John Henry Newman

“ Turn once more to this scholar of charity, and{10}
you will find that so it is. 'We, brethren,' he
says, 'being bereaved of you for the time of an
hour, in sight, not in heart, have hastened the
more abundantly to see your face with great
desire. For we would have come unto you, I,{15}
Paul, indeed, once and again, but Satan hath
hindered us. For which cause, forbearing no
longer, we thought it good to remain at Athens
alone, and we sent Timothy.' What force is
there in each expression! That flame of charity{20}
living in his soul is manifested with singular
luminousness. ”

“ Shine
on us, dear Lady, with thy bright countenance,
like the sun in his strength, O stella matutina, O
harbinger of peace, till our year is one perpetual{15}
May. From thy sweet eyes, from thy pure smile,
from thy majestic brow, let ten thousand
influences rain down, not to confound or
overwhelm, but to persuade, to win over thine enemies.
O Mary, my hope, O Mother undefiled, fulfill to{20}
us the promise of this Spring. A second temple
rises on the ruins of the old. ”

“ Or, again, approach the flame:
it warms you, and it enlightens you; yet approach
not too near, presume not, or it will change its
nature. That very element which is so beautiful{5}
to look at, so brilliant in its character, so graceful
in its figure, so soft and lambent in its motion,
will be found in its essence to be of a keen,
resistless nature; it tortures, it consumes, it reduces to
ashes that of which it was just before the{10}
illumination and the life. So it is with the attributes
of God; our knowledge of them serves us for our
daily welfare ”

“ Israel; for sensuality came upon him under the
guise of intellect, and it was the high mental
endowments of Eloisa, who became his pupil,{5}
speaking in her eyes, and thrilling on her tongue,
which were the intoxication and the delirium of
Abelard....
He is judged, he is punished; but he is not
reclaimed. True wisdom is not only "pacifica,"{10}
not only "pudica;" it is "desursum" too. It is
a revelation from above; it knows heresy as
little as it knows strife or license. ”

“ Newman's great reputation for prose and the supreme interest attaching to his life seem to have obscured the fame he might have won as a poet. He was in poetry, as in theology, a more masculine Keble, but with all the real purity of Keble, with also the indispensable flavor of earth. ”

“ What delicacy of style, yet what strength! how simple, yet how suggestive! how penetrating, yet how refined! how homely, yet how [Pg 10] tender-hearted! You might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church System, but you would be harder than most men if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul.... Newman's innate and intense idealism is, perhaps, his most striking characteristic.... ”

“ After whom is the king of Israel come out?{5}
after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog,
after a flea. The Lord therefore judge ... and
see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of
thine hand." Saul was for the time overcome;
he said, "Is this thy voice, my son David? and{10}
Saul lifted up his voice and wept." And he said,
"Thou art more righteous than I; for thou hast
rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee
evil." He added, "And now, behold, I know well
that thou shalt surely be king." ”

“ It is the place
where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a
missionary and a preacher, displaying his science
in its most complete and most winning form,
pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and{10}
lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of
his hearers. It is the place where the catechist
makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the
truth day by day into the ready memory, and
wedging and tightening it into the expanding{15}
reason. ”

“ The long imprisonment, the fetid
dungeon, the weary suspense, the tyrannous trial,
the barbarous sentence, the savage execution, the{5}
rack, the gibbet, the knife, the caldron, the
numberless tortures of those holy victims, O my God,
are they to have no reward? Are Thy martyrs
to cry from under Thine altar for their loving
vengeance on this guilty people, and to cry in{10}
vain? Shall they lose life, and not gain a
better life for the children of those who persecuted
them? ”

“ It is a thought of his, always deeply felt and many times repeated, that this visible world is but the outward shell of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from our view things far greater and more wonderful than any which we see, and that the unseen world is close to us and ever ready to break through the shell and manifest itself. ”

“ Let us consider{10}
how wide and how high is the platform of our
knowledge at this day, and what openings in
every direction are in progress—openings of
such promise, that, unless some convulsion of
society takes place, even what we have attained,{15}
will in future times be nothing better than a poor
beginning; and then on the other hand, let us
recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside
revealed truths, Europe had little more than that
poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at{20}
best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the
senses. ”

“ Newman's best essays display a delicate and flexible treatment of language, without emphasis, without oddity, which hardly arrests the attention at first,—the reader being absorbed in the argument or statement,—but which, in course of time, fascinates, as a thing miraculous in its limpid grace and suavity. ”

“ Athens. Most of those who sought Attic wisdom were natures without control. "Basil and Gregory were spoiled for subtle, beautiful, luxurious Athens. They walked their straight and loving road to God, with the simplicity which alone could issue out of the intense purpose of their lives—the love and service of Christ their Lord." ”

“ There are those who are cut off in the first
opening of this excellence, and then, if we may trust
their epitaphs, they have lived like angels; but{15}
wait awhile, let them live on, let the course of
life proceed, let the bright soul go through the
fire and water of the world's temptations and
seductions and corruptions and transformations;
and, alas for the insufficiency of nature! alas for{20}
its powerlessness to persevere, its waywardness
in disappointing its own promise! Wait till
youth has become age ”

“ Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested in everything that was going on in science, in the highest form of politics, in literature.... Nothing was too large for him, nothing too trivial, if it threw light upon the central question,—what man really is and what is his destiny. ”

“ The pure style of Newman may be compared in its distinguishing quality to the atmosphere. It is at once simple and subtle, vigorous and elastic; it penetrates into every recess of its subject; it is transparent, allowing each object it touches to display its own proper color.
—H. E. Beeching's English Prose.
There are touching passages characteristic of Newman's writings which give them a peculiar charm. They are those which yield momentary glimpses of a very tender heart that has a burden of its own, unrevealed to man.... ”

“ I am wandering in a labyrinth of which I cannot
find the center and heart, and am but conducted
out of doors again when I do my best to penetrate
within.
This seems to me, to tell the truth, a sort of{30}
[Pg 89] pantheistic treatment of the Saints. I ask something
more than to stumble upon the disjecta
membra of what ought to be a living whole. I
take but a secondary interest in books which
chop up a Saint into chapters of faith, hope,
charity, and the cardinal virtues. They are too{5}
scientific to be devotional. ”

“ Basil, indeed, in spite of the reputation
which attended him, had, from the first, felt
disappointment with the celebrated abode of
philosophy and literature; and seems to have given up
the world from a simple conviction of its emptiness.{10}
"He," says Gregory, "according to the way of human
nature, when, on suddenly falling in with what we hoped
to be greater, we find it less than its fame, experienced
some such feeling, began to be sad, grew impatient, and
could not congratulate himself on his place of residence.{15}
He sought an object which hope had drawn for him ”

“ What food for the intellect is it possible to
procure indoors, that you stay there looking about{30}
[Pg 172] you? do you think to read there? where are your
books? do you expect to purchase books at
Athens—you are much out in your calculations.
True it is, we at this day, who live in the
nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a
perpetual memorial; and copies there have been,{5}
since the time that they were written; but you
need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would
you find them in Athens. ”

“ Why,
while David is called a man after God's own heart,
should Saul be put aside as worthless?
This question leads us to a deeper inspection of,
his character. Now, we know, the first duty of{25}
every man is the fear of God—a reverence for His
word, a love of Him, and a desire to obey Him; and,
besides, it was peculiarly incumbent on the king of
Israel, as God's vicegerent, by virtue of his office, to
promote His glory whom his subjects had rejected.{30}
Now Saul "lacked this one thing." ”

“ One thing I
am sure of, that the more the enemy rages against
us, so much the more will the Saints in Heaven
plead for us; the more fearful are our trials from
the world, the more present to us will be our{15}
Mother Mary, and our good Patrons and Angel
Guardians; the more malicious are the devices of
men against us, the louder cry of supplication will
ascend from the bosom of the whole Church to
God for us. We shall not be left orphans; we{20}
shall have within us the strength of the Paraclete,
promised to the Church and to every member of
it. ”

“ Others have sudden falls,
as David had. Others are corrupted by
prosperity, as Solomon. But as to Saul, there is no{15}
proof that he had any deep-seated religious
principle at all; rather, it is to be feared, that his
history is a lesson to us, that the "heart of unbelief"
may exist in the very sight of God, may rule a man
in spite of many natural advantages of character,{20}
in the midst of much that is virtuous, amiable,
and commendable.
Saul, it would seem, was naturally brave,
active, generous, and patient ”

“ When Saul was disobedient, Samuel said to him,
"Thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath
sought Him a man after His own heart, and the{10}
Lord hath commanded him to be captain over
His people, because thou hast not kept that which
the Lord commanded thee." [19] The office to
which first Saul and then David were called was
different from that with which other favored{15}
men before them had been entrusted. From the
time of Moses, when Israel became a nation, God
had been the king of Israel, and His chosen
servants, not delegates, but mere organs of His
will. ”

“ Newman's mind swung through a wide arc, and thoughts apparently antagonistic often were to him supplemental each to each.... A man of dauntless courage and profound thoughtfulness, while his intellect was preëminently a logical one, both the heart and the moral sense possessed with him their sacred tribunals in matters of reasoning as well as of sentiment.... ”

“ Those whom
it has created, its children who have become such
by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their{25}
own acts, the dispensation which made them
what they were; and, though they have not
carried out works simply miraculous, yet they have
done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own
unearthly origin, and the new powers which had{30}
[Pg 182] come into the world. The revival of letters by
the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen,
when everything had to be done, reminds us of
the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of
man can resemble a work of God. ”

“ We do not
hesitate to say, that poetry is ultimately founded
on correct moral perception; that where there is
no sound principle in exercise there will be no{5}
poetry; and that on the whole (originality being
granted) in proportion to the standard of a writer's
moral character will his compositions vary in
poetical excellence. This position, however,
requires some explanation.{10}
Of course, then, we do not mean to imply that
a poet must necessarily display virtuous and
religious feeling ”

“ Lucretius, too, had great poetical genius; but his
work evinces that his miserable philosophy was
rather the result of a bewildered judgment than
a corrupt heart.{15}
According to the above theory, Revealed
Religion should be especially poetical—and it is so
in fact. While its disclosures have an originality
in them to engage the intellect, they have a beauty
to satisfy the moral nature. It presents us with{20}
those ideal forms of excellence in which a poetical
mind delights, and with which all grace and
harmony are associated. ”