between that Newman who spoke from the pulpit of St. Mary's and that other Newman, who had become the disciple of St. Philip. Forced no longer to reconcile things seemingly irreconcilable, no longer the prey of contending emotions, Newman showed in his two final volumes of sermons a maturity, a vigor, and a selfconfidence which brought out all the more distinctly the fourfold phases of his power. His personality, though losing none of its persuasiveness, gained something in dominance if not in sublety; his psychological insight appeared at its keenest in "Divine Calls and Warnings"; the most sustained flight of his imagination is found in "The Mental Sufferings of Our Lord"; the triumph of his rhythmic prose in "The Second Spring."

These two volumes must not be confused. As a matter of fact they represent distinctive stages of Newman's development as a writer. The earlier one shows an ardor, one might almost say a passion, an imaginative fervor, a colorful quality in the style and at times an almost conscious rhetoric which remind us that Newman had but lately completed his seminary studies among Italian surroundings. In his later volume there is a certain return to his Anglican reserve. He is no longer Newman, the new convert, the ardor of whose spiritual joy glows with a southern warmth; but he is Newman back once more in an English atmosphere, grown accustomed to Catholicism, and held in leash by that self-repression which marked him as fundamentally neither Attic nor Hebraic, but English.

The style of Sermons on Various Occasions is substantially Newman's final style, which he had reached with Anglican Difficulties in 1850 and whose qualities, except for such concessions as the needs of occasion required, persisted in all his subsequent writings.

One passage, justly celebrated, from Sermons on Various Occasions, will serve to show how perfect this prose

was at its best. Newman is speaking of the conversion of England from paganism, whose idols crumbled and whose mummeries flitted away.

"The fair form of Christianity rose up and grew and expanded like a beautiful pageant from north to south; it was majestic, it was solemn, it was bright, it was beautiful and pleasant, it was soothing to the griefs, it was indulgent to the hopes of man; it was at once a teaching and a worship; it had a dogma, a mystery, a ritual of its own; it had a hierarchical form. A brotherhood of holy pastors, with miter and crosier and uplifted hand, walked forth and blessed and ruled a joyful people. The crucifix headed the procession, and simple monks were there with hearts in prayer, and sweet chants resounded, and the holy Latin tongue was heard, and boys came forth in white, swinging censers, and the fragrant cloud arose, and Mass was sung, and the saints were invoked; and day after day, and in the still night, and over the woody hills and in the quiet plains, as constantly as sun and moon and stars go forth in heaven, so regular and solemn was the stately march of blessed services on earth, high festival, and gorgeous procession, and soothing dirge, and passing bell, and the familiar evening call to prayer; till he who recollected the old pagan time, would think it all unreal that he beheld and heard, and would conclude he did but see a vision, so marvellously was heaven let down upon earth, so triumphantly were chased away the fiends of darkness to their prison below." 1

In all Newman's sermons, whether as Anglican or as Catholic, there runs like a thread of gold the unity of his conviction of the unseen realities, of the ever present "face to face with God," and of the need of that living faith which alone can move mountains. So, too, there is unity in his style which is always his and his alone

1 From "Christ Upon the Waters" preached Oct. 27, 1850.

though it be Doric in the Parochial Sermons, Corinthian in Mixed Congregations, and Ionic in the Discourses on Various Occasions. Which of these phases of it is the most perfect remains, despite the critics, a question not of judgment but of individual taste. Which is most truly representative of the real Newman may not be so difficult to determine. But, certain it is, at all events, that in those qualities which are more abiding than the moment, Newman lives equally in all three,

III

NEWMAN AS NOVELIST

CARDINAL NEWMAN wrote two novels, Loss and Gain, published in 1848, and Callista, a sketch of the third century, published in 1855. These stories were byplays of genius, done en passant by a man who was a preacher, a controversialist, a poet, an historian, and a theologian before he was a novelist. Neither tale was a spontaneous expression of a talent for story writing, but each was evoked, as were virtually all his works, by a more or less pressing sense of obligation. In the advertisement to the sixth edition of Loss and Gain he says that as an aftermath of the Oxford Movement a story had been published directed against "Oxford converts to the Catholic Faith," so "wantonly and preposterously fanciful" as to be unjust. And he adds:

"The suitable answer lay rather in the publication of a second tale; drawn up with a stricter regard to truth and probability, and with at least some personal knowledge of Oxford, and some perception of the various aspects of the religious phenomenon, which the work in question handled so rudely and so unskillfully."

In the advertisement to the first edition of Callista he says: "It (the story) is an attempt to imagine and express, from a Catholic point of view, the feeling and mutual relations of Christians and heathens at the period to which it belongs, and it has been undertaken as the nearest approach which the author could make to a more important work suggested to him from a high ecclesiastical quarter."

In fairness to Newman, then, one ought to study him as a novelist with the fact in mind that he made no pretence of turning out a finished story or of telling a tale purely for its own sake. In both novels Newman's chief interest was in the spiritual development of an individual.

[I]

Charles Reding, the only son of an Anglican clergyman, is sent to Oxford where his attendance at courses of lectures on Church subjects only serves to stir up difficulties which the lecturers and his own personal friends fail to allay. The difficulties grow; efforts to settle them only involve the boy more deeply in a tangle of contradictions. His anxieties increase, for some day, distant, it is true, but certain, he must either sign the Thirty-nine Articles, about whose truth and significance he cannot feel satisfied, or be denied his degree. His friends protest that he is conjuring up difficulties to no purpose; that if let alone they will settle themselves; that in two years' time, when he is to come up for his degree, he will see things differently. Reding continues his studies with such peace of mind as he may only to receive the unexpected news of his father's death. At home for the last sad rites he forgets his religious perplexities in the pain of his bereavement.

In due time Charles returns to the University, the very air of which is fast becoming electric with religious controversy and in spite of himself his mind undergoes a steady evolution. Contrary interpretations of formulæ and creed evoke new difficulties and awaken old ones. . . . The time for taking his degree steadily approaches: how is he, in a maze of doubts, to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles? "I really cannot