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Title: Loss and Gain
The Story of a Convert
Author: John Henry Newman
Release Date: February 11, 2008 [EBook #24574]
Language: English
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LOSS AND GAIN:
THE STORY OF A CONVERT.
BY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN,
OF THE ORATORY.
ADHUC MODICUM ALIQUANTULUM,
QUI VENTURUS EST, VENIET, ET NON TARDABIT.
JUSTUS AUTEM MEUS EX FIDE VIVIT.
Eighth Edition.
LONDON: BURNS AND OATES.
1881.
TO THE VERY REV.
CHARLES W. RUSSELL, D.D.,
PRESIDENT OF ST. PATRICK'S COLLEGE, MAYNOOTH,
&c. &c.
My dear Dr. Russell,--Now that at length I take the step of printing my
name in the Title-Page of this Volume, I trust I shall not be
encroaching on the kindness you have so long shown to me, if I venture
to follow it up by placing yours in the page which comes next, thus
associating myself with you, and recommending myself to my readers by
the association.
Not that I am dreaming of bringing down upon you, in whole or part, the
criticisms, just or unjust, which lie against a literary attempt which
has in some quarters been thought out of keeping with my antecedents and
my position; but the warm and sympathetic interest which you took in
Oxford matters thirty years ago, and the benefits which I derived
personally from that interest, are reasons why I am desirous of
prefixing your name to a Tale, which, whatever its faults, at least is a
more intelligible and exact representation of the thoughts, sentiments,
and aspirations, then and there prevailing, than was to be found in the
anti-Catholic pamphlets, charges, sermons, reviews, and story-books of
the day.
These reasons, too, must be my apology, should I seem to be asking your
acceptance of a Volume, which, over and above its intrinsic defects, is,
in its very subject and style, hardly commensurate with the theological
reputation and the ecclesiastical station of the person to whom it is
presented.
I am, my dear Dr. Russell,
Your affectionate friend,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
THE ORATORY, _Feb. 21, 1874_.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The following tale is not intended as a work of controversy in behalf of
the Catholic Religion; but as a description of what is understood by
few, viz. the course of thought and state of mind,--or rather one such
course and state,--which issues in conviction of its Divine origin.
Nor is it founded on fact, to use the common phrase. It is not the
history of any individual mind among the recent converts to the Catholic
Church. The principal characters are imaginary; and the writer wishes to
disclaim personal allusion in any. It is with this view that he has
feigned ecclesiastical bodies and places, to avoid the chance, which
might otherwise occur, of unintentionally suggesting to the reader real
individuals, who were far from his thoughts.
At the same time, free use has been made of sayings and doings which
were characteristic of the time and place in which the scene is laid.
And, moreover, when, as in a tale, a general truth or fact is exhibited
in individual specimens of it, it is impossible that the ideal
representation should not more or less coincide, in spite of the
author's endeavour, or even without his recognition, with its existing
instances or champions.
It must also be added, to prevent a farther misconception, that no
proper representative is intended in this tale, of the religious
opinions which had lately so much influence in the University of Oxford.
_Feb. 21, 1848._
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SIXTH EDITION.
A tale, directed against the Oxford converts to the Catholic Faith, was
sent from England to the author of this Volume in the summer of 1847,
when he was resident at Santa Croce in Rome. Its contents were as
wantonly and preposterously fanciful, as they were injurious to those
whose motives and actions it professed to represent; but a formal
criticism or grave notice of it seemed to him out of place.
The suitable answer lay rather in the publication of a second tale;
drawn up with a stricter regard to truth and probability, and with at
least some personal knowledge of Oxford, and some perception of the
various aspects of the religious phenomenon, which the work in question
handled so rudely and so unskilfully.
Especially was he desirous of dissipating the fog of pomposity and
solemn pretence, which its writer had thrown around the personages
introduced into it, by showing, as in a specimen, that those who were
smitten with love of the Catholic Church, were nevertheless as able to
write common-sense prose as other men.
Under these circumstances "Loss and Gain" was given to the public.
_Feb. 21, 1874._
LOSS AND GAIN.
Part I.
CHAPTER I.
Charles Reding was the only son of a clergyman, who was in possession of
a valuable benefice in a midland county. His father intended him for
orders, and sent him at a proper age to a public school. He had long
revolved in his mind the respective advantages and disadvantages of
public and private education, and had decided in favour of the former.
"Seclusion," he said, "is no security for virtue. There is no telling
what is in a boy's heart: he may look as open and happy as usual, and be
as kind and attentive, when there is a great deal wrong going on within.
