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PAGE

INTRODUCTION 5

CHARACTER SKETCHES:

Saul 13

Early Years of David 28

Basil and Gregory 45

Augustine and the Vandals 56

Chrysostom 84

THE TURK:

The Tartar and the Turk 111

The Turk and the Saracen 122

The Past and Present of the Ottomans 143

UNIVERSITIES:

What is a University? 155

University Life: Athens 163

Supply and Demand: The Schoolmen 180

The Strength and Weakness of Universities: Abelard 186

MISCELLANEOUS:

Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics 200

The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes 218

Christ upon the Waters 222

The Second Spring 229

St. Paul's Characteristic Gift 251

NOTES 269

INTRODUCTION

It has come to be universally admitted that Cardinal Newman fulfills his own definition of a great author: "One whose aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it happens that whatever be the splendor of his diction, or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity.

"Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake.... He writes passionately because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous.

"When his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much....

"He expresses what all feel but cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words, idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces."

Newman may be said to have handled England's prose as Shakespeare handled her verse. His language was wrought up little by little to a finish and refinement, a strength and a subtlety, thrown into the form of eloquence, beyond which no English writer of prose has gone. Nor is his excellence that of mere art in form; he possesses not only skill, which he calls an exercise of talent, but power--a second name for genius--which itself implies personality and points to inspiration.

His mind was large, logical, profoundly thoughtful, imaginative, intense, sincere, and above all, spiritual; his soul was keen, delicate, sympathetic, heroic; and his life, at once severe and tender, passionate and self-controlled, alone and unlonely, stands out in its loftiness and saintliness, a strange, majestic contrast to the agitation and turmoil of "confused passions, hesitating ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies" amidst which it was lived.

Both by word and work did Newman lead forth his generation on the long pilgrimage to the shrine of Truth, and England of the nineteenth century has no surer claim to holiness and genius for her great sons than that set upon John Henry Newman.

Any attempt to choose from the writings of Newman what seems most desirable for brief class studies is certain to be woefully embarrassed by the very wealth of matter; and apology for risking the choice would be due, were it not lost sight of in the desire to see a literary model so pure, varied, animated, forceful, luminous--"a thing of light and beauty"--given to our students.

What is more significant of the Life Book of the saintly Oxford Scholar than his self-written epitaph: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem?"

APPRECIATIONS

Newman's best essays display a delicate and flexible treatment of language, without emphasis, without oddity, which hardly arrests the attention at first,--the reader being absorbed in the argument or statement,--but which, in course of time, fascinates, as a thing miraculous in its limpid grace and suavity.

The work of Newman reveals him as one of the great masters of graceful, scholarly, finished prose. It is individual, it has charm, and this is the secret of its power to interest. No writer of our time has reflected his mind and heart in his pages as has Newman. He has light for the intellect and warmth for the heart.

Newman towers, with only three or four compeers, above his generation; and now that the benignity of his great nature has passed from our sight, its majesty is more evident year by year.

The finish and urbanity of Newman's prose have been universally commended even by those who are most strenuously opposed to his opinions.

All the resources of a master of English style are at Newman's command: pure diction, clear arrangement, delicate irony, gracious dignity, a copious command of words combined with a chaste reserve in using them. All these qualities go to make up the charm of Newman's style--the finest flower that the earliest system of a purely classical education has produced.

Newman combines a thoroughly classical training, a scholarly form, with the incommunicable and almost inexplicable power to move audiences and readers.

The pure style of Newman may be compared in its distinguishing quality to the atmosphere. It is at once simple and subtle, vigorous and elastic; it penetrates into every recess of its subject; it is transparent, allowing each object it touches to display its own proper color.

There are touching passages characteristic of Newman's writings which give them a peculiar charm. They are those which yield momentary glimpses of a very tender heart that has a burden of its own, unrevealed to man.... It is, as I have heard it described, as though he suddenly opened a book and gave you a glimpse for a moment of wonderful secrets, and then as quickly closed it.... In Newman's Sermons, how the old truth became new; how it came home, as he spoke, with a meaning never felt before! He laid his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state, were dropped out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what strength! how simple, yet how suggestive! how penetrating, yet how refined! how homely, yet how tender-hearted! You might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church System, but you would be harder than most men if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul.... Newman's innate and intense idealism is, perhaps, his most striking characteristic.... It is a thought of his, always deeply felt and many times repeated, that this visible world is but the outward shell of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from our view things far greater and more wonderful than any which we see, and that the unseen world is close to us and ever ready to break through the shell and manifest itself.

Newman's great reputation for prose and the supreme interest attaching to his life seem to have obscured the fame he might have won as a poet. He was in poetry, as in theology, a more masculine Keble, but with all the real purity of Keble, with also the indispensable flavor of earth.

It is when Newman exerts his flexible and vivid imagination in depicting the deepest religious passion that we are most carried away by him and feel his great genius most truly.... Whether tried by the test of nobility, intensity, and steadfastness of his work, or by the test of the greatness of the powers which have been consecrated to that work, Cardinal Newman has been one of the greatest of our modern great men.

Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested in everything that was going on in science, in the highest form of politics, in literature.... Nothing was too large for him, nothing too trivial, if it threw light upon the central question,--what man really is and what is his destiny.

In Newman's sketch of the influence of Abelard on his disciples is seen his belief in the immense power for good or ill of a dominating personality. And he himself supplied an object-lesson in his theory. Shairp, Froude, Church, Wilberforce, Gladstone, are only a few of those who have borne testimony to the personal magnetism which left its mark on the whole of thinking Oxford. "Cor ad cor loquitur," the motto chosen by Newman on his receiving the Cardinal's hat, expressed to him the whole reality of intercourse between man and man, and man and God.

Newman's mind swung through a wide arc, and thoughts apparently antagonistic often were to him supplemental each to each.... A man of dauntless courage and profound thoughtfulness, while his intellect was pre?minently a logical one, both the heart and the moral sense possessed with him their sacred tribunals in matters of reasoning as well as of sentiment.... The extreme subtlety of his intelligence opposed no hindrance to his power of exciting vehement emotion.

SAUL

The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct, indeed, of Samuel's sons was the occasion of the sin, but "an evil heart of unbelief," to use Scripture language, was the real cause 5 of it. They had ever been restless and dissatisfied, asking for flesh when they had manna, fretful for water, impatient of the wilderness, bent on returning to Egypt, fearing their enemies, murmuring against Moses. They had miracles 10 even to satiety; and then, for a change, they wished a king like the nations. This was the chief reason of their sinful demand. And further, they were dazzled with the pomp and splendor of the heathen monarchs around them, and they 15 desired some one to fight their battles, some visible succor to depend on, instead of having to wait for an invisible Providence, which came in its own way and time, by little and little, being dispensed silently, or tardily, or unsuitably. Their carnal hearts did not love the neighborhood of heaven; and, like the inhabitants of Gadara afterwards, they prayed that Almighty God would depart from their coasts. 5

There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man; a plainness, austereness, and sadness. It is like the heavenly manna of which the Israelites complained, insipid, and at length wearisome, "like wafers made with honey." They complained that "their soul was dried away." "There is nothing at all," they said, 20 "beside this manna, before our eyes.... We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." Such were the dainty meats in which their soul 25 delighted; and for the same reason they desired a king. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please them, they felt they were behind the world, and clamored to be put on a level with the heathen. 30

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