The Open Court
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— — " The Open Court A. WEEKLY JOURNAL Devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion with Science. Two Dollars per Year. (Vol. IV.-32 J No. 162. ) CHICAGO, OCTOBER 2, il I Single Copies, lo Cts, CARDINAL NEWMAN. except the pulpit-attorneys ; whereas the late Cardinal BY MONCURE D. CONWAY. was an example of reversion to the original type. II. Professor Francis W. Newman, the late Cardinal's Charles Kingslev, in his attack on Dr. Newman, brother, whose friendship I have enjoyed many years, made a mistake whose recoil on him ought to be in- told me that when they were young clergj'men, his structive to liberal thinkers. Kingsley could not con- relation to his brother was affectionate. Indeed, John ceive that a great scholar, a man of genius, might be Henry wrote a poem to his brother : genuinely and thoroughly convinced of what to him " Dear Frank, we both are summoned now as champions of the Lord. Enrolled am and shortly thou must buckle on thy sword L ; (Kingsley) appeared puerile superstitions, and he vir- A high employ, not lightly given tually impugned the sincerity of Newman's position in To serve as messengers of heaven. saying that the great Oratorian taught that truth need oh, may we follow undismayed where'er our God shall call t not be the chief virtue of the Catholic clergy. It turned And may His Spirit's present aid uphold us lest we fall ! out that Newman was more sincerely in his position When Francis—so he told me—once expressed a than Kingsley, whose sword, so gratuitiously seized, doubt on some point relating to the authority of the broke in his hand. After reading Newman's Apologia, Church, his brother was alarmed and said, "Take evoked by that controversy, it is impossible to doubt care ! if you go so far you will go farther." Francis that its writer was a sort of a religious Mithridates, replied, " I will go farther when I see farther." So he had lived on what rationalism would call mental at eve did the two ships speak each other, and in the poisons until they were his natural food. It would morning, as Clough said, were two towers of sail appear that even in early life he hunted about for "scarce long leagues apart descried." It was clear signs and wonders as other boys did for birds' nests. that the ages of faith had transmitted to the mind of As his sophistication went on with his education at John Henry Newman a stony deposit which became Oxford, the Bible did not contain half enough miracles his touchstone of all things. As time went on this for his insatiable love of the marvellous, and in the end inner marble, quarried from the ancient ecclesiastical he naturally added the vast supernatural lore of Catholi- formation, became an image, carved by his genius and cism. Such a man is not to be censured, still less sus- polished by his scholarship. It was his Galatea, and pected of insincerity, but to be studied as an invalu- under his passionate devotion took (for him) life as able specimen of "reversion." Where he stood the the Virgin Mary. whole learned world once stood. In the next century In studying the evolution of Newman we have to it will be as extraordinar}' to find an evangelical be- consider the evolutionary factors which in all ages and liever, of scholarship and commanding ability, as it races show good men and women worshipping cruel was to find this phenomenal Newman. Of course, 1 gods. Such deities were originall}' created by savage am speaking now of real religious believers, and not man in his own image. They are not religious but of the retained pulpit attorneys of dogma who will al- cosmological creations. Through terror all the re- ways be in demand, and increase in ta.lent as their sources of primitive man were organized around such task of professional defence becomes more difficult. self-evoked phantoms, so that they became the foun- But Newman threw up his brief for the sake of his dations of every social and political order. When personal conviction. It was well to take a good look higher minds arose, and began to question these heart- social foundations, the at him ; he was probably the last man of anything like less gods, it was assailing the the same power that will ever believe his creed. And political order, and endangering vast interests. Con- it is well to take a good look at Gladstone, who is sequently the skeptics were killed off, and the abject pretty certain to be the last unprofessional champion believers alone remained to propagate the species. of orthodoxy, of like eminence^ unless in some case of " He that belie veth not shall be damned," was sacred reversion. The difference between Newman and Glad- law, and the unbeliever's future fires were begun on stone is that the latter is merely a survival, — the last earth. For many centuries there went on a survival evangelical survivor among the great men of Europe, of the credulous. Heretics could find no wives; priests — 2544 THE OREN COURTP. bred. Thus confession to him. I suppose two friends will be received with would not marry them; only belief was me. May I have only one-tenth part as much faith as I and science, became ser- have in- all scholarship, all thought, tellectual conviction where the truth lies ! I do not suppose any type was formed of a piety vants of superstition. The one can have had such combined reasons pouring in upon him that was abject assent, the Abra- is right. far I blessed whose supreme virtue he doing So am most ; but, alas ! my heart is so hard, and I am taking things so much as a matter hamic Sacrifice of Reason. of course, that I have been quite frightened lest I should not have faith and Fortunately, however, the various nations were so contrition enough to gain the benefit of the Sacraments. Perhaps from each other, by distance and hostility, separated faith and reason are incompatible in one person, or nearly so." different type. Each that each developed a somewhat hated every other The next letter was written more than forty-one had consecrated its own variety and increasing communication and years later (March 23, 1887) to a theistic minister : as heresy. But as, with in each country, some migrations, these types mingled "What I have written about Rationalism requires to be ex- mutual toleration, had panded. If you will let me be short abrupt, I will modus Vivendi, some principle of and contrast it toleration reason began to claim with/(;/M. ' Faith cometh by hearing,' by the Word of God. Ra- to be reached. Under tionalists are those who are content with conclusions to which science to grow, and protestant movements rights, they have been brought by reason, but ' we are saved by faith,' In the course of time the pro- asserted themselves. and even in cases and persons where true conclusions can be ar- strong that the English testant movement became so rived at, those conclusions must be believed on the ground that church was compelled to compromise with it, as the ' God has spoken.' A man may be a true and exact theist and yet power, and its wealth,— not have faith. What he lacks in order to faith is the grace of only means of preserving its God, which is given in answer to prayer. I have written as much to-day amounts to a thousand million dollars. which as my fingers will write, and more perhaps than you can read. constitutes an immense "breed- This amount of money P. S. Liberalism is the dt-vflopnimt of Rationalism. It views the spiritual nurseries, ing" power. The universities, faith as a mere natural gift, the like and the consequence of rea- farmer breeds ; were able to breed rehgious teachers as a son and the moral sense and by reason and the moral sense he sheep which should estimates it and measures its objects. He soon comes to be sat- sheep. The modern church needed isfied with other men, though they ignore faith and its objects, scientific but while growing protestant, scholarly, ; be provided they recognise reason and the moral sense. This is Lib- logical legs must be bred too such fine wool, their eralism." church palings. They short for them to jump over the The first of these letters is interpreted by the must not stray into Catholicism on one side, nor into second. We can detect in his fear that he had not but they were free to enjoy Unitarianism on the other ; as much faith as he had intellectual conviction that ritualistic and ration- either inside the church, where his heart (which he calls "hard ") was faintly carrying pastures are provided. alistic on the skepticism which his reason had renounced, escaping the possi- But in this process there is no his intellect having assumed the role of faith. His original type. Such was bilities of reversion to the dread is that his reason may have had something to intellectual legs were not the late Dr. Newman. His do with his conversion and his convictions. There is brother, for con- bred short enough, nor those of his something rationalistic, consequently sinful, in be- their moral finement in the pale of the church, while lieving even Catholicism on intellectual grounds. Such so they leaped into their enthusiasm was over-bred ; belief, to be right, must be solely of God's authority, congenial pastures—one into modern theism, the of divine grace, of faith.