Volume I Part 13 (2/2)
Mr. Newman's words about myself, occurring in his work on ”The Soul,” I remember with pride. They were written at a time when I had an ominous reputation among theologians. When residing at Clifton as a professor, Mr. Newman came down to Broadmead Rooms at Bristol, and took the chair at one of my lectures, and spoke words on my behalf which only he could frame. But he was as fearless in his friends.h.i.+p as he was intrepid in his faith. He wrote to me, April 30, 1897, saying: ”I appeal to your compa.s.sion when I say, that the mere change of opinion on a doubtful fact has perhaps cost me the regard of all who do not know me intimately.” The ”fact” related to the probability of annihilation at death. He regretted the loss of friends.h.i.+p, but never varied in his lofty fidelity to conscience. Whatever might be his interest in a future life, if it were the will of G.o.d not to concede it, he held it to be the duty of one who placed his trust in Him to acquiesce. The spirit of piety never seemed to me n.o.bler, than in this unusual expression of unmurmuring, unpresuming resignation.
His first wife, who was of the persuasion of the Plymouth Brethren, had little sympathy with his boldness and fecundity of thought. Once, when he lived at Park Village, Regent's Park, his friend, Dr. James Martineau, came into the room; she opened the window and stepped out on to the lawn, rather than meet him. Mr. Newman was very tender as to her scruples, but stood by his own. When I visited him, he asked me, from regard to her, to give the name of ”Mr. Jacobs”--the name I used when a teacher in Worcester in 1840, where I lectured under my own name and taught under another.
On February 12, 1897, Mr. Newman wrote:--”Mv dear Holyoake,--I am not coming round to you, though many will think I am. On the contrary, I hope you are half coming round to me, but I have no time to talk on these matters.” He then asked my advice as to his rights over his own publications, then in the hands of Mr. Frowde, printer, of Oxford; but with such care for the rights of others, such faultless circ.u.mspection as to the consequences to others in all he wished done, as to cause me agreeable surprise at the unfailing perspicacity of his mind, his unchanging, scrupulous, and instinctive sense of justice.
He regarded death with the calmness of a philosopher. He wrote to me April 30, 1897: ”Only those near me know how I daily realise the near approach of my own death (he was then ninety-three). I grudge every day wasted by things unfinished which remain for me to do.” No apprehension, no fear, and he wished I could ”appear before him, with a doc.u.ment drawn up,” by which he could consign to me the custody of all the works under his control. At the time, as he said, he might ”easily be in his grave”
before I could accomplish his wishes. He says in another letter that his ”wife, like himself, abhorred indebtedness.” He provided for the probable cost of everything he wished done. His sense of honour remained as keen as his sense of faith. He was a gentleman first and a Christian afterwards.
Mr. Gladstone told me he was under the impression that he had, in some way unknown to himself, lost the friends.h.i.+p of Mr. Newman, from whom he had not heard for several years; and Mr. Newman was under an impression that Mr. Gladstone's silence was occasioned by disapproval of his published views of the ”Errors of Jesus”--an error of a.s.sumption respecting Mr. Gladstone into which Mr. Newman might naturally, but not excusably, fall; for Mr. Newman should have known that Mr. Gladstone had a n.o.ble tolerance equal to his own, or should personally have tested it, by letter or otherwise, before nurturing an adverse conjecture. I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gladstone, and found Mr. Newman's surmise groundless. At the same time I gave him a copy of Mr. Francis Newman's ”Secret Songs” (as one copy given to me was called) which revealed to Mr. Gladstone a devotional spirit he did not, as he said, imagine could co-exist in one whose faith was so divergent to his own.
The following letter, which has autobiographical value, may interest the reader:--
”Norwood Villa, 15, Arundel Crescent,
”Weston-super-Mare.
”March 22, 1893.
”Dear Mr. George Jacob Holyoake,--I had no idea of writing to Mr.
