Occasional Papers by R.W. Church

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I have spoken more on this subject in my _Essay on Development_,
p. 438, "Nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of
devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the Divine,
from the infirmity of our nature; for, I repeat, the question is
one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked,
_whether the character of Protestant devotion towards Our Lord has
been that of worship at all_; and not rather such as we pay to an
excellent human being.... Carnal minds will ever create a carnal
worship for themselves, and to forbid them the service of the
saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God.
Moreover, ... great and constant as is the devotion which the
Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far
more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of
Christianity_, and with certain extraordinary offices which she
holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion_".
Our late Cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last
sentence, for the expression of his especial approbation.

Can Dr. Newman defend the first of these two assertions, when he
remembers such books of popular Protestant devotion as Wesley's Hymns,
or the German hymn-books of which we have examples in the well-known
_Lyra Germanica_? Can he deny the second when he remembers the
exercises of the "Mois de Marie" in French churches, or if he has heard
a fervid and earnest preacher at the end of them urge on a church full
of young people, fresh from Confirmation and first Communion, a special
and personal self-dedication to the great patroness for protection amid
the daily trials of life, in much the same terms as in an English
Church they might be exhorted to commit themselves to the Redeemer of
mankind? Right or wrong, such devotion is not a matter of the "festive
aspect" of religion, but most eminently of what is "personal and
primary" in it; and surely of such a character is a vast proportion of
the popular devotion here spoken of.

But for himself, no doubt, he has accepted this _cultus_ on its most
elevated and refined side. He himself makes the distinction, and says
that there is "a healthy" and an "artificial" form of it; a devotion
which does not shock "solid piety and Christian good sense; I cannot
help calling this the English style." And when other sides are
presented to him, he feels what any educated Englishman who allows his
English feelings play is apt to feel about them. What is more, he has
the boldness to say so. He makes all kinds of reserves to save the
credit of those with whom he cannot sympathise. He speaks of the
privileges of Saints; the peculiarities of national temperament; the
distinctions between popular language and that used by scholastic
writers, or otherwise marked by circumstances; the special characters
of some of the writers quoted, their "ruthless logic," or their
obscurity; the inculpated passages are but few and scattered in
proportion to their context; they are harsh, but sound worse than they
mean; they are hardly interpreted and pressed. He reminds Dr. Pusey
that there is not much to choose between the Oriental Churches and Rome
on this point, and that of the two the language of the Eastern is the
most florid; luxuriant, and unguarded. But, after all, the true feeling
comes out at last, "And now, at length," he says, "coming to the
statements, not English, but foreign, which offend you, I will frankly
say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almost
anger." They are "perverse sayings," which he hates. He fills a page
and a half with a number of them, and then deliberately pronounces his
rejection of them.

After such explanations, and with such authorities to clear my
path, I put away from me as you would wish, without any
hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part
(when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant
would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not
use them), such sentences and phrases as these:--that the mercy of
Mary is infinite, that God has resigned into her hands His
omnipotence, that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than
her Son, that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God, that He is
(simply) subject to her command, that our Lord is now of the same
disposition as His Father towards sinners--viz. a disposition to
reject them, while Mary takes His place as an Advocate with the
Father and Son; that the Saints are more ready to intercede with
Jesus than Jesus with the Father, that Mary is the only refuge of
those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can obtain a
Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the
salvation of men if our Lord had died, not to obey His Father, but
to defer to the decree of His Mother, that she rivals our Lord in
being God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature;
that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her
virtues; that, as the Incarnate God bore the image of His Father,
so He bore the image of His Mother; that redemption derived from
Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and
loveliness; that as we are clothed with the merits of Christ so we
are clothed with the merits of Mary; that, as He is Priest, in
like manner is she Priestess; that His body and blood in the
Eucharist are truly hers, and appertain to her; that as He is
present and received therein, so is she present and received
therein; that Priests are ministers as of Christ, so of Mary; that
elect souls are, born of God and Mary; that the Holy Ghost brings
into fruitfulness His action by her, producing in her and by her
Jesus Christ in His members; that the kingdom of God in our souls,
as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul--and
she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary
things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul He flies
there.

Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book,
nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English Catholics know
them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived
them to be said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to
Scripture, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of Councils, or to
the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to
the Holy See, or to Reason. They defy all the _loci theologici_.
There is nothing of them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in
the Roman _Raccolta_, in the Imitation of Christ, in Gother,
Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, so far as I am aware. They do but
scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more spiritual, more
sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being into the
reception of them; I should but be guilty of fulsome frigid
flattery towards the most upright and noble of God's creatures if
I professed them--and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like
the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with
the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I should
expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her
service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the _scandalum
parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum Pharisaeorum_, I leave
others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe
(which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary
is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements,
which can only be explained by being explained away. I do not,
however, speak of these statements, as they are found in their
authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe
that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in
your pages. Were any of them, the sayings of Saints in ecstasy, I
should know they had a good meaning; still I should not repeat
them myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the
tongues of Angels, but according to that literal sense which they
bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as
spoken by man to man in England in the nineteenth century, I
consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the
unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to
work the loss of souls.

Of course; it is what might be expected of him. But Dr. Newman has
often told us that we must take the consequences of our principles and
theories, and here are some of the consequences which meet him; and, as
he says, they "scare and confuse him." He boldly disavows them with no
doubtful indignation. But what other voice but his, of equal authority
and weight, has been lifted up to speak the plain truth about them?
Why, if they are wrong, extravagant, dangerous, is his protest
solitary? His communion has never been wanting in jealousy of dangerous
doctrines, and it is vain to urge that these things and things like
them have been said in a corner. The Holy Office is apt to detect
mischief in small writers as well as great, even if these teachers were
as insignificant as Dr. Newman would gladly make them. Taken as a
whole, and in connection with notorious facts, these statements are
fair examples of manifest tendencies, which certainly are not on the
decline. And if a great and spreading popular _cultus_, encouraged and
urged on beyond all former precedent, is in danger of being developed
by its warmest and most confident advocates into something of which
unreason is the lightest fault, is there not ground for interfering?
Doubtless Roman writers maybe quoted by Dr. Newman, who felt that there
was a danger, and we are vaguely told about some checks given to one or
two isolated extravagances, which, however, in spite of the checks, do
not seem to be yet extinct. But Allocutions and Encyclicals are not for
errors of this kind. Dr. Newman says that "it is wiser for the most
part to leave these excesses to the gradual operation of public
opinion,--that is, to the opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and
this seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down." We quite
agree with him; but his own Church does not think so; and we want to
see some evidence of a public opinion in it capable of putting them
down. As it is, he is reduced to say that "the line cannot be logically
drawn between the teaching of the Fathers on the subject and our own;"
an assertion which, if it were true, would be more likely to drag down
one teaching than to prop up the other; he has to find reasons, and
doubtless they are to be found thick as blackberries, for accounting
for one extravagance, softening down another, declining to judge a
third. But in the meantime the "devotion" in its extreme form, far
beyond what he would call the teaching of his Church, has its way; it
maintains its ground; it becomes the mark of the bold, the advanced,
the refined, as well as of the submissive and the crowd; it roots
itself under the shelter of an authority which would stop it if it was
wrong; it becomes "dominant"; it becomes at length part of that "mind
of the living Church" which, we are told, it is heresy to impugn,
treason to appeal from, and the extravagance of impertinent folly to
talk of reforming.

It is very little use, then, for Dr. Newman to tell Dr. Pusey or any
one else, "You may safely trust us English Catholics as to this
devotion." "English Catholics," as such,--it is the strength and the
weakness of their system,--have really the least to say in the matter.
The question is not about trusting "us English Catholics," but the
Pope, and the Roman Congregation, and those to whom the Roman
authorities delegate their sanction and give their countenance. If Dr.
Newman is able, as we doubt not he is desirous, to elevate the tone of
his own communion and put to shame some of its fashionable excesses, he
will do a great work, in which we wish him every success, though the
result of it might not really be to bring the body of his countrymen
nearer to it. But the substance of Dr. Pusey's charges remain after all
unanswered, and there is no getting over them while they remain. They
are of that broad, palpable kind against which the refinements of
argumentative apology play in vain. They can only be met by those who
feel their force, on some principle equally broad. Dr. Newman suggests
such a ground in the following remarks, which, much as they want
qualification and precision, have a basis of reality in them:--

It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line
cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the
case in concrete matters which have life. Life in this world is
motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things
grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death.
No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural
law, whether in the material world or in the human mind.... What
has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the
multitude, and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and
abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and
superstition while men are what they are. A people's religion is
ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church you
must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels
of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you
will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but
if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of
religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that
compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavourably from
abroad,--a high grand faith and worship which compels their
admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite
their contempt.

