CARDINAL NEWMAN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1382, 7 March 1912, Page 6

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

HIS BIOGRAPHY. REVIEWED fIY "THE TIMES." LIFE STORY Oil 1 A GREAT PERSONALITY. In an interesting leading article, the London "Times" of January 22 gives the following review of "Tim Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman" based on his Private Journals and correspondence:— To-day is published by Messrs. Longmans what many pci'foiis will consider, not without some reason, tho final mid nuthoritntivo Life of Cardinal Newman. .Mr. Wilfrid -Ward writes from personal knowledge and with affection. He lias had all material documents put at hi.s disposal. His account of the second part of the Cardinal's life, not falling within the "Apologia," is full, explicit, and novel. Though this is not a Court portrait, and though it does not conceal it few weaknesses clinging to a noble nature, Mr. Ward has not committed tho fault, dear to some biographers, of giving disproportionate importance to them. Wo shall probably never know much more of tho lifo of the Cardinal than is told in this account, temperate and sympathetic, reveront but not uncritical; one so important that we shall return to the book and notice it in detail. Ii: leaves a picture of a great intelligence, a loving nature, with traits not unlike (hose of his own St. Philip Neri, "the. saint of gentleness and kindness, cheerful in penance, and in pt&cept ".vinning"; and we see tho setting of an oventful, changeful lifo in an evening of serenity and content., But final theso volumes are not in the sense that they settle for us all the questions which have been, and will continue to be, put as to that life, and among them these:— Was it somewhat of a tragedy, or was it oven to its last hours an advance along a path which lie must, if true to himself, follow? Did his own life conform to the tests of sound development .which he applied as to doctrines? \\"as there preservation of the typo or idea, continuity of principles, an-.l logical sequence, and were'the many changes which he passed through only, in his'vocabulary, "preservative additions"? The ethical completeness of that life is not to be challenged. He was always tho same; tender and austere, impressed with the' suffering of the world, yet full of buoyancy. But was there, it will often bo asked,, a stoppage or partial dislocation of those powers which once stirred the English Church to its foundations Significant Memoranda, In a note by his Oratorian friend and colleague, Father Eyder, there is a reference to Newman's "passivity—making no attempt to fashion the courso of his life, but waiting on Providence"; and Mr. Wilfrid Ward remarks that "at .critical moments, when friends expect him to strike and to protest, he says instead, 'Fiat rohintas tua.' The incident of the Irish bishopric, tho suspension of the translation of the Scriptures, the resignation of the editorship of the 'Rambler,' the abandonment of the Oxford scheme, are all instances Two significant memoranda, dated October, 1374, give, utterance to the "depressing feeling that now I am doing nothing at all." "As to the- great controversies of the day; etc., they fCatholics] think I am passe." "I have been startled on considering that in the last fifteen years I have only written two books, the 'Apologia' and the Essay on Assent." Certainly he said and did the things that moved men deepest before he quitted the Church of England. His end, it-is clear from these volumes, if we did not know it otherwise, was one of peace and contentment,' amid love and reverence. But, looking at the wistful, half-puzzled expression in his later portraits, one is tempted to think of the last years as spent in voluntary captivity and isolation; this rare intelligence spending itself upon "olSciaL work,' this restless nature recognising the truth of the words of the Imitation, "Cella continuata dul-cesc-it"; ,this caged spirit, born,to be free, putting; Inp'on itself fetters f. and i unconsciously ensuring repose by repressing the impulses ' which '' had carried him —ant with him others—so far. Touching and full of that' sweetness which belonged to him beyond all men aro many of the letters and details relating to his occupations at the, Oratory. But readers of Mr. Ward's volunies will think sometimes of a prisoned giant who uses his strength no longer, though he has'only to put out his hands to pull down the edifice in which he dwells. To be frank, we are not quite suro whether all the men about him fully understood the splendid captive whom they had made; whether some of them were not :noi'e puzzled than proud of their acquisition. The thinker, the searcher, tho controversialist, the combatant against the errors of a generation uncongenial to him,-was transformed into the passive saint; and the picture which we have of him as such is precious. But something, it may be, was lost, something perhaps left unsaid, by reason of this peaceful isolation. On the memorial glab upon his tomb were engraved at his own desire ' the words "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatcm." _ Could he have attained that end by other paths than those in which at last he found himself? Children fear to go into the dark and old men to go into the light—at least many do; was that his case also? "Heart Speaks to Heart." The generation which canio directly under his spell when ho was in his primo has passed away. But Mr. Ward will help the youngest to understand somewhat of its depths and extent. It was not owing to Newman's knowledge .or penetration and acuteness. He was curiously outside the great movements of thought of his time. He knew virtually nothing of science. Hβ knew little of philosophy except what he had read at Oxford in his youth. yHis historical studies were not profound. He was not perhaps in full touch with tho chief scholars of his own ago. To his best historical work, that on the Arians, the very highest place cannot bo given. Hβ was ignorant, so far as n man of genius cqn be, of much that it was necessary to know for the adequate discussion of many of the questions which he treated. Science made amazing advances. The world moved onwards towards democratic institutions. Ho summed up all uncongenial changes, whether jjood or bad, iu the word "Liberalism," aiid put them far from' him as ovil or perilous to the soul.' His admirers in moments of indiscretion, and with littlo sense- of proportion, havo likened him to Pascal. In kind and degree the natures differed: Newman, with his tendencies to see in reason only an instrument of subversion, and able to abstain from its exercise when, as he conceived, duty required it; the author of tho "Pensc3s," that manual nt once of the sceptic and the devotee, never fully able, even when ho has given his allegiance to a crocd demanding implicit obedience, to refrain from holding communication and betraying intellectual sympathy with its enemies. 'A happier comparison would ba with Fenolon, though that, also would recall only superficial points of likeness. Newman is memorable because he is himself—a product of his own Church, but like no one el?o iu the Church which he quitted or in that in which he died. None but ho exercised the kind of influence "which wis his. He laid a hand upon those who came near him, and at that touch they were transformed. A subtle, sinuous phrase, meant as it might, seem for no one in particular, found its way where nothing else could, and wound itself round the huavt-slrings of him whom it pierced. A few apparently chance words coining from him might be to some tlic -words of their destiny. The arrow shot from his bow at a venture might transfix some one nnd , never be withdrawn. "Cor ad cor loquitur"—it was his motto and his life, and I he chief secret of his subtle power. It will be said by some readers of Ihese volumes, an it has been said before, "His strength lay, not in himself, but in his opportunity. The land was nthirst and hungered. Men longed for sweet waters to refresh it. They had asked for bread,' and they had been offered the stony nutriment of Utilitarianism or the no less crude and more acrid sustenanco given, by tho Evangelicalism of the time. Nmvmin or no Newman, tho movement'of the thirties nnd forties would have been much what it was." Wn doubt it. Continued by Hurrell Fronde, and Faber, the work of those days would have been ephemeral and limited. It would have quickly ended in a brief interest in patristic literatim' it certain ritualistic practices. It would nut have been n living force, but n vain altempt to blow into flame the ashes, scarcely hot. of expiring controversies It. was the presence of a man of Renins that transformed'all; not mt-rely genius in the possession of rare intellectual gifts; but in the possession of that power of. touching the hearts of njr;n, a certain penetrating sweetness, which none of his generation hid iu like mea--sure.