The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of DublinNewman, John Henry
Religion
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
Newman, John Henry
Education, Higher; Universities and colleges
And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and political world. Man, with
his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is
from Him. Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts.
Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The pageant of earthly
royalty has the semblance and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace
and civilization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when
humane and necessary, have His co-operation, and His blessing upon them.
The course of events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall of
states, the periods and eras, the progresses and the retrogressions of the
world’s history, not indeed the incidental sin, over-abundant as it is,
but the great outlines and the results of human affairs, are from His
disposition. The elements and types and seminal principles and
constructive powers of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be
referred to Him. He “enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.”
His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of
conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect,
the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of
the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and
decorates the Temple, now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The
old saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the luminous
maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, the traditionary rules of
truth, justice, and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, or
alloyed with the pride, of the world, betoken His original agency, and His
long-suffering presence. Even where there is habitual rebellion against
Him, or profound far-spreading social depravity, still the undercurrent,
or the heroic outburst, of natural virtue, as well as the yearnings of the
heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its true remedies,
are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or
reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient sage, and
of the pagan devotee; His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian
fane, or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but
concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in His selected season, in
the issues of unbelief, superstition, and false worship, and He changes
the character of acts by His overruling operation. He condescends, though
He gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, and He makes
His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the
incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel’s spirit in the witch’s cavern,
prophesies of the Messias by the tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to
recognize His ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbeliever. He
is with the heathen dramatist in his denunciations of injustice and
tyranny, and his auguries of divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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