CARDINAL NEWMAN ON THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 380, 30 July 1880, Page 7

CARDINAL NEWMAN ON THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

When I say to you, gentlemen, that the question to which I shall ask your attention bears upon the subject of the conversion of England to the Catholic faith, you will think perhaps I am venturing without necessity upon difficult and dangerous ground— difficult because it relates to the future, and dangerous from the offence which it may possibly give to our Protestant brethren. But a man must write and speak on such matters as interest and occupy his mind. At the time when you paid me the great compliment of asking me to address you, you were aware who it was that you were asking ; you were aware what I could attempt and what I could not attempt ; and I claim in consequence, and I know I shall obtain, your indulgence in case you should be dissatisfied whether with my subject or with my mode of treating it. However, lam not going to consider the prospect of this country's becoming Catholic, but to inquire what we mean when we speak of praying for its conversion. I cannot, indeed, say anything which will strike you as new, for to be new is to be paradoxical ; and yet if I can bring out what is in my mind I think something may be said upon the subject. Now, of course, it is obviously an act of both simple charity and religious duty on our part to use our privilege of intercession on behalf of our own people ; of charity if we believe our religioa is true and that there is only one true religion, and of strict religious duty in the case of English Catholics, because such prayer has been especially enjoined upon them by ecclesiastical authority. There is a third reason which comes to us all, accompanied with very touching and grateful reminiscences. Our martyrs in the sixteenth century and their successors and representatives in the times which followed, at home and abroad, hidden in out-of-the-way nooks and corners of England, or exiles and refugees in foreign countries, kept up a tradition of continuous fervent prayer for their dear England, down almost to our own day, when it was taken up as if from a fresh beginning. It was a fresh 'start on the part of a holy man, Father Spencer, of the Papsion, himself a convert, who made it his very mission to bring into shape a system of prayer for the conversioD of his country ; and we know what hardships, mortifications, slights, insults, disappointments he underwent with this object. We know, too, how, in spite of this immense discouragement, or, rather, I should say, by means of it (for trial is the ordinary law of Providence), he did a great work, great in its success. That success lies in the visible fact of the conversions that have been so abundant among us since he entered upon his evangelical labour, coupled as it is with the general experience which we all have in the course of life of those wonderful answers which are granted to persevering prayer. Noi must we forget, while we bless the memory of his charily, that such a religious service was one of the observances which he inherited from the congregation which he had joined, though he had begun it before he was one of its members — for St. Paul of the Cross, its founder, for many years in his Roman monastery, had the conversion of England in his special prayers. Nor, again, must we forget the great aid which Father Spencer found from the first in the zeal of Cardinal Wiseman, who not only drew up a form of prayer for England for the use of English Catholics, but introduced Father Spencer's object to the bishops of France, and gained foi us the powerful intercession of an affectionate people who, iv my early days, were considered, this side the channel, to be nothing else than our national enemies. The experience, then, of what has actually come of prayer for our country, this and the foregoing generation, is a third reason, in addition to the claim of charity and the duty of obedience, for steadily keeping up an observance which we have inherited. And now, after this introduction, let us consider what it is we ask for when we ask for the conversion of England. Do we mean the conversion of the State, or of the nation, or of the people, or of the race 1 Of which of these, or of all these together, for there is an indistinctness in the word England ; and, again, a conversion from what to what ? This, too, has to be explained. Yet I think that at all times, whether in the sixteenth century or in the nineteenth, those who have prayed for it have mainly prayed for the same thing. That is, I think, they have ever meant — firstly, by conversion, a real and absolute apprehension and acknowledgment as true, with an internal assent and consent to the Catholic creed, and an honest acceptance, of the Catholic Roman Church as a divinely ordained exponent ; and. next, by England the whole population of England, eve.y man, woman, and child. Nothing short of this ought to satisfy the desire of those who pray for the conversion of England. So far our martyrs and confessors and their surroundings of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries are one with each other, but so abstract an object is hardly all they prayed for. They prayed for something concrete, and so do we ; but, as time and circumstances have changed, so is what is possible, desirable, as signally