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206 Q£t)t !&*&&£*? [Saturday,
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IPt + iV ^ rr + tri* * JLIIVXUIUXV.
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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As weeks pass the Laureateship becomes m...
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The French do not often pay us the compl...
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Newman's phases of faith. Phases of Fait...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
206 Q£T)T !&*&&£*? [Saturday,
206 Q £ t ) t !&*&& £ *? [ Saturday ,
Ipt + Iv ^ Rr + Tri* * Jliivxuiuxv.
Kittxatntt .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them .. —Edinburgh Review .
As Weeks Pass The Laureateship Becomes M...
As weeks pass the Laureateship becomes more and more the subject of speculation , and fresh candidates are put forward . The Daily News gives circulation to the suggestion of a Poetess being the proper person to hold office under a Queen ; the Morning Post prints a letter recommending the claims of Thomas Miller ( the basket-maker ) . Why the delay takes place in filling up the appointment , or whether the office is to be abolished , are questions vainly asked : perhaps the Whitsun holidays may furnish an answer .
Among the light gossip of the day , the authorship of anonymous novels is frequently a topic of interest when the novels are of sufficient importance to make people care who wrote them ; at present , The Initials has that honour . Some lay it to the door of Mrs . Eastlake ( late Miss Rigby , famous for her lively Quarterly Review articles , and her Letters from the Baltic ); to which others object that her residence in Germany has not been
sufficiently long to furnish her with materials for so minute a picture of German life ; and thereupon the objectors declare it must be Miss Keir Grant , the authoress of Ninfa , an intensely German novel written by her originally in German . Other names are mentioned , but considering that Jane Eyre was attributed first to Thackeray and then to Lord Morpeth (!) it may be imagined how much confidence we place in the confident assertions of the
gossips . Among the new books , Colonel Ciiesney's Expedition to Survey the Euphrates and the Tigris , must occupy the attention of a certain public , as one of the most important that has been given to the world for some time . A notice of it will be found in another part of this number . From a cursory inspection of Dr . Bigsby ' s Shoe and Canoe j or . Pictures of Travel in the Canadas , we anticipate an animated , well informed , and impartial survey of colonial life and scenery .
The French Do Not Often Pay Us The Compl...
The French do not often pay us the compliment of taking our fictions and farces as we take theirs , and when they do choose , their choice is an enigma . The Constitutionnel has passed into the hands of Granier de Cassagnac , and the first feuilleton published under his auspices is from an English novel , and what novel ? The Woodman , by the omniscribent G . P . It . James ! Honoru de Balzac has been silent for some
time . His marriage with une grande dame Russe has unhappily ( for us ) rendered unnecessary that marvellous fecundity with which he was so often reproached , and which he answered by that exquisite naivete : " they reproach me with my fecundity , as if the fecundity of Nature were not greater ! " —Nature and M . de Balzac ! However , it appears that his productiveness was regulated rather by the wants of his purse than by any necessity for producing ; and his marriage has kept
him silent ; perhaps he is meditating a new Physiologie du mariage ! In default of something new from his pen the manager of the Gait 6 bethought him ' twould be a good speculation to revive Vautrin , that drame which created so much scandal , and in which Lemaitrk , who played the for cat , caricatured the highest person in the realm in a flagrant manner . Vautrin was interdicted . Balzac expostulated , wrote prefaces , diatribes , and uttered bon mots ; all in vain . He declared Vautrin
was the expression of a great social truth . People would not have Vautrin . In revenge Balzac dragged him through a variety of volumes : he had fallen in love with this insolent incarnation of vice , and insisted on presenting him at all hazards . Tliw manager , knowing Balzac ' s predilections , revived the said drama . It was damned . Whereupon Balzac writes from Dresden protesting against the iniquity of performing his piece during his absence , and threatens law proceedings . It is a fair question : if Vautrin had succeeded , would the author have been so irritated ?
In the last- Consei / tier du Pen pie there is a reply by Lamahtink to the article by I ' hok kk in the Quarterly lierieie , on the History of i , sis—an article made up , it is said , with the assistance of the journal of Louis Philippe .
Newman's Phases Of Faith. Phases Of Fait...
