CARDINAL NEWMAN MEMORIAL FUND.
[To TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—The executive sub-committee of the Cardinal Newman Memorial Fund, having learnt that some misunderstanding exists in certain quarters regarding the intent of the third object of the fund—viz., "To promote and perpetuate the study of Cardinal Newman's works and the endowment of a Scholarship or Prize "—has requested me to communicate to you the accompanying memorandum, which perhaps may be
of use in removing misapprehensions on the subject. —I am,
Hon. Sec. Cardinal Newman Memorial Fund.
Catholic Union of Great Britain, 10 Duke Street, St. James's, S.W., London, December 3rd.
" The promoters of the Cardinal Newman Memorial Fund have felt that one chief object of Cardinal Newman's life was to impress upon his generation by means of his writings certain great principles ; and that he did so with a combination unequalled in the present day of philosophical grasp of the essence of religious truth on the one hand, and on the other of vivid apprehension of the spirit of the age and its special intellectual characteristics. Hence arose his peculiar power of stating Christian principles in such a way as to be at once intelligible and persuasive in view of contemporary religious movements. This being so, the promoters have felt that it would be in an especial way to carry on the work begun by the Cardinal, while it would also signally serve the cause of religions truth, to adopt some scheme for the encouragement and diffusion of the systematic study of his writings. And this seemed the more desirable from the fact that one natural result of the study of the Cardinal's works is, to use his own expression, to suggest trains of thought over and above what- they explicitly develop. They are consequently of great value as guides in the questions of difficulty which arise from time to time in connection with Christian Faith, quite apart from the special conditions under which they were written. It is felt therefore to be of great im- portance that such writings should not be treated as ephemeral or merely literary, or as belonging to a condition of things to which they no longer apply. These remarks, while applicable in their measure to very many of Cardinal Newman's writings, would seem, in view of the modern Agnostic tendency, to be especially so to that large portion of his work which is concerned in philosophically investigating, in his own words, that ethical character,' and system of first principles,' and mode of viewing the question and of arguing, which is naturally and divinely the organuin investigandi given us for gaining religious truth,' and that mode of reasoning which, on the other hand, naturally leads to religious negation or agnosticism. The principles laid down on this subject, whether in reference to the philosophy of Faith (as in the Oxford Univer- sity Sermons' and Grammar of Assent ') or to the attitude of a Christian towards the intellectual and scientific problems which from time to time arise (as in the Idea of a University'), seem to be as invaluable a guide for both inquirer• and apologist in dealing with new problems, as they were in reference to the state of thought at the time of their composition. In conclusion it may be well to recall the permanent value attributed by the Cardinal himself to what he called his four great constructive works '— viz , the 'Lectures on Justification,' the Essay on the Develop- ment of Christian Doctrine,' the ' Idea of a University,' and the Grammar of Assent.' "
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