changed as regards the object of their and our prayer. It must be recollected that the sixteenth and following centuries had been a period of great political movements and inteinational conflicts, and with those movements and conflicts and their issues religion had been intimately bound up. To pray for the triumph of religion was in times past to pray for the success in political and civil matters of certain sovereigns, governments, parties, nations. So it was in the fourth century when Julian attempted to revive and re-establish paganism. To pray for the Church then was to pray for the overthrow of Julian. And so in England Catholics in the sixteenth century would pray for Mary, and Protestants for Elizabeth. But these times are gone. Catholics do not now depend for their religion on the patronage of sovereigns— at least in England — and it would not help them much if they gained it. Indeed, it is a question if they succeeded here in England even in the sixteenth century. Queen Mary did not do much for us in her short reign. She peimitted acts as if for the benefit of Catholics, which were the cause, the excuse for terrible reprisals in the next reign, and have stamped on the minds of our countrymen a fear and hatred of us. viewed as Catholics, which at the end of three centuries is as fresh and keen as it ever was. Nor did James 11. do us any good in the next century by the exercise of his regal power. The event has taught us not to

look for the conversion of England to political movements and changes and in consequence not to turn our prayers for it in that direction. At a time when priests were put to death or forced out of the country if they preached or said Mass there was no other way open for conversion but the allowance or sanction of the government. It was as natural, therefore, then to look for political intervention, to pray for the succes of dynasties, of certain heirs or claimants to thrones, of parties of popular insurrections, of foreign influence in behalf of Catholics in England, as it would be preposterous and idle to do so now. I think the best favour which sovereigns, parliaments, municipalities and other political powers can do is to let tis alone. Yet though we cannot as sensible men, because times have changed, pray for the cause of the Catholic religion among us with the understanding and intention of those who went before us, still besides what they teach us ethically as to perseverance amid disappointment, I think we may draw two lessons from their mode of viewing the great duty of which I am speaking — lessons whicli we ought to lay to heart, and. from which we may gain direcHon for ourselves ; and on these I will say a few words. And first they suggest to us that in praying for the conversion of England we ought to have, as they had, something in view whicli may be thrown into the shape of an object — present or immediate. An abstract idea of conversion — a conversion which is to take place some day or other, without any conception of what it is to be, and how it is to come about — is to my mind, very unsatisfactory. I know, of course, that we must ever leave events to the Supreme Disposer of all things. Ido not forget the noble linos : Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice. But this great precept dees not interfere with our duty of taking pains to understand what we pray for — what our prayer definitely means — and the question is not what we shall get, bnt for what we shall ask. The views of our predecessors were clear enough. On the other hand, a want of distinctness is not only unjust to our object, but ip, very likely very apt to irritate those for whom we pray, as if we had some seciet expedient and method against them, or else as if we were giving expression to a feeling of superiority and compassion for them, and thus betray ourselves to the resource alone left to them who have been beaten in argument. Now certainly those who prayed for the accession of Maiy Tudor oi- Mary Stuait to the throne of England did not lay themselves open to this charge. They were definite enough in their petitions, and would have been quite satisfied with ordinary acts of Providence in their favour, such as are the staple of the world's history. And this is the point as to which I think they give us a second lesson for our own profit. I consider, then, that when we pray we do not ask for miracles, and that this limitation of our prayers is neither a piescribing to Divine mercy nor is any want of faith. I do not forget the displeasure of the prophet Eliseus with the King of Isiael when he s>motc the ground only three times with his arrow instead of moic times. "If thou hadst smitten five, six, or seven times," Faya the prophet, " thou hadst smitten Syria even to utter destruction, but now three times shalt thou smite it."' But in this case there is no question c f miracles. Nor will it be to the purpose to refer to the parab'e of the importunate widow ; and that has nothing to do with miracles either. What I would urge is this : the Creator acts by a fixed rule, which we call a system of law?, and ordinarily, and on the whole, He honours and blesses His own ordinance, and acts thiough it, and we best honour IJim when we follow His guidance in looking for His presence where He has lodged it. 51 01 cover, what is very remarkable, even when it is His will to act miraculously, even when He outstrips His ordinary system, He is wont to honour it while overstepping it. Sometime?, indeed, He directly contradicts His own laws, as in raising the dead, but such Ttvre acts have their own definite purpose which makes them necessajy for their own sake ; but, for the most part. His marvels are rather what may be called exaggeration.