace when acting upon a will obstinately set upon evil.

The immediate occasion of his rejection was his failing under a specific trial of his obedience, as

15 set before him at the very time he was anointed. He had collected with difficulty an army against the Philistines ; while waiting for Samuel to offer the sacrifice, his people became dispirited, and began to fall off and return home. Here he was

20 doubtless exposed to the temptation of taking unlawful measures to put a stop to their defection. But when we consider that the act to which he was persuaded was no less than that of his offering sacrifice — he being neither priest nor prophet,

25 nor having any commission thus to interfere with the Mosaic ritual — it is plain " his forcing himself '' to do so (as he tenderly described his sin) was a direct profaneness — a profaneness which implied that he was careless about forms,

30 which in this world will ever be essential to things supernatural; and thought it mattered

SAUL 23

little whether he acted in God's way or in his own.

After this, he seems to have separated himself from Samuel, whom he found unwilling to become his instrument, and to have had recourse to the 5 priesthood instead. Ahijah or Ahimelech (as he is afterwards called), the high priest, followed his camp; and the ark, too, in spite of the warning conveyed by the disasters which attended the presumptuous use of it in the time of Eli. " And lo Saul said unto Ahijah, Bring hither the ark of God;" while it was brought, a tumult which was heard in the camp of the Philistines increased. On this interruption Saul irreverently put the ark aside, and went out to the battle. 15

It will be observed, that there was no professed or intentional irreverence in Saul's conduct; he was still on the whole the same he had ever been. He outwardly respected the Mosaic ritual — about this time he built his first altar to the Lord,^ 20 and in a certain sense seemed to acknowledge God's authority. But nothing shows he considered that there was any vast distinction between Israel and the nations around them. He was indifferent, and cared for none of these things. The chosen people 25 desired a king like the nations, and such a one they received.

After this he was commanded to " go and smite the sinners, the Amalekites, and utterly destroy them and their cattle." This was a judgment on 30 1 1 Sam. xiv. 35.

them which God had long decreed, though He had delayed it; and He now made Saul the minister of His vengeance. But Saul performed it so far only as fell in with his own inclination and pur- 5 poses. He smote, indeed, the Amalekites, and "destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword" — this exploit had its glory; the best of the flocks and herds he spared, and why? to sacrifice therewith to the Lord. But since God 10 had expressly told him to destroy them, what was this but to imply, that Divine intimations had nothing to do with such matters ? what was it but to consider that the established religion was but a useful institution, or a splendid pageant suitis able to the dignity of monarchy, but resting on no unseen supernatural sanction? Certainly he in no sense acted in the fear of God, with the wish to please Him, and the conviction that he was in His sight. One might consider it mere pride and 20 willfulness in him, acting in his own way because it was his own (which doubtless it was in great measure), except that he appears to have had an eye to the feelings and opinions of men as to his conduct, though not to God's judgment. He 25 "feared the people and obeyed their voice." Again, he spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites. Doubtless he considered Agag as "his brother," as Ahab afterwards called Ben-hadad. Agag was a king, and Saul observed towards him 30 that courtesy and clemency which earthly monarchs observe one towards another, and rightly

SAUL 25

when no Divine command comes in the way. But the God of Israel required a king after His own heart, jealous of idolatry; the people had desired a king like the nations around them.

It is remarkable, moreover, that while he spared 5 Agag, he attempted to exterminate the Gibeonites with the sword, who were tolerated in Israel by virtue of an oath taken in their favor by Joshua and "the princes of the congregation." This he did "in his zeal to the children of Israel andio Judah." 1