To my mind there are quite two, if not more, sides to this question. My strongest argument, however, in favour of only dealing briefly with them is this: It is quite true that Agnosticism more or less held its sway over him during the years between 1834 and 1879. I am quite aware of how tremendous a slice that is of a man's life. But it is not an overwhelming testimony when one comes to look at it not from the worldly point of view.
There are periods in which Time—as Time—seems almost beside the mark. "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday." When the Israelites had once achieved their journey through the wilderness—nay, even through the earlier time of tyranny amongst the Egyptians-I suppose the actual years seemed as a dream when one awaketh.
I myself have known forty years pass, for someone afflicted with a terrible mental disability, as a watch in the night, once light pierced through the clouds of the long-darkened mental vision. Time, as sex, is purely temporary. In this present world we cannot do without either, but when Time itself passes for good, the old implements which were necessary to make the clock go round will pass likewise.
So, in Newman's case, when that tremendous slice in a man's life—forty- five years—was overpast, he sloughed off the old garments of Agnosticism, and came back to the Christian faith professed by him in early childhood so conscientiously—and, indeed, up to the year after his missionary journey, 1834.
This fact influences me largely in the matter of dealing only briefly with the time-as regards his religious professions—which lies between these two dates, and for these reasons, which I hope to prove, carry considerable weight.
The first is that people are mistaken in considering that it was his religious opinions which made Newman great. The real valour of his life was shown in the splendid aspects of Social Reform which he showed to the world; the way of the New Citizenship, of the New Patriotism, which he was for ever preaching and writing about. He was the Perseus of To-day whose wholehearted efforts were spent in freeing the Andromedas from their antiquated bonds and fetters; whose good sword was ever pointed at the throats of the dragons which lift their ugly heads against freedom— against reforms of all sorts; the dragons who take so long in dying.
But there are many who will regret bitterly that a man who served his generation so splendidly as he did in these matters should ever have written a book such as the Phases of Faith; for though it is undeniably clever, yet it is not convincing; and very much of it is very painful reading for those who do not care to wander out of the way in the wilderness of religious speculation and doubt.
Newman declares in this book that he did not give up Christianity; yet he gave up all that made Christianity Christianity. He said in it that he was looking for a "religion which shall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness that are the glories of the purest Christianity, with that activity of intellect and untiring pursuit of truth." [Footnote: He said once he wished for a religion which should combine the best out of all religions in the world.]
When he mentions that, in his time, "of young men at Oxford not one in five seemed to have any convictions at all," he seems to imply that it was on account of the desire for a new religion; whereas it was far more traceable to the after-effects of Calvinism and Puritanism, which have stuck, as spiritual limpets, to England's religious rocks ever since they first reached them. They are certainly looser in their hold than was the case formerly, but they are there still.
Phases of Faith was published in 1850. But the year before a book of far more religious suggestiveness had come out, though that too was a book of opposition to the accepted forms of religion, The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations.