DR. ABBOTT AND CARDINAL NEWMAN. D R. ABBOTT'S long letter, published
in another column, challenges us to dissect his dissection of what he regards as Cardinal Newman's ecclesiastical "lubrication," and to demolish, if we can, his demonstration that Dr. Newman was the aptest and most skilful of self-deceivers. We have no intention of undertaking any such task, for this kind of petty verbal assault on the reputation of a really great man is so entirely distasteful to us, that we found it at first very difficult to believe that a man of Dr. Abbott's high standing and character had really thrown himself into it. It seems to us work like that of the white ants, which scatter so much destruction in tropical climates by eating out the framework of wooden structures. Only it attacks something much dearer to us than any material structure,— the character and genius of those who have made our life and literature what they are. So far from entering into the details of Dr. Abbott's pedantic criticism on the two chief heads of his attack, we have gone back to those of Dr. Newman's letters and writings which he has assailed with even greater satisfac- tion than before, and find them full of a candour in which Dr. Abbott's book *appears to us singularly deficient. The letter to Mr. Keble, in which Dr. Newman asks his advice about the resignation of St. Mary's, could hardly be less accurately described than in Dr. Abbott's expression, "Keble, who did not at all realise the real position from the hints and interrogatories in which Newman conveyed it." A franker letter,—one which less deserved to be thus characterised as a letter of hints to which the key was reserved in Newman's own breast,—we never read. Here is a specimen of "the hints and interrogatories in which Newman conveyed" his request for Keble's judgment :—" I cannot disguise from myself that my preaching is not calculated to defend that system of religion which has been received for three hundred years, and of which the Heads of Houses are the legitimate maintainers in this place. They exclude me as far as may be from the University pulpit; and though I never have preached strong doctrine in it, they do so rightly, so far as this,—that they understand that my sermons are cal- culated to undermine things established. I cannot dis- guise from myself that they are. No one will deny that most of my sermons are on moral subjects, not doctrinal. Still, I am leading my hearers to the Primitive Church, if you will, but not to the Church of England. Now ought one to be disquieting the minds of young men with the received religion, in the exercise of a sacred office, yet without a com- mission, against the wish of their guides and governors P But this is not all. I fear I must add that, whether I will or no, I am disposing them towards Rome. First, because Rome is the only representative of the Primitive Church, besides ourselves ; in proportion, then, as they are loosened from the one, they will go to the other. Next, because many doctrines which I have held, have far greater, or their only scope, in the Roman system People tell me, on the other hand, that I am, whether by sermons or otherwise, exerting at St.
Mary's a beneficial influence on our prospective clergy; but what if I take to myself the credit of seeing further than they, and of having in the course of the last year discovered that what they approve so much is very likely to end in Romanism P" If this is what Dr. Abbott regards as "hints and interrogatories" which were not in the least calculated to give Keble a true idea of Newman's real position, all we can say is, that we cannot imagine franker and more explicit statements. It may rather be asked how Newman could have felt any doubt of what Keble's answer would be, after avowals so plain and straightforward. But the reply is, that only half the case is here stated. With all his Roruanising, Newman felt at this time and for three years longer,—what Dr. Abbott does not mention,—that the abuses of the Roman practice were so gross, that his conscience would not allow him to join the Church of Rome ; so that if he had at once resigned St. Mary's, he might have precipitated many of his followers into a Church of which he then felt the abuses in the keenest fashion. He goes on to say to Keble :—" The arguments which I have published against Rome seem to myself as cogent as ever, but men go by their sympathies, not by argument ; and if I feel the force of this influence myself, who bow to the arguments, why may not others still more, who never have in the same degree admitted the arguments ? " If such a letter as this is treated as a tissue of hints and interrogatories from which it was im- possible for Kale to infer Newman's real state of mind, we can only say that we have no standard in common with the critic who thus regards it. Dr. Abbott is very severe upon Newman for his "disbelief in the use of words as a means to the attainment of truth." That touches precisely the feature which seems to us to distinguish that exceptionally fine and subtle sense of truth which Newman possessed, No man, who relies on definitions and is proud of his own consistency in the use of words, can possibly have the finest and truest conception of the truth behind the words,—the truth which is so much deeper than words, so much more elastic, so much more taxing. Dr. Abbott's account of Newman's unconscious insincerity is that he was actuated partly by "contempt for his readers," partly by "contempt for fact" (p. 259). This is one of the passages which