Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman

by I. Giberne Sieveking

* * * * *

"He was a true philanthropist. He championed the cause of the oppressed everywhere…. A room in his house was set apart as a guest-chamber for persons needing a change to the seaside, but whose circumstances barred the way; and not a few were fresh equipped for the work and battle of life, as a result of his thoughtful hospitality…. Francis Newman stood by himself in his greatness, his goodness, his simplicity, and we shall not find his like again…. Above all, our friend was a truth seeker. This was the ruling passion of his life."

Mrs. Temperley Grey tells me that it was always Newman's first wife's great hope that her husband should be the means, through his ministrations during the last part of Newman's life, of leading him back to his original faith. Mrs. Newman used deeply to regret Newman's lack of definite belief, but always said when the subject was raised, "Cannot they understand that my husband is under a cloud—a mist, as it were?" Both the brothers, the Cardinal and Francis Newman, through the greater part of their lives had been restlessly searching for truth—for certainty—in their faith. Calvinism had been the black cloud under which they had both been brought up. If the obiter dictum of a celebrated Cardinal in the Roman Church be correct: "Give me the child till he is seven years old, and he will be a Jesuit all his life," then indeed it shows the tremendous power of habit, for it was only through much tribulation, through passionate inward wrestlings with those terrible tenets, and through many searchings of heart, that either brother made his way out of its toils at length. The Cardinal sought above all things Truth, through authority; no one will forget those soul-stirring words of his in his Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ in which he speaks of the great peace that at last quieted his doubts and fears when he was received into the Roman Church. To many of us Authority is the life-buoy which supports us "o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone"; but Francis Newman could not believe in it. "Authority is the bane," he would say, "of religion." He must see with his intellectual eyes, to be saved. He must see and touch Truth for himself; his intellectual self must be convinced, or he must stand outside the creeds he knew—a questioner still.

But he was honest and open in his aloofness. Did it mean loss of a distinguished brilliant worldly career (as it did at Oxford in 1830)? Well, then the career must be lost, for he could not bring himself to sign to doctrines which he did not believe. Did it mean unpopularity, that he held certain views on Social Reform? Well, rather than compromise, rather than temporize, he would stand out alone rather than yield an iota of what he held to be the true Progressive Aims for People and Land. Only—and this was a flaw, and no small one either—he often wrote his religious opinions so openly as to pain his readers. In many of his letters which I have read there are expressions relating to the religious dogmas held by his correspondents which are bluntly, unrestrainedly, bitterly used. It is true that often, at the close of a letter, there follows a hope that he had not hurt his friends' feelings; but that he must, at all costs, be open as to his own beliefs. But that apology only came as an after-thought, as it were as an attempt to dress the wound which he himself had made, and is quite unable to do away with the impression produced by the written word. Litera scripta manet.

In writing on "The National Church" thirty-three years after he had refused to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, he said, with emphasis, "Truthfulness of the individual man is essential to moral worth; but for this very reason the system of the Church must be lax in order to allow truthfulness to individuals." This is curious reasoning, and subversive of the idea of Unity. Still, as no one can deny that as Life implies Progression, so as regards the Churches, the inspired words that they should be "led into all truth" surely allow for progression also into higher regions of knowledge and methods of teaching. To allow for this spirit of progression Newman held that a State Church should not be tied down to fixed conditions. "No general Church system will go so far as the foremost minds…. All the moderate and wisest historians of the Anglican Church have extolled its foundations. They have judged that, take it as a whole, the Reformation went as far as the collective nation was then able to go." That it "was necessary to reform it in the sixteenth century in order to harmonize it with the higher intelligence of the best minds, so far as could be done without making it useless to the inferior minds." All this has a certain truth, but when all is said, the fact forces itself upon one that after all it is a matter for debate whether the Reformation was a "progressive" movement at all: whether it did not in reality delay progression. For it is well known to-day that it was really managed by the machinations of one of the most selfish and unprincipled of kings [Footnote: Whose conduct at this time largely hinged on the refusal of the Pope to grant him his wished-for divorce from Katherine.]—who was only progressive in the matter of wives—and by his ministers, who were, many of them, men of vile characters and greed. As to motive, it is very patent to-day what that was. It was that of the man who covets his neighbour's goods, i.e. the lands and moneys of the monasteries and churches, and who whitewashes his sin when his desire is satisfied. There is besides sufficient proof to-day that the great bulk of the unrepresented nation did not regard this act of wholesale robbery as "lawful and necessary," nor that it "harmonized" the Church "with the higher intelligence of the best minds."

To the end of his life (from his Oxford days to his death), of course, Newman was never greatly in sympathy with the Anglican Church. He did not, even at the end, own himself bound by her dogmas or obedient to her conditions. To go further into the question is, I think, not desirable here. It is enough to say that though he was outside the visible Church, yet he was, in life and spirit, "not far off". As was said of Stanley, "he believed more than he knew." His "life was in the right," though his doubts and rationalism led him into unbeliefs, which only at the close of his long life he renounced. And he had a far deeper longing for religious truth than have many conventional Churchmen.

CHAPTER XIX

LAST YEARS, CHARACTERISTICS, AND SOME LETTERS RELATING TO THE EARLY LIFE OF THE CARDINAL

It will be remembered that Francis Newman retired from his official duties at University College in 1863, with the title Emeritus Professor. As most of us are aware, this word "Emeritus" was originally given to Roman soldiers who had served out their term and been discharged, on the understanding of being given a settled sum of money which was practically the equivalent of our English half-pay. The term is now used to designate a professor who has been "honourably relieved" of his office, either because of physical disability or on account of a term of long service fulfilled. It is, in effect, a retiring pension.

As will have been seen by letters from Newman which precede this chapter, he retired from the office of Professor, but in no sense from his work of writing, studying, and lecturing. The enormous number of books published will testify to this. His five volumes of Miscellanies, his Reminiscences of Two Exiles, Europe of the Near Future, translation of the Odes of Horace, [Footnote: Which did not meet with the approval of Matthew Arnold.] Handbook and Dictionary of Modern Arabic, Kabail Vocabulary, Libyan Vocabulary, Text of the Iguvine Inscriptions, Christian Commonwealth, History of the Hebrew Monarchy, Hebrew Theism, Early Life of Cardinal Newman, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery, not to mention many others, alone show how writing largely filled his days and occupied his mind.