anxious doubtings which grew upon him in sheltered Oxford. And after he left the Church of England, his life was even narrower. Oxford was at least a university; Edgbaston was simply a religious house. Here he lived, surrounded by devoted disciples who looked through his spectacles, busying himself with much routine work, farther away than ever from that great and turbulent world in which he was so well fitted to shine.

This academic and confined life it was that largely encouraged the extreme shyness and reserve, the fastidious shrinking and oversensitiveness on which so many writers comment. His 'morbidly sensitive skin,' as he called it in old age, was a life-long handicap. He shrinks into himself from the hard world, he cannot do himself justice among strangers. On entering Oriel in 1822, he spent days of acute suffering, and his new associates did not know what to make of his 'extreme shyness and vivid self-consciousness.' This in moderation might not be unnatural in a youth entering suddenly the society of older and more famous men, but even so it ought to have passed away as he grew older and became accustomed to use his talents. A man of commanding and original character rather sets the lead than receives it; he makes the best of strange or unfamiliar surroundings and moulds his circumstances to his will. Newman, however, was ever ill at ease in ordinary society, and longed to escape back to his accustomed path. In the fullness of his youthful powers, when enjoying the beauties and the fresh sights of the Mediterranean, he yet yearns for Oxford where he can sport his oak and lie at full length on his sofa. He 'shrinks involuntarily from the world,' finds 'every kind of exertion an effort,' and has an almost morbid perception of his deficiencies and absurdities.'† During the height of the Movement he says, 'I have learnt to throw myself on myself. . . . God intends me to be lonely; He has so framed my mind that I am in a great measure beyond the sympathies of others and thrown upon Himself'; and a year later he laments, 'I am very cold and

Newman (says J. B. Mozley in the 'Christian Remembrancer,' January 1846) 'saw the pen everywhere; . . . he went instinctively to documents, not to life; all came out of himself.'

† 1, 321.

reserved to people, but I cannot realise to myself that any one loves me; . . . or I dare not realise it.' When dining out, he complains that he is looking like a fool,' and at Rome in 1846 refused invitations because he was 'so bashful and silent in general society.' Twenty-five years later, when one of the most famous men in the country, he will not visit a friend in London, because 'I am sure to make a fool of myself being so shy, and go away gnawing my heart at the thought of the many gaucheries and absurdities I have committed.' And this from the man with the most winning personality in England! Even in his preaching shyness pursued him; he never let himself go, and compared himself to Ulysses in the 'Iliad,' who 'when he began looked like a fool.' His insight and deep earnestness moved men's hearts, but his manner was stiff and unnaturally calm. It was, says a hearer, 'the calmness of suppression,' hiding ‘a spirit seething with restless and agitating thoughts,' like the breathless quiet before a mighty thunderstorm.* He never learnt to pour out full and wide the great treasures with which his heart was bursting.

So much for his surroundings. Now we may turn to the growth and development of his mind. Not a great deal is known of his boyhood and upbringing, but there are two facts mentioned by himself that have a very ominous sound.† The first is that his imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers and talismans; he thought life might be a dream, or himself an angel, and the world a semblance or a deception. This tendency must be accounted very dangerous. The growing boy, as his mind becomes more robust and prepares to shoulder the responsibilities of manhood, should cast off all childish fancies and get into touch with hard fact. In Newman, however, we find traces of this idea in later years, and he seems never entirely to have shaken it off. Besides, this is no normal childish fancy; it is utterly unreal to doubt the existence of the external world; for all that we do or think is based upon that belief. A man would not exist at all, unless his parents took the

p. 16.

* Whately (son of the Archbishop), 'Personal and Family Glimpses, † Apologia, Part III.

world as real; and as a baby, long before he can rise to the notion of God or even think at all, his actions proceed on the same idea; he eats and drinks, he hugs his mother, he shouts for his rattle. This world may not be final and unchangeable reality, but for us in this dispensation it is real and we must use it as our basis; otherwise we have nothing to go upon. Just as Rousseau's biographers attribute his fantastic theories partly to the large overdoses of fairy stories which he took in boyhood, so in Newman a certain over-subtlety of mind and aloofness from hard fact is no doubt to be traced to this early feeling of separation from the visible and material world.