It is like Dr. Newman to put his case in this broad way, making large
admissions, allowing for much inevitable failure. That is, he defends
his Church as he would defend Christianity generally, taking it as a
great practical system must be in this world, working with human nature
as it is. His reflection is, no doubt, one suggested by a survey of the
cause of all religion. The coming short of the greatest promisee, the
debasement of the noblest ideals, are among the commonplaces of
history. Christianity cannot be maintained without ample admissions of
failure and perversion. But it is one thing to make this admission for
Christianity generally, an admission which the New Testament in
foretelling its fortunes gives us abundant ground for making; and quite
another for those who maintain the superiority of one form of
Christianity above all others, to claim that they may leave out of the
account its characteristic faults. It is quite true that all sides
abundantly need to appeal for considerate judgment to the known
infirmity of human nature; but amid the conflicting pretensions which
divide Christendom no one side can ask to have for itself the exclusive
advantage of this plea. All may claim the benefit of it, but if it is
denied to any it must be denied to all. In this confused and imperfect
world other great popular systems of religion besides the Roman may use
it in behalf of shortcomings, which, though perhaps very different, are
yet not worse. It is obvious that the theory of great and living ideas,
working with a double edge, and working for mischief at last, holds
good for other things besides the special instance on which Dr. Newman
comments. It is to be further observed that to claim the benefit of
this plea is to make the admission that you come under the common law
of human nature as to mistake, perversion, and miscarriage, and this in
the matter of religious guidance the Roman theory refuses to do. It
claims for its communion as its special privilege an exemption from
those causes of corruption of which history is the inexorable witness,
and to which others admit themselves to be liable; an immunity from
going wrong, a supernatural exception from the common tendency of
mankind to be led astray, from the common necessity to correct and
reform themselves when they are proved wrong. How far this is realised,
not on paper and in argument, but in fact, is indeed one of the most
important questions for the world, and it is one to which the world
will pay more heed than to the best writing about it There are not
wanting signs, among others of a very different character, of an honest
and philosophical recognition of this by some of the ablest writers of
the Roman communion. The day on which the Roman Church ceases to
maintain that what it holds must be truth because it holds it, and
admits itself subject to the common condition by which God has given
truth to men, will be the first hopeful day for the reunion of
Christendom.

XXVIII

NEWMAN'S PAROCHIAL SERMONS[32]

[32]
_Parochial and Plain Sermons_. By John Henry Newman, B.D., formerly
Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. Edited by W.J. Copeland, B.D. _Saturday
Review_, 5th June 1869.

Dr. Newman's Sermons stand by themselves in modern English literature;
it might be said, in English literature generally. There have been
equally great masterpieces of English writing in this form of
composition, and there have been preachers whose theological depth,
acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power have
not been inferior to his. But the great writers do not touch, pierce,
and get hold of minds as he does, and those who are famous for the
power and results of their preaching do not write as he does. His
sermons have done more perhaps than any one thing to mould and quicken
and brace the religious temper of our time; they have acted with equal
force on those who were nearest and on those who were farthest from him
in theological opinion. They have altered the whole manner of feeling
towards religious subjects. We know now that they were the beginning,
the signal and first heave, of a vast change that was to come over the
subject; of a demand from religion of a thoroughgoing reality of
meaning and fulfilment, which is familiar to us, but was new when it
was first made. And, being this, these sermons are also among the very
finest examples of what the English language of our day has done in the
hands of a master. Sermons of such intense conviction and directness of
purpose, combined with such originality and perfection on their purely
literary side, are rare everywhere. Remarkable instances, of course,
will occur to every one of the occasional exhibition of this
combination, but not in so sustained and varied and unfailing a way.
Between Dr. Newman and the great French school there is this
difference--that they are orators, and he is as far as anything can be
in a great preacher from an orator. Those who remember the tones and
the voice in which the sermons were heard at St. Mary's--we may refer
to Professor Shairp's striking account in his volume on Keble, and to a
recent article in the _Dublin Review_--can remember how utterly unlike
an orator in all outward ways was the speaker who so strangely moved
them. The notion of judging of Dr. Newman as an orator never crossed
their minds. And this puts a difference between him and a remarkable
person whose name has sometimes been joined with his--Mr. F. Robertson.
Mr. Robertson was a great preacher, but he was not a writer.