The heart is a secret with its Maker; no one on earth can hope to get at
it or to touch it. I have a cure of souls; what do I really know of my
parishioners? Nothing; their hearts are sealed books to me. And this
dear boy, he comes close to me; he throws his arms round me, but his
soul is as much out of my sight as if he were at the antipodes. I am
not accusing him of reserve, dear fellow: his very love and reverence
for me keep him in a sort of charmed solitude. I cannot expect to get at
the bottom of him.
'Each in his hidden sphere of bliss or woe,
Our hermit spirits dwell.'
It is our lot here below. No one on earth can know Charles's secret
thoughts. Did I guard him here at home ever so well, yet, in due time,
it would be found that a serpent had crept into the heart of his
innocence. Boys do not fully know what is good and what is evil; they do
wrong things at first almost innocently. Novelty hides vice from them;
there is no one to warn them or give them rules; and they become slaves
of sin, while they are learning what sin is. They go to the University,
and suddenly plunge into excesses, the greater in proportion to their
inexperience. And, besides all this, I am not equal to the task of
forming so active and inquisitive a mind as his. He already asks
questions which I know not how to answer. So he shall go to a public
school. There he will get discipline at least, even if he has more of
trial: at least he will gain habits of self-command, manliness, and
circumspection; he will learn to use his eyes, and will find materials
to use them upon; and thus will be gradually trained for the liberty
which, any how, he must have when he goes to college."
This was the more necessary, because, with many high excellences,
Charles was naturally timid and retiring, over-sensitive, and, though
lively and cheerful, yet not without a tinge of melancholy in his
character, which sometimes degenerated into mawkishness.
To Eton, then, he went; and there had the good fortune to fall into the
hands of an excellent tutor, who, while he instructed him in the old
Church-of-England principles of Mant and Doyley, gave his mind a
religious impression, which secured him against the allurements of bad
company, whether at the school itself, or afterwards at Oxford. To that
celebrated seat of learning he was in due time transferred, being
entered at St. Saviour's College; and he is in his sixth term from
matriculation, and his fourth of residence, at the time our story opens.
At Oxford, it is needless to say, he had found a great number of his
schoolfellows, but, it so happened, had found very few friends among
them. Some were too gay for him, and he had avoided them; others, with
whom he had been intimate at Eton, having high connections, had fairly
cut him on coming into residence, or, being entered at other colleges,
had lost sight of him. Almost everything depends at Oxford, in the
matter of acquaintance, on proximity of rooms. You choose your friend,
not so much by your tastes, as by your staircase. There is a story of a
London tradesman who lost custom after beautifying his premises, because
his entrance went up a step; and we all know how great is the difference
between open and shut doors when we walk along a street of shops. In a
university a youth's hours are portioned out to him. A regular man gets
up and goes to chapel, breakfasts, gets up his lectures, goes to
lecture, walks, dines; there is little to induce him to mount any
staircase but his own; and if he does so, ten to one he finds the friend
from home whom he is seeking; not to say that freshmen, who naturally
have common feelings and interests, as naturally are allotted a
staircase in common. And thus it was that Charles Reding was brought
across William Sheffield, who had come into residence the same term as
himself.
The minds of young people are pliable and elastic, and easily
accommodate themselves to any one they fall in with. They find grounds
of attraction both where they agree with one another and where they
differ; what is congenial to themselves creates sympathy; what is
correlative, or supplemental, creates admiration and esteem. And what is
thus begun is often continued in after-life by the force of habit and
the claims of memory. Thus, in the choice of friends, chance often does
for us as much as the most careful selection could have effected. What
was the character and degree of that friendship which sprang up between
the freshmen Reding and Sheffield, we need not here minutely explain: it
will be enough to say, that what they had in common was freshmanship,
good talents, and the back staircase; and that they differed in
this--that Sheffield had lived a good deal with people older than
himself, had read much in a desultory way, and easily picked up opinions
and facts, especially on controversies of the day, without laying
anything very much to heart; that he was ready, clear-sighted,
unembarrassed, and somewhat forward: Charles, on the other hand, had
little knowledge as yet of principles or their bearings, but understood
more deeply than Sheffield, and held more practically, what he had once
received; he was gentle and affectionate, and easily led by others,
except when duty clearly interfered. It should be added, that he had
fallen in with various religious denominations in his father's parish,
and had a general, though not a systematic, knowledge of their tenets.
What they were besides, will be seen as our narrative advances.