Gladstone, yet am glad to hear that you gave him my 'Secret Hymns.'
Probably my contrast to my brother, the late Cardinal, always puzzled him. That we were in painful opposition ever since 1820 had never entered his mind, much less that this opposition made it impossible to me to endure living in Oxford, which also would have been my obvious course.
”I did send my 'Paul of Tarsus' to Mr. Gladstone, which partially opened his eyes. For my brother's first pretentious religious book was against the Arians, which I _think_ I read at latest in 1832. Mr. Gladstone has _written_ that my brother's secession to Rome was the greatest loss that the English Church ever suffered. Of what kind was the loss my little book on 'Paul' indirectly states, in pointing out that, as our English New Testament shows, Paul in his own episode plainly originated the doctrine, three centuries later _called_ Arianism, and held by all the Western Church until young Athanasius introduced his new and therefore 'false' doctrine.
My brother, with Paul's epistle open before him, condemned the doctrine of Arian, and did not know that it was the invention of Paul, and thereby prevailed in the whole Western Church. Moreover, I read what I cannot imagine met Mr. Gladstone's eyes, that 'It is not safe to quote any Pre-Athanasian doctrines concerning the Trinity, since the _Church_ had not yet taught them how to express themselves.' After this, _could_ Mr. Gladstone, as a decent scholar, mourn over my brother's _loss_ to the Church? I hope Mr. Gladstone can now afford time to read something of the really early Christianity. He will find the Jerusalem Christianity peris.h.i.+ng after the Roman revolt, and supplanted by Pauline fancies (not Christian at all) and by Pauline morality, often better than Christian. To me our modern problem is to eschew Pauline fancies and further to improve on Pauline wisdom.
”But since I have reached the point of being unable to take Human Immortality as a Church axiom, I cannot believe that the problem is above fully stated, or that Christianity deserves to become coetaneous with man's body.
”Perhaps I ought to thank you more, yet I may have said too much.--Yours truly,
”F. W. Newman.”
One day as Mr. Newman was leaving my room in Woburn Buildings, he looked round and said: ”I did not think there were rooms so large in this place”; and then descending the stairs, as though the familiarity of the remark was more than an impulse, he said: ”Do you think you could join with me in teaching the great truth of Theism?” Alas! I had to express my regret that my belief did not lie that way. Highly as I should think, and much as I should value public a.s.sociation with Mr. Newman, I had to decline the opportunity. If the will could create conviction, I should also have accepted Mazzini's invitation--elsewhere referred to--for Theism never seemed so enchanting in my eyes as it appeared in the lives of those two distinguished thinkers who were inspired by it.
CHAPTER XVII. MAZZINI IN ENGLAND-INCIDENTS IN HIS CAREER
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mazzini]
Giuseppe Mazzini, whom Englishmen know as Joseph Mazzini, was born in Genoa, June 22, 1805, and died in Pisa, March 10, 1872. He spent the greater part of forty years of his marvellous life in London. * Some incidents of his English career, known to me, may increase or confirm the public impression of him.
* First in Devons.h.i.+re Street, Queen Square; in Chelsea; in Brompton; in earlier years in penury. Where he had command of a sitting-room, birds were flying about. Uncaged freedom was to Mazzini the emblem of Liberty.
Never strong from youth, abstemious, oft from privation, and always from principle, he was as thin as Dumas describes Richelieu. Arbitrary imprisonment, which twice befel him, and many years of voluntary confinement, imposed upon himself by necessity of concealment--living and working in a small room, whence it was dangerous for him to emerge by day or by night--were inevitably enervating. When he first came to London in 1837, he brought with him three exiles, who depended upon his earnings for subsistence. The slender income supplied him by his mother might have sufficed for his few wants,* but aid for others and the ceaseless cost of the propaganda of Italian independence, to which he devoted himself, had to be provided by writing for reviews. At times cherished souvenirs had to be pledged, and visits to money-lenders had to be made.
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