Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
I am not inviting a comparison between these two brothers, so alike in
their sincerity, their devotion, their courage, and their gifts--so
singularly unlike, so utterly divided, in their creeds and their
careers. My own sympathies, of course, naturally go with Francis Newman,
who has in a vast majority of instances been a teacher of some opinion,
a champion of some political cause of which I am proud to be a disciple
and a follower. But I suppose the greater intellect and the richer gifts
were those which were given up so meekly and wholly to the service of
the dogmatism of the Roman Catholic Church. The career of John Henry
Newman may probably be regarded as having practically closed. His latest
work of note, "The Grammar of Assent," does not indeed seem to show any
falling away of his intellectual powers; but I have heard that his
physical strength has suffered severely with years, and he never was a
strong man. He is now in his seventieth year, and it is therefore only
reasonable to regard him as one who has done his work and whose life is
fully open to the judgment of his time. May I be allowed to say that I
think he has done some good even to that English Church to which his
secession struck so heavy a blow? Newman was really the mainspring of
that movement which proposed to rescue the Church from apathy, from dull
easy-going quiescence, from the perfunctory discharge of formal duties,
and to quicken her once again with the spirit of a priesthood, to arouse
her to the living work, physical and spiritual, of an ecclesiastical
sovereignty. The impulse indeed overshot itself in his case, and was
misdirected in the case of Dr. Pusey, plunging blindly into Romanism
with the one, degenerating into a somewhat barren symbolism with the
other. But throughout the English Church in general there has been
surely a higher spirit at work since that famous Oxford movement which
was inspired by John Henry Newman. I think its influence has been more
active, more beneficent, more human, and yet at the same time more
spiritual, since that sudden and startling impulse was given. For the
man himself little more needs to be said. Every one acknowledges his
gifts and his virtues. No one doubts that in his marvellous change he
sought only the pure truth. His theology, I presume, is not that of the
readers of "The Galaxy" in general, any more than it is mine; but I
trust there is none of us so narrowed to his own form of Christianity as
to refuse his respect and admiration to one so highly lifted above the
average of men in goodness and intellect, even though his career may
have been sacrificed at the shrine of a faith that is not ours. For me,
I am sometimes lost in wonder at the sacrifice, but I can only think
with respect and even veneration of the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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