The Spell Of Newman

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 749, 23 August 1929, Page 14

The Spell Of Newman

, (Written (or The Snn.J IN A RECENT volume of essays entitled “Things to Come,” Mr Middleton Murry make 3 compari*ott between Sidgwick, the philosopher of Cambridge, and Newman, the theologian of Oxford. Its base is hard to find; for Sidgwick’s belief in God was at th 6 best conditional, Newman’s was implicit. Then, too, the name of Sidgwick connotes nothing to the ordinary man, while that of Newman is pregnant with associations. It may be that one had heard "Lead Kindly Light” before one heard of Newman, but the day came for most of us when some elder spoke of the man who wrote the hymn. Possibly the desire to know more of Newman was fortified by church bells and Sunday tea. He is not the conventional child's hero; and perhaps for that very reason he wears better than many. There 1* a Newman legend, but there is no Newman myth, for writers such as Mr Lytton Strachey to dissipate. One usually heard the worst of him at the outset: and yet, m some unaccountable way, the magic of his name persisted- Then, it may be. one was confronted by the presentment of him that stands in a niche hard by the Brompton Oratory in London. The surge of London life seemed to beat against that immovable face; and one was confronted by the eternal enigma of human personality. Never was a soul more terribly sensitive to every current of thought and feeling. 1 cannot say whether this figure of Newman has ever inspired such a poem as that which Lionel Johnson addressed to the equestrian statue of King Charles tho First at Charing Cross. Some of its familiar lines are almost applicable to Newman himself. Historians have been busy of late years at the task of removing the clamour from tho name of King Charles, but it is doubtful if the layman will ever accept their hypotheses. He is for all time a tragic and romantic figure; and so. in a lesser decree, is Newman. The late Dr A. C. Benson in his comprehensive biography of his father, the Archbishop, inserts a description of a visit paid by Edward White Benson, as he then was, to a > hurch where Newman was preaching. Despite his bias in Newman’s oisfavour he fell under the spell of rue preacher, offended though he was by both his doctrine and by his ges--1 ure3. Elsewhere A. C. Benson treats "f this spell that Newman wielded over his fellow men. In what was, perhaps, one of his most finished and suggestive essays, he writes of a quality, in places and persons to which making perilous use of a word that lias done base service, he applies the term “charm.” He points out that the Greek rendering of the word, “Charis." is simply the “grace” with which all readers of the Pauline epistles are familiar. Bereft of its theological association the word stands for that which the Greeks most admired in places and things and persons. A. C. Benson cites one place and three persons as having this quality. The place is a little village, a short distance from Cambridge. The persons are Hallam, Lord Melbourne and Newman.

This quality in persons is not easy of definition. It has not to do with beauty of person, for Hallam, it seems, resembled a sanguine ploughboy. Nevertheless he hold sway over a remarkable little gfoup of men. Of Melbourne’s influence on the young Victoria even Mr Lytton Strachey has nothing disillusioning to say. In Newman’s case there is the instance of the two ecclesiastical lawyers who came from London, when he was living at Birmingham, in the hops of making him cede some point of Church policy. Newman entertanied them at luncheon, and so charmed them that they left for London again without having broached the distasteful subject at all. There is irony in the fact that New man should be known to thousands as the writer of a great evangelical hymn rather than as the author of the "Apologia.” “Lead Kindly Light” has so permeated the air that to point out literary deficiencies would be tantamount to criticising the wind in the trees. Nevertheless, one may be permitted to wonder how Newman's ear can have played him false when he huddled all those similar long vowel sounds together in: Keep thou my feet. Ido not ask to see The distant scene. One step enough for me. Lifted from its setting in “The Dream of Gerontius,” “Praise to the Holiest in the Height ” is like an exquisite piece of mediaeval workman ship, whereas “Lead Kindly Light" is an improvisation which the people have made their own. The circumstances of its inditing are set forth in the "Apologia.” New man was a passenger on an orange boat bound from Palermo to England He had made his great decision, and was in a state like that of a man who relaxes at the end of a contest. It is a cry from the heart rather than a considered poem, such as are the hymn* in “The Dream of Gerontius.” No doubt for that very reason it has a spiritual value, the value of what breathes the common longing of humanity. C. R. ALLEN. Dunedin.