CHAPTER II.
It was a little past one P.M. when Sheffield, passing Charles's door,
saw it open. The college servant had just entered with the usual
half-commons for luncheon, and was employed in making up the fire.
Sheffield followed him in, and found Charles in his cap and gown,
lounging on the arm of his easy-chair, and eating his bread and cheese.
Sheffield asked him if he slept, as well as ate and drank, "accoutred as
he was."
"I am just going for a turn into the meadow," said Charles; "this is to
me the best time of the year: _nunc formosissimus annus_; everything is
beautiful; the laburnums are out, and the may. There is a greater
variety of trees there than in any other place I know hereabouts; and
the planes are so touching just now, with their small multitudinous
green hands half-opened; and there are two or three such fine dark
willows stretching over the Cherwell; I think some dryad inhabits them:
and, as you wind along, just over your right shoulder is the Long Walk,
with the Oxford buildings seen between the elms. They say there are dons
here who recollect when the foliage was unbroken, nay, when you might
walk under it in hard rain, and get no wet. I know I got drenched there
the other day."
Sheffield laughed, and said that Charles must put on his beaver, and
walk with him a different way. He wanted a good walk; his head was
stupid from his lectures; that old Jennings prosed so awfully upon
Paley, it made him quite ill. He had talked of the Apostles as neither
"deceivers nor deceived," of their "sensible miracles," and of their
"dying for their testimony," till he did not know whether he himself was
an _ens physiologicum_ or a _totum metaphysicum_, when Jennings had
cruelly asked him to repeat Paley's argument; and because he had not
given it in Jennings' words, friend Jennings had pursed up his lips, and
gone through the whole again; so intent, in his wooden enthusiasm, on
his own analysis of it, that he did not hear the clock strike the hour;
and, in spite of the men's shuffling their feet, blowing their noses,
and looking at their watches, on he had gone for a good twenty minutes
past the time; and would have been going on even then, he verily
believed, but for an interposition only equalled by that of the geese at
the Capitol. For that, when he had got about half through his
recapitulation, and was stopping at the end of a sentence to see the
impression he was making, that uncouth fellow, Lively, moved by what
happy inspiration he did not know, suddenly broke in, apropos of
nothing, nodding his head, and speaking in a clear cackle, with, "Pray,
sir, what is your opinion of the infallibility of the Pope?" Upon which
every one but Jennings did laugh out: but he, _au contraire_, began to
look very black; and no one can tell what would have happened, had he
not cast his eyes by accident on his watch, on which he coloured, closed
his book, and _instanter_ sent the whole lecture out of the room.
Charles laughed in his turn, but added, "Yet, I assure you, Sheffield,
that Jennings, stiff and cold as he seems, is, I do believe, a very good
fellow at bottom. He has before now spoken to me with a good deal of
feeling, and has gone out of his way to do me favours. I see poor bodies
coming to him for charity continually; and they say that his sermons at
Holy Cross are excellent."
Sheffield said he liked people to be natural, and hated that donnish
manner. What good could it do? and what did it mean?
"That is what I call bigotry," answered Charles; "I am for taking every
one for what he is, and not for what he is not: one has this excellence,
another that; no one is everything. Why should we not drop what we don't
like, and admire what we like? This is the only way of getting through
life, the only true wisdom, and surely our duty into the bargain."
Sheffield thought this regular prose, and unreal. "We must," he said,
"have a standard of things, else one good thing is as good as another.
But I can't stand here all day," he continued, "when we ought to be
walking." And he took off Charles's cap, and, placing his hat on him
instead, said, "Come, let us be going."
"Then must I give up my meadow?" said Charles.
"Of course you must," answered Sheffield; "you must take a beaver walk.
I want you to go as far as Oxley, a village some little way out, all
the vicars of which, sooner or later, are made bishops. Perhaps even
walking there may do us some good."
The friends set out, from hat to boot in the most approved Oxford
bandbox-cut of trimness and prettiness. Sheffield was turning into the
High Street, when Reding stopped him: "It always annoys me," he said,
"to go down High Street in a beaver; one is sure to meet a proctor."
"All those University dresses are great fudge," answered Sheffield; "how
are we the better for them? They are mere outside, and nothing else.
Besides, our gown is so hideously ugly."
"Well, I don't go along with your sweeping condemnation," answered
Charles; "this is a great place, and should have a dress. I declare,
when I first saw the procession of Heads at St. Mary's, it was quite
moving. First----"
"Of course the pokers," interrupted Sheffield.
...
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