Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
The younger brother needs no apology or vindication, in the United
States especially. He is, be it understood, a thoroughly religious man.
He has never sunk into materialism or frittered away his earnestness in
mere skepticism. He is not orthodox--he has gone his own way as regards
church dogma and discipline; but except in the vulgarest and narrowest
application of the word, he is no "infidel." The United States owe him
some good feeling, for he was one of the few eminent men in England who
never were faithless to the cause of the Union, and never doubted of its
ultimate triumph. I have now before me one of the most powerful
arguments addressed to an English audience for the Union and against
secession that reason, justice, and eloquence could frame. It is a
pamphlet published in 1863 by "F. W. Newman, late Professor at
University College, London," in the form of a "Letter to a Friend who
had joined the Southern Independence Association." How wonderful it
seems now that such arguments ever should have been needed; how few
there were then in England who regarded them; how completely time has
justified and sealed them as true, right, and prophetic. I read the
pages over, and all the old struggle comes back with its rancors and its
dangers, and I honor anew the brave man who was not afraid to stand as
one of a little group, isolated, denounced, and laughed at, confiding
always in justice and time.
The story of these two brothers is on the whole as strange a chapter as
any I know in the biography of human intellect and creed. I think it may
at least teach us a lesson of toleration, if nothing better. The very
pride of intellect itself can hardly pretend to look down with mere
scorn upon beliefs or errors which have carried off in contrary
directions these two Newmans. The sternest bigot can scarcely refuse to
admit that truthfulness and goodness may abide without the limits of his
own creed, when he remembers the high and noble example of pure, true,
and disinterested lives which these intellectually-sundered brothers
alike have given to their fellow-men.
ARCHBISHOP MANNING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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