And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
Some have believed that Newman by “angel faces” had in mind loved ones lost through death. Yet others are convinced that the author had reference to the actual visions of angels which are said to have come to him in youth, and the loss of which greatly grieved him in later life. Newman himself, in a letter written January 18, 1879, refused to throw further light on the lines, pleading that he had forgotten the meaning that he had in mind when the hymn was written forty-six years before.
Rome honored its distinguished proselyte by making him a cardinal. It is said, however, that Newman was never again a happy man after having surrendered the faith of his fathers. He died at Birmingham, England, August 11, 1890, at the age of eighty-nine years.
A disciple of Newman’s, Frederick William Faber, may be mentioned in this connection, for the lives of the two men were strangely intertwined. Faber, who was the son of an English clergyman, was born at Yorkshire, June 28, 1814. He was graduated from Oxford in 1836, and became a minister of the English Church at Elton in 1843.
While at Oxford he came under the influence of the “Oxford Movement” and formed a deep attachment for Newman. It was inevitable, therefore, that he too should be carried into the Roman Church, which communion he joined in 1846. For some years he labored with Newman in the Catholic church of St. Philip Neri in London. He died in 1863 at the age of forty-nine years.
Faber wrote a large number of hymns, many of them before his desertion to the Church of Rome. Others, written after his defection, containing eulogies of Mary and petitions addressed to the saints, have been changed in order to make them suitable for Protestant hymn-books. His inordinate use of the word “sweet”, and his familiar manner of addressing Christ as “sweet Saviour” has called down harsh criticism on his hymns as sentimental and effeminate. However, such hymns as “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,” “Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling,” “O Saviour, bless us ere we go,” “O Paradise, O Paradise,” and “Faith of our fathers, living still” have probably found a permanent place in the hymn-books of the Church Universal, and will be loved and cherished both for their devotional spirit and their poetic beauty.
Faber wrote “Faith of our fathers” after his defection to the Church of Rome. In its original form the author expressed the hope that England would be brought back to the papal fold. The opening lines, as Faber wrote them, were:
Faith of our fathers! Mary’s prayers
Shall win our country back to thee.