It is difficult to realise at present the effect produced originally by
these sermons. The first feeling was that of their difference in manner
from the customary sermon. People knew what an eloquent sermon was, or
a learned sermon, or a philosophical sermon, or a sermon full of
doctrine or pious unction. Chalmers and Edward Irving and Robert Hall
were familiar names; the University pulpit and some of the London
churches had produced examples of forcible argument and severe and
finished composition; and of course instances were abundant everywhere
of the good, sensible, commonplace discourse; of all that was heavy,
dull, and dry, and of all that was ignorant, wild, fanatical, and
irrational. But no one seemed to be able, or to be expected, unless he
avowedly took the buffoonery line which some of the Evangelical
preachers affected, to speak in the pulpit with the directness and
straightforward unconventionality with which men speak on the practical
business of life. With all the thought and vigour and many beauties
which were in the best sermons, there was always something forced,
formal, artificial about them; something akin to that mild pomp which
usually attended their delivery, with beadles in gowns ushering the
preacher to the carpeted pulpit steps, with velvet cushions, and with
the rustle and fulness of his robes. No one seemed to think of writing
a sermon as he would write an earnest letter. A preacher must approach
his subject in a kind of roundabout make-believe of preliminary and
preparatory steps, as if he was introducing his hearers to what they
had never heard of; make-believe difficulties and objections were
overthrown by make-believe answers; an unnatural position both in
speaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, a
systematic conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to be
avoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquent
only escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly. The
strong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing clap-trap as
they loathed loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; but
sermons are meant for heart and souls as well as minds, and to the
heart, with its trials and its burdens, men like Whately never found
their way. Those who remember the preaching of those days, before it
began to be influenced by the sermons at St. Mary's, will call to mind
much that was interesting, much that was ingenious, much correction of
inaccurate and confused views, much manly encouragement to high
principle and duty, much of refined and scholarlike writing. But for
soul and warmth, and the imaginative and poetical side of the religious
life, you had to go where thought and good sense were not likely to be
satisfied.

The contrast of Mr. Newman's preaching was not obvious at first. The
outside form and look was very much that of the regular best Oxford
type--calm, clear, and lucid in expression, strong in its grasp,
measured in statement, and far too serious to think of rhetorical
ornament. But by degrees much more opened. The range of experience from
which the preacher drew his materials, and to which he appealed, was
something wider, subtler, and more delicate than had been commonly
dealt with in sermons. With his strong, easy, exact, elastic language,
the instrument of a powerful and argumentative mind, he plunged into
the deep realities of the inmost spiritual life, of which cultivated
preachers had been shy. He preached so that he made you feel without
doubt that it was the most real of worlds to him; he made you feel in
time, in spite of yourself, that it was a real world with which you too
had concern. He made you feel that he knew what he was speaking about;
that his reasonings and appeals, whether you agreed with them or not,
were not the language of that heated enthusiasm with which the world is
so familiar; that he was speaking words which were the result of
intellectual scrutiny, balancings, and decisions, as well as of moral
trials, of conflicts and suffering within; words of the utmost
soberness belonging to deeply gauged and earnestly formed purposes. The
effect of his sermons, as compared with the common run at the time, was
something like what happens when in a company you have a number of
people giving their views and answers about some question before them.
You have opinions given of various worth and expressed with varying
power, precision, and distinctness, some clever enough, some clumsy
enough, but all more or less imperfect and unattractive in tone, and
more or less falling short of their aim; and then, after it all, comes
a voice, very grave, very sweet, very sure and clear, under whose words
the discussion springs up at once to a higher level, and in which we
recognise at once a mind, face to face with realities, and able to
seize them and hold them fast.

The first notable feature in the external form of this preaching was
its terse unceremonious directness. Putting aside the verbiage and
dulled circumlocution and stiff hazy phraseology of pulpit etiquette
and dignity, it went straight to its point. There was no waste of time
about customary formalities. The preacher had something to say, and
with a kind of austere severity he proceeded to say it. This, for
instance, is the sort of way in which a sermon would begin:--

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