*, or carrying out to an extreme point of the laws of nature, than naked contraries to them, and if we would see more of J T is wonder-working hand, we must look for it as thus mixed up with His natural appointments. As Divine aid given to the soul acts through and with natural reason, natural affection and conscience, so miiaculous agency, when exerted, is in many ways, iv most cases, a co-operation with the ordinary ways of physical nature. As an illustration, I may take the division of the waters of the Eul Sea at the word of Moses. This was a miracle ; yet it was effected with the instrumentality of a natural cause, acting according to its nature, but at the same time beyond it. "When Hoses," says the sacicd writer, "had stretched forth his hands over the sea, the Lord took it away by a strong and burning wind blowing all the night, and <urned it into dry ground." The coincidence that it happened at so critical a time, and in answer t<-> prayers, and then the hot wind's abnormal and successful action— all this makes it a miracle ; but still it is a miracle co-operating with the laws of nature, and recognising them while it surpasses them. If tho Almighty thus honouis His own ordinance?, we may well honour them, too ; and, indeed, this is commonly recognised as a duty by Catholics in the case of medical cures — not to look to miracles until natural means had failed. I do not say that they reglect this rule in regard to their prayers for conversions, but thoy haven't i before their minds so consistently and practically. For instance, prayers for the conversion of given individual?, however unlikely to succeed, are, in the case of their relations, friends, benefactors and the like, obviously a sacred duty. St. Monica prayed for her son ; she was bound to do so ; had he remained in Africa he might have merely exchanged one heresy for another. He was guided to Italy by natural means, and was converted by St. Ambrose. It was by hoping against hope, by perseverance in asking that her merit was gained, that her reward was wrought out. However, I conceive the general rule of duty is to take likely objects of prayer, not unlikely objects about whom we know little or nothing. But I have known cases where good Catholics have said of a given Protestant, " We will have him," and that with a sort of impetuosity, and as if. so to say, defying Providence ; and which have always reminded me of the doctrine of Hindoo theology represented in Southey's poem,

that prayers and sacrifices had a compulsory force on the Bupreme Bong, as if no implicit act of resignation were necessary in order to make our intercession acceptable. If, then, I am asked what our predecessors in the faith, were they on earth, would understand now by praying for the conversion of England— as two or three centuries ago they understood by it the success of those political parties and meapimp with which that conveibion was bound up— l answer that th< y would contemplate an object present, immediate, concrete, and in the way of Providence ; and it would be, if woidcd with strict conccimtp, Rottlic conversion of England to the Catholic Church, but the growth of the Catholic Church, in England. Jlicy would (xpect, again, by their prayers nc-thing sudden, nothing violent, nothing evidently miraculous, nothing inconsistent with the free will of our countrymen, nothing out of w keeping with the majestic march and slow but sure triumph of truth and right in this turbulent world. They would look for the gradual, steady and sound advance of Catholicity by ordinary means and issues which are probable and acts and proceedings which arc good and holy. They would pray for the conversion of individuals and for a great many of them, and out of all ranks and classes, and those especially who are in faith and devotion nearest to the Church, and seem, if they do not themselves defeat it, to be the object of God's election ; for a removal from the public mind of prejudice and i<Tiorance about us, for a better understanding in all quarters of what we hold and what we do not hold, for a feeling of good will and respectful bearing m the population towards our bishops and priests, for a growing capacity in the educated classes of entering on a just appreciation of our characteristic opinions, sentiments, ways and principles ; and in order to effect all this for a blessing on our controversialists, that they may be gifted with an abundant measure of prudence, self-command, tact, knowledge of men and things, good sense, candour and straightforwardness, that their reputation may be high and their influence wide and deep ; and as a special means, and most necossary for our success, for a large increase in the Catholic body of brotherly love, mutual sympathy, unanimity and high principal and rectitude of conduct, and purity of life. I could not have selected a more important subject to bring before you, but in proportion to my sense of its importance is my consciousness that it deserves a treatment far superior to that which I have given it. I have done as well as I could, though poor is the best.