Newman ' s phases of faith . Phases of Faith ; or , Passages from the History of my own Creed , By Francis William Newman . John Chapman . Theee is something to our minds inexpressibly solemn and affecting in this simple , earnest , unequivocating narrative of the conflicts of a human soul with the mysteries of faith and the oppressions of dogma . Since St . Augustine wrote his Confessions there has been no such honest work ; for if that of Rousseau is more intensely interesting from the variety of its psychological revelations and its
magnificence of style , it wants the purity and earnestness which are the fascinations of this . Treating of his own life , his own spiritual struggles , he is less egotistical than many who write of others . Nowhere by artifices of style , nor by insinuations which adroitly lure the attention , does he call your thoughts from the great subj ect he is discussing to the personality of the writer . He preaches from the texts of his own experience , but he sounds no trumpet on his own behalf . He depicts the various phases of a believing
inquiring soul , but without any of those self-glorifications and complacent reflections which disfigure and disgrace the religious confessions of all other writers we are acquainted with . And in treating of these subjects , which admit of more equivocation than any other , to his great honour , be it said , that he has throughout spoken in the sincerest plainness , neither attempting to conceal the full force of his objections nor treating the opinions of others with insolence .
Phases of Faith is the story of a mind naturally reverential and pious , fostered by early training into the Evangelical school of thinking , and slowly emerging therefrom in the course of long years of painstaking inquiry , and gradual enlargement of view , passing through attempts after a more primitive Christianity , through Calvinism , which is abandoned as neither Evangelical nor true—through the lleligion of the Letter—through that of Faith received upon tradition—and , finally , discovering History to be no part of lleligion at all , and that
Religion in the shape of accredited dogma , passing from one generation to another , is a thing to be renounced entirely , man ' s own conscience being the sole monitor he is to listen to in such an argument . Thus , while one Newman passes slowly onwards from Oxford to Home , and accepts as the final stage of human inquiry that intellectual bondage which delivers up private judgment , and reposes on the petrified formulas of a Church , the other Newman , starting from the same point , passes on to illimitable freedom , to the denial of all " established" lleligion , and reposes on the indestructible instincts of the soul .
Established creeds have had no such terrible assailant as this ; for its attacks are not from without but from within . The assaults are not the sarcasms of exasperated " infidels , " nor the merciless syllogisms of negative thinkers ; these the defensors of religion have found means to answer—or to vilify . Moreover the protection afforded by the natural repugnance of men to have their creeds assaulted has
been very great . But in the Phases oj Faith we follow the slow progress of doubt up wards , from points of aprmrcntly the most trivial nature to those of vital consequence . It is a believer whom we follow ; not an assailant . He believes what the most orthodox believe ; he begins with doubts such as the orthodox permit , yet gradually he unfolds such a state of weakness in the orthodox creed that it is difficult to see how
any sincere mind can refuse his conclusions . Had we not worked out our emancipation years ago this book would have emancipated us . The nature of the book and the conclusions it sets forth , will prevent the great majority—if not all—of our eotemporaries from adequately noticing it ; we propose , therefore , to examine its contents at greater length than is necessary for other works , which get more ample notice from ordinary journals . The first period Mr . Newman entitles his Youthful Creed : —
" I first began to read religious books at school , and especially the liible , when I . was eleven years old ; and al i . ost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer . But , it was not until I was fourteen tli . it I trained any definite idea of a ' scheme of doctrine , ' or could have been called a converted person ' by one of the Evangelical School . My religion then certainly exerted a great general influence over my conduct ; for I soon underwent various persecution i ' roni my schoolfellows on iKtnutil of it : fhe worst kind eonsistprl in their deliberate attempts to corrupt me . " He had early doubts iucleed respecting thu doctrine of election which he could not reconcile -with the
idea of God ' s justice , but he silenced them with the hope that light would one day descend upon him . " Such was the beginning and foundation of my faith—an unhesitating unconditional acceptance of whatever was found in the Bible . " At sixteen he was confirmed by Dr . Howley , the Bishop of London . *• Everything in the service was solemn to me except the Bishop : he seemed to me a made-up man , and a mere pageant . " Nor was this the only disturbing influence for he observed that the questions put to him were only such as tested his memory , not his faith , and therein he felt how wide the chasm which separated the High from the Low Church , and how impossible it was for him to sympathize with those who imagined forms could command the spirit .
