THE TWO NEWMANS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4405, 1 April 1876, Page 3

THE TWO NEWMANS.

(From the Canadian MontMy<)

The students of Thackeray will doubtless remember the following passage in "Pendennis" (chap. 61):—" «The truth, friend, 1 Arthur said, imperturbably, 'where is the truth? Show it to me. That is the question between us. I see it on bqtb sides. I see it on both Bides of the House. I see-it'on the Conservative side of the House, and-amongst the Radicals, and eveu on the Ministerial benches. I see it in this man who worships by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded by a silk apron and five thousand a year; in that man who, driven fatally by the remorseless logicof his creed, givesup-everything—friends, fame, dearest ties, closest vanities, the*; respect of an army of churchmen* the recognised position of a leader, and passes over, truthimpelled, to the enemy, in whose ranks he iB ready to serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier; I see the truth in that man as I do in his brother,, whose Bogio drives him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavours to I reconoile an irreconcilable book, flings it at ; last down in despair, and declares with '. tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation.'" There is little doubt that this passage referrad to ihe two Newmans—John Henry, the Anglican convert and Catholic priest; and Francis W., the professor and freethinker. At the time, or some time before, Mr Thackeray put these words into the mouth of .Mr Arthur Pendennis, Dr John H. Newman had delivered his famous lectures upon Anglican difficulties, and they had been attended'by Thackeray and Miss Bront6j and all the literary and religious celebrities of the day. About the same time, too, Francis W. Newman had published his worfe on " The Soul" and his •'Phases of Faith.'! The Fellow.of Oriel had become a Catholic priest, and the dpiightie^t 'of 'the English cnaropioßsef his, newly-iidbpted Church. The Eell*w of Baliol; had become a species of Rationalist. Bath had comefrom the same parents.. They had been carefully trained and highly educated. They had great talent. Both were men of grave aiid.earnest minds. Both were devoted to the same absorbing studies. Both had access to the same sources of information. "Both, in their early career, had years of doubt and months of darkness—seeking re&t and finding none, Reeking truth and not finding it; and in mature years, when tha laws of life and mind compelled them into definite beliefs, one took the path to the cloister, the other to the groves of Academe; and the elder might sadly say to the younger, as the distance between them increased,

My paths are. in. the fields I know. And thine - in undiscovered lands.

Looking at the grave Greek face of the elder, John Henry Newman, not less than reading his wonderfully calm, clear, cold, logical disquisitions, no one can doubt that he has fixed his faith and has found rest for his intellect, whatever may be thought of that faith and that rest. Reading the essays of the other, one finds him still wandering and wondering, hoping, doubting, humanely and kindly dreaming of better times to come for the human vace in its development of religions ideas, and lor himself some future state; unknown, isnforeshadowed, possibly with God ia spite of doubt, and an epitaph which shall embody the verse of the Laureate—

Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, At last be beat his music out, There lives wore faith in honest douM, Believe me, than in .half the creeds. Those two men illustrate in their liven, each now near its close, and ia their work, now nearly over, the two great religious tendencies of the time, that towards submission to an authority, and that towards freedom, of individual judgment.