convince us that Dr. Abbott has read Newman more to establish his theory of him, than simply to fill himself with the genius and spirit of the man. If five-and-twenty years' study of him gives any qualification to speak, the present writer may say that the two qualities which seem to him most characteristic of Newman, are reverence for his readers and reverence for fact, though he would add that Cardinal Newman's modes of testing fact often seem to him too subjective, and therefore unsatis- factory and inadequate. In the particular instance of the casuistic discussion in which Dr. Abbott sees nothing but oscillation, lubrication, and self-deception, our own confi- dent judgment is not only that Newman decided rightly, but that he read himself and his motives with singular clearness and accuracy. No labour could be more thoroughly wasted than that which Dr. Abbott has devoted to the minute analysis of Newman's shading off of thought into thought, and word into word. It is not only natural but right that in a crisis of reflection such as Newman went through in asking Keble's advice and considering it, he should approach his ultimate deci- sion gradually by laying more stress than he had been disposed to do in the first shock of hesitation as to his position, on the reasons against premature action. If Dr. Abbott had been equally reluctant to take premature action on the not very worthy attempt to undermine a great reputation, he would not have committed one of the most serious blunders of an upright and manly life. We suppose we had no right to say that we did not believe him quite sincere in denying that Newman was guilty of conscious insincerity, and we withdraw the statement. But we confess we see nothing to choose between unconscious insincerity so profound and far-reaching as that which Dr. Abbott imputes to Newman, and conscious insincerity. A mind so honeycombed with self-deception as Dr. Abbott represents, is a rotten one for almost every purpose. Our own conviction is, that Newman was very exceptionally truthful with himself, and that that was one of the chief sources of his power.
As to the question whether Newman's religion was or was not a religion of fear, it takes a greater familiarity than Dr. Abbott seems to possess with his writings as a whole to judge. That fear, or as Dr. Abbott prefers to call it, awe, though the Bible always uses the more popular word, entered deeply into Newman's faith, nobody who knows anything about him doubts. If it had not been so, the depth of his love for God would not have been half as deep and passionate as it was. We hold heartily with him in adopting the teaching, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and in believing that there is no true fear of God as God, fear of that which is holiest in God, that does not involve an active germ of love, and no true love of God which does not also inspire a very deep fear. As Words- worth so finely says in the noble poem on Burns, "The best of what we do and are, just God forgive ;" and he who asks for forgiveness for what is best in him, necessarily trembles lest there be more to forgive than his poor self-knowledge betrays. The expressions which Dr. Abbott quotes from Newman to show that he thought ill of himself, that he hated his own hollowness, that he saw in himself depths of evil which no one else saw in him, could be paralleled in the history of every exceptionally good man who ever lived, and their quotation appears to us to throw a very vivid light on the shallowness of Dr. Abbott's moral criticism. But the fear in Newman's love of God is not half as remarkable as the love in Newman's fear of him. The picture of Callista, the martyr of his story, when the heathen philosopher attempts to find her good grounds for submitting to the Imperial decree, is, we are confident, a true picture of the sort of moral fear which had blossomed in himself into so deep a love. " Oh that I could find Him !' she exclaimed, passionately. On the right hand and on the left I grope, but touch Him not. Why dost Thou fight against me P why dost Thou scare and perplex me, 0 First and Only Fair? I have Thee not, and I need Thee.'" That is the lan- guage of a heathen seeking an object of love in whom the attributes that excite love and fear are closely blended; and it was Newman's own natural attitude, which an ever-growing faith and gratitude deepened more and more into one of over- flowing thankfulness. Dr. Abbott cannot enter into Newman's complexity of religious feeling, and so he grossly exag- gerates the proportion of what he calls his religious fear. The true complexity, and also the true simplicity, of Newman's religious attitude are so finely expressed in the sermon on "The State of Grace," that we will close our unwelcome controversy with Dr. Abbott by a sentence taken from it. "All the necessary exactness of our obedience," he says, "the anxiety about failing, the pain of self-denial, the watch- fulness, the zeal, the self-chastisements which are required of us, as little interfere with this vision of faith, as if they were practised by another, not by ourselves. We are two or three selves at once in the wonderful' ktructure of our minds, and can weep while we smile, and labour while we meditate." Perhaps Dr. Abbott is not in the same sense two or three selves at once ; at all events, he grossly misreads one who was, and this has drawn him into a violent attempt at iconoclasm of which we do not doubt that he will one day repent.
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