He went to Oxford . Small doubts on minor points occasionally troubled him , but on the whole he remained within the most rigid orthodoxy : — " Of more immediate practical importance to me was the controversy concerning Infant Baptism . For several years together I had been more or less conversant with the arguments adduced for the practice ; and at this time I read Wall ' s defence of it , which was the book specially recommended at Oxford . The perusal brought to a head the doubts which had at an earlier period flitted over my mind . Wall ' s historial attempt to trace Infant Baptism up to the apostles seemed to me a clear failure :
and if he failed , then who was likely to succeed ? The arguments from Scripture had never recommended themselves to me . Even allowing that they might confirm , they certainly could not suggest and establish the practice . It now appeared that there was no basis at all ; indeed , several of the arguments struck me as cutting the other way . Suffer little children to come unto me , ' was urged as decisive ; but it occurred to me that the disciples would not have scolded the little children away , if they had ever been accustomed to baptize them . Wall also , if I remember aright , declares that the children of proselytes were baptized by the Jews ; and deduces that , unless the contrary were stated , we must assume that also Christ ' s disciples baptized children ; but
I reflected that the baptism of John was one of ' repentance , ' , therefore , could not have been administered to infants ; which ( if precedent is to guide us ) afforded the truer presumption concerning Christian baptism . Prepossesions being thus overthrown , when I read the apostolic epistles with a view to this special question , the proof so multiplied against the Church doctrine , that I did not see what was left to be said for it . I talked much and freely of this , as of most other topics , with equals in age , who took interest in religious questions ; but the more the matters were discussed , the more decidedly impossible it seemed to maintain that the popular Church views were apostolic . "
It is apropos of this that Mr . Newman first mentions his brother the Reverend John Henry Newman : — "Asa warm-hearted and generous brother , who exercised towards me paternal cares , I esteemed him . and felt a deep gratitude ; as a man of various culture and peculiar genius , I admired and was proud of him ; but my doctrinal religion impeded my loving him as much as he deserved , and even justified my feeling some distrust of him . He never showed any strong attraction
towards those whom I regarded as spiritual persons : on the contrary , I thought him stiff and cold towards them . Moreover , soon after his ordination , he had startled and distressed me by adopting the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration ; and in rapid succession worked out views which I regarded as full-blown ' Popery . ' I speak of the years 1823-6 : it is strange to think that twenty years more had to pass before he learnt the place to which his doctrines belonged .
" In the earliest period of my Oxford residence I fell into uneasy collision with him concerning Episcopal powers . I had on one occasion dropt something disrespectful against bishops or a bishop , — something which , if it had been said about a clergyman , would have passed unnoticed ; but my brother checked and reproved me , — as I thought , very uninstructively , —for wanting reverence towards bishops . ' I knew not then , and I know not now , why bishops , as such , should be more reverenced than common clergymen ; or clergymen , as sur : h , more than common men . In the world I expected pomp and vain show and formality and counterfeits ; but of the Church , as Christ ' s own kingdom , I demanded reality and could not digest legal fictions . I to
saw round me what sort of young men were preparing be clergymen : I knew the attractions of family ' livings and fellowships , and of a respectable position and undefinable hopes of preferment . I farther knew , that when youths had become clergymen through a great variety of mixed motives , bishops were selected out of these clergy on avowedly political grounds ; it therefore amazed me how a man of good sense should be able to set up a duty of religious veneration towards bishops . I was willing to honour a Lord Bishop as a peer of Parliament ; but his oilice was to me no guarantee of spiritual eminence . — lo find my brother thus stop my mouth , was a puzzle ; and impeded all free speech towards him . In fact , I very soon left off the attempt at intimate religious intercourse with him , or asking counsel as of one who could
sympathize . Unable to find in his brother the guidance he needed , he threw himself tipon . God , " resolved to follow the light which He might give" : — " When the period arrived for twiner rny Tim-h'lor ' s degree , it . was n quisitF n . r * imi to siyn the Thirry-Tiine Articles , ami I uow found invself embarrassed ' ' . V the question of infant Baptism . One of the articles contains the following words : * The baptism of young chil-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 25, 1850, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25051850/page/14/
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