CARDINAL MANNING.
ASTATELY figure disappears from England by the death of Cardinal Manning,—the figure of one who has probably wielded more influence in turning the genius of the Roman Catholic Church into what we may call de- mocratic channels, than any other Englishman of his day. If the late Cardinal Newman had far more to do with the intellectual relations of the Catholic Church to Christian faith, than the eminent man who, though converted from Anglicanism six years later than he, became a Prince of the Church four years before him, yet unquestionably Cardinal Manning has exerted much more influence than Cardinal Newman on the practical policy of the Church of Rome in this country, and over her relations with the great social movements of the day. An eminent foreigner who had been very anxious to see him is said to have ex- pressed his disappointment in finding him less a Roman Catholic priest, than " the skeleton of an Anglican par- son." As for the ascetic exterior which was, we suppose, referred to in this ungracious speech, we are not aware that it has been unusual for a great Roman Catholic dignitary to lead, and give every one the evidence that he leads, an ascetic life. But that something of the oracular arbitrariness of the Anglican clergyman lingered in Cardinal Manning in spite of his asceticism, in spite of his Ultramontanism, in spite of his hankerings after the mediaeval philosophy, in spite of his pas- sionate sympathy with the miseries and sufferings of the poor, cannot, we think, be denied. It is not that he had any of Cardinal Newman's tendency to exalt the via media. It is not in the least that he loved compromise for its own sake, as so many English clergymen do ; still less is it that he wished to steer a middle course between " the Scylla and Charybdis of. Aye and No." On the contrary, he rather loved to exaggerate than to depreciate the intellectual authority of the Church he had joined. He was one of the most enthusiastic of the apologists for the Vatican Council of 1870, and leaned much more to the interpretation of infallibility advocated by the late Mr. Ward than to that advocated by the late Cardinal Newman. Nevertheless, there was in him always some disposition to assert that kind of clerical authority which is not, and does not even persuade itself that it is, final, but rather positive and opinionative,—and which the incumbents of our National Church have all the more habitually exerted that they know of no final authority by which they could be overruled. Amongst Roman Catholic priests born and bred, we generally see a very clear and strong sense of the difference between that to which their individual opinion inclines, and that to which the Church has given the formal sanction of her authority. They speak in one tone of what the Church teaches, and in quite another tone of their own personal opinion. The Anglican Vicar or Rector does not make this difference. He is habitually consulted on theological and ecclesiastical questions, and habitually gives his opinion with a con- fidence and yet a vagueness of speech of which Mr. Trollope's picture of Archdeacon Grandy conveys some impression. The authoritativeness of his manner is really very much greater than the authoritativeness of his thought. As the incumbent of a freehold in which it is almost impossible for his authority to be ques- tioned, he very often gets into the habit of laying down the law with an air of what we may call vague absolute- ness,—though hardly venturesomeness,—of arbitrary authority. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster never altogether lost that manner, that air of kindly imperiousness which gave the impression of caring rather to subdue opposition and stop controversy, than to clear up doubts and discriminate between settled and unsettled questions. His brow was encircled by a certain rhetorical nimbus of impressiveness,—which did not im- press,—in dealing with doubt or difficulty ; and this cer- tainly reminded one more of the Anglican clergyman who had never been exposed to challenge or contradiction, than of the Roman Catholic priest who had been carefully educated to distinguish between what the Church had defined and what the Church had not defined and was open to discussion, though to profitable discussion only so far as the discussion rested on principles of settled significance and explicit authority. The great merit, however, of the Cardinal whom the Catholic Church in England has just lost, was his pas- sionate sympathy with the various miseries of the poor, and his indefatigable labours on their behalf. Often he went, to our mind, far beyond what it was prudent either for a dignitary of his Church, or for an English patriot, or for a wise moralist to go. His crusade against intoxica- tion, for instance, gave the impression of something like a fanatic dread of the "substance alcohol." His sympathy with Irish Home-rulers often gave the impression of some- thing like indifference to British unity and constitutional traditions. His treatment of the various great social questions which arose during the last seven years of his episcopate, often gave the impression of a prelate who cared more to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, than to stimulate their self-control, and place their relations with their employers on a sound and permanent basis. But in spite of all these apparent shortcomings, no one could ever doubt that the Cardinal threw heart and soul into the work of preaching the Gospel (as he understood it) to the poor, and that he would have given far more to reconcile the poor to the Church, than to obtain even for the Church in which he felt so great a pride, any other kind of influence and honour. He was often thought to be an ambitious ecclesiastic ; but it is not the part of an ambitious eccle- siastic to push such a movement as the Temperance move- ment to the almost fanatical extreme to which Cardinal Manning pushed it. Nobody has any right to doubt that he cared far more to exert the power of the Church for the redemption of the poor, than he did merely to enhance the splendour of the Church by .popularising it amongst the masses of the people. His sympathy with the people was very deep and tender, nor do we believe that his evident desire to reconcile the Church with the democracies which he saw looming in the future, was nearly so ecclesiastical in motive as it has often been sup- posed to be. Had it been so, he could hardly have made the mistake, as we think it, and as the greater number of the older members of his own Church thought it, of giving his cordial support to General Booth in the generous but rather wild and dangerous experiment on the dregs of our pauperism, which the head of the Salvation Army launched a year or so ago. Cardinal Manning's adhesion to that proposal fell almost like a bomb amongst his co-religionists. And though we ourselves thought that he then made a moral and economical, not to say a theologi- cal mistake, we cannot but recognise that it demonstrated his enthusiasm for such projects as having its origin in fervent charity for the miserable, and not in any kind of ecclesiastical ambition. For amongst his own supporters and allies, it lost the Church much more support than it gained for her.
The disinterested enthusiasm of Cardinal Manning, the singular dignity of his bearing, and the authoritative solemnity,—though it was a vague and rather artificial solemnity,—of his speech, made him a conspicuous figure among the ecclesiastics of his Church. It used to be said that it was worth a long walk merely to see him ascend the pulpit of the Pro-Cathedral, without regard even to the substance or elocution of his sermon. We do not think that he was great as a theologian. There was always something of the old Evangelical unction about him, and something also of the half-interrogative manner of grappling with religious problems in vogue among the Evangelicals,—the manner which aims at evapo- rating or volatilising theological difficulties, rather than at directly confronting and gauging them. He was one of the truest and most disinterested of the philan- thropists among the Princes of the Church ; but his theological influence was not half so weighty a factor in the religious tendencies of the great communion to which he belonged, as his social leanings and his democratic bias.
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