OBITUARY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 9289, 15 January 1892, Page 2

OBITUARY.

DEATH OF CARDINAL 1 MANNING. London, January 14. — Cardinal Manning died at 8 o'clock this morning, at the ago of 84 years, Tho Archbishop of Cork Archdeacon Sinclair, and the Chief Rabbi, called on Cardinal ■ Manning yesterday. The 'Pope sends his- blessing by telegraph. The Cardinal died peacefully in the arms of the Rev. W. V. Vaughati, the Ca^liolic Bishop of Plymouth.

The death of this eminent dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, announced' by cablegram ftom Europe, removes the last surviving member of that group of High Anglicans in tho University of Oxford whose illustrious chiefs secession to Rome half a century ago, created so profound a sensation, throughout Christendom. John Henry Newman, John Koble, John Hurrell Froude, John Wilberforcej Edward Pu'sey — and now Henry Edward Manningr-all departed ! Born in the year , 1808, fit a period when the Church of England by law established was beginning to expertence that evangelical revival which the Wesleys and Whit field had set in motion more than half a century before. Dr Manning lived to witness its flow roach high water mark, under tho attraction of William Wilberforce, Thomas Scott, Leigh Richmond, Edward Bickersteth, and Charles Simeon; again after the seemingly inevitable law with every religious sect in turn, to watch it ebb, and give place, in its turn, to the incoming flood of High Anglicanism; High Anglicanism again, to be swept avvav by the wave of Ritualism; | to behold, during the concluding five and twenty years of an eventful career of four scoro years and four, set in slowly but resistlessly, the counter current of Religiou Liberalism, emanating from Coleridge (whoso nephew, the present Lord Chief Justice, was a younger contemporary- of the Cardinal's at Oxfprd) urged onwards by Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, by his son, Matthew. Arnold, by Dean Stanley, his pupil, by the younger Newman, brother of the late Cardinal, oy James Anthony Froude, F. D. Maurice, Benjamin Jowottj F. W. Robertson, and others only less distinguished. Manning, after receiving his early education at Rugby, which had' not then, or ' till' many yeais subsequently under Dr. Butler, attained the high rank it now holds among the English public schools, entered Balliol College, Oxford. After graduation; in tho year 1830, bo was elected Fellow of Merton College, and ten yearß after' nominated to the archdeaconry of Chichester. In 1851, about the date, if I rightly recollect, of the "perversion to Rome" of Archdeacon Wilberforce, bo feelingly bewailed by his brother Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, Archdeacon Manning, following the example of Dr. Newman, joined the Church of which I from that time up to his death— a period \of over forty years — he was so distinguished an ornament — in the literal sonee her Summum Decus ot Tutamen. Id 1857, three years after having had conferred upon him by Pope Pius IX. the honorary degree of D.Dj Dr. Manning was appointed Provost o£ tho nowly created See of Westminster, of which Cardinal Wiseman had been created the first Archbishop. On the death of Cardinal Wisouiao, in 1865, Dr. Manning was appointed by the, Pope to that archdiocose over which, during the ensuing quarter of a century, he continued to preside with a singular combination of sagacity, tact, courtesy, and . fairness. In tho year 1875, he was elected Cardinal by the Sacred College at Rome, under the direction of his present Holiness.*" It was not, however, chiefly as the exalted digna • lary and able champion of a Church, that Henry Edward Manning was so long rovered and loved by members of hisccuhtrymen. Every inch a Cardinal and a Catholic, he was more than either ; a man, not indeea grfted with the unique and marvellous genius of a Nowman, but, possessed of no ordinary intellectual endowments, adorned by moral qualities of a high and noble order ; gracious courtesy to all ; quick and tender sympathy ; burning zeal for right* ousnoss and truth ; deep indignation against injustice, however sanctioned by custom ;in a word, possessed in his whole character his long and honoured life, alike as a priest and as a man, of a true enthusiasm of humanity, and an ardent, solf -sacrificing devotion to tho great head of the church Catholic, under all its annual designations. Thoso wno, liko the writer of this brief memorial, have had the privilege, if but once in a lifetime, of listening to a discourse of this saint of God— for such indeed waß Manning ; to behold that attenuated, ethoreal form; that worn, pale, countenance ; those deop-sot, luminous eyes; illuminated, as ho pleaded with such oahn, yet profound earnestness, by light from that unseen world of tho Spirit, with which he hold habitual converse, will fully comprchond, as applied to his life and character, the force of the lines :— " A faith like this for ever doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things ;" Egmont.