The other fact of his boyhood at which we must look askance is his resolution of celibacy at the extremely early age of 15. To accept celibacy in manhood is one thing; to do so as a boy is quite another. The boy who has determined never to marry tends to have a different outlook towards the other sex during the important years that precede full manhood. The question is already prejudged, and he may regard women as an intrusion or be afraid of them. Even if he mixes freely with them, it is not likely to be on quite the same terms as other young men. At the age of 29 Newman congratulates himself that at Oxford he is out of the way of their 'dangerous fascinations,' and even speaks of them (by implication) as a temptation'*-a strange and unnatural tone even for one who does not wish to marry, and quite contrary to the example and practice of the Apostle Paul. Newman's ardent and expansive nature resented barriers at all times; vows, he once said, are a want of faith; and we may safely conclude that his early resolution of celibacy was a mistake. Any lingering doubt will be removed by his own statement that this resolution strengthened that feeling of aloofness from the visible world which we have already seen reason to disapprove.

We pass on now to the religious development of his mind. Religion was the root and ground of his being. Much as he loved poetry and music and the fair world of nature, yet all these pleasures were secondary; indeed

* A. Mozley, 1, 230.

at times he even mistrusts them, as liable to seduce him from the one thing needful. He desired to use all his splendid powers in the furtherance of Christianity. But he was living at the beginning of a very difficult age. Fresh truths were coming to light, new movements were beginning of which the end could not be foreseen; a testing-time was at hand for the Church, and the whole religious world was to be shaken to its foundations. Science was on the threshold of those discoveries, on the strength of which she has since endeavoured to carry the war into the theological camp. Lyell, whose 'Principles of Geology' paved the way for Darwin, was three years older than Newman, and Darwin himself was only eight years younger. In Germany a Biblical Criticism was gathering force, claiming a new freedom in the treatment of the Scriptures. It is well known how Pusey's youthful radicalism was turned into conservatism by a recoil from the criticism which he encountered in that country; and the new ideas were slowly penetrating into England. Now Newman's mind felt the tendencies of things very quickly, and he understood clearly what was going to happen. For four or five years after his election to Oriel he had been something of a Liberal himself, and he thoroughly grasped the principle and aims of the scientific method. The reasoning intellect has its place in life and cannot be pushed out: the scientist rightly demands freedom for his studies, and he must be allowed to follow the truth wherever it seems to lead; otherwise science is a mockery. In the same way the critic has his proper part to play. Newman himself stated that the first time he read the opening chapters of Genesis in Hebrew, he saw at once that there were two documents placed alongside. There are difficulties in the Bible which can only be resolved by the use of criticism. All this he saw; but he saw more than this; he took a long view. The scientist and the critic would not be satisfied with half measures, but would claim the right of testing and judging not only the outworks but the very foundation doctrines and documents of the faith. It would not be a case of the age of the world or the composition of the books of Moses, but of the being of God and the credibility of the Gospels. It would be useless to say to the new

teachers, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther'; for they would insist on taking their own line. But the Christian religion was to Newman dearer than life itself. If its holy joys and its triumphant glories were to be torn from him, if a man were to be left to the exercise of his cold reason and to the satisfaction of his lower instincts, then indeed he felt (and rightly) that it were better never to have been born. His heart trembled for the ark of God. Could it ride unharmed on these new and boisterous seas? Would the icy hand of scepticism freeze the warm life out of the Gospel? He starts back in horror; Liberalism becomes anathema to him; his mind leaps away to the early ages of the Church, when great champions arose and great victories were won, when creeds and formulas were created, when out of great dangers a glorious end was achieved. He immerses himself more and more in the Fathers; he gets to be 'hungry for Irenæus and Cyprian'; it becomes 'a paradise of delight to live in imagination' in their times; he draws out elaborate parallels between those days and his own. He idealises the fourth century and brings it in to solve the problems of the 19th. His mind thus acquires a backward rather than a forward look; he meets difficulties not on their merits, not by the aid of the Spirit dwelling in himself, but by reference to a long-forgotten past.

Here, however, he showed a want of faith-faith in the Church and faith in himself. The Church would weather the storm that was beating up, because there is that in her which the scientific reason can neither give nor take away. But then she must launch forth on the troubled seas and fear not. She must discard all adventitious aids; she must give up the idea of any absolute guarantee of success, and trust in the inherent truth within her; for truth is strong and will prevail. And her leaders and captains must keep up a good heart and believe in themselves, remembering that God's treasure is always in earthen vessels. It was useless to call for an Athanasius; even if he could have appeared, he would have been a lost man in the 19th century. A wholly new set of difficulties had arisen, and must perhaps be met on new lines.

Athanasius was sufficient for his day, and Newman might, under the guidance of the