228: 5. A brotherhood ... below. Where in the range of English prose is to be found form wedded to sense in a more surpassingly beautiful way? Neither music, nor painting, nor poetry, can have anything more exquisite to yield, it would seem.
Other numbers of this volume equally admirable are The Second Spring, The Tree beside the Waters, and Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training.
THE SECOND SPRING
Introductory Note. This discourse was given in St. Mary's, Oscott, on the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy to England. It furnishes an excellent specimen of the simplicity and grace of Newman's style. The climax is reached in the glory of the last pages.
229: 17. Alternate Seraphim. The angelic choirs whom St. John in vision heard crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty." Apocalypse iv. 8.
231: 24. How beautiful.... A strong presentation of the weakness of human nature left to itself. "Without me you can do nothing," says Christ. John xv. 5.
233: 12. Roman conqueror. Scipio Africanus, victor of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War.
235: 22. The English Church. The Catholic Church in England was virtually destroyed by Henry VIII, restored by Mary I, and officially re-destroyed by Elizabeth, who attempted, through Matthew Parker, to create new orders. The Second Spring is the resuscitation of the Church in England, 1850.
237: 11. Cumber the ground. "Why doth it (the barren fig tree) cumber the ground?" Newman's writings, like St. Augustine's, are saturated with Scripture.
240: 23. (a) St. Augustine. (b) St. Thomas. (a) Called St. Austin, sent by Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons, 597 A.D. (b) Martyred at Canterbury by the nobles of Henry II because of his fearless defense of the rights of the Church. The Pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas á Becket.