Loss and Gain - John Henry Newman

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It is surely more reasonable to come in when you can: so many things may hinder persons."

      "Well, my dear Louisa," said her mother, "I like the old way. It used always to be said to us, Be in your seats before 'When the wicked man,' and at latest before the 'Dearly Beloved.' That's the good old-fashioned way. And Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson used always to sit at least five minutes in the desk to give us some law, and used to look round before beginning; and Mr. Jones used frequently to preach against late comers. I can't argue, but it seems to me reasonable that good Christians should hear the whole service. They might as well go out before it's over."

      "Well, but, mamma," said Charlotte, "so it is abroad: they come in and go out when they please. It's so devotional."

      "My dear girl," said Mrs. Bolton, "I am too old to understand all this; it's beyond me. I suppose Mr. White has been saying all this to you. He's a good young man, very amiable and attentive. I have nothing to say against him, except that he is young, and he'll change his view of things when he gets older."

      "While we talk, time's going," said Louisa; "is it quite impossible we should still go to church?"

      "My dear Louisa, I would not walk up the aisle for the world; positively I should sink into the earth: such a bad example! How can you dream of such a thing?"

      "Then I suppose nothing's to be done," said Louisa, taking off her bonnet; "but really it is very sad to make worship so cold and formal a thing. Twice as many people would go to church if they might be late."

      "Well, my dear, all things are changed now: in my younger days Catholics were the formal people, and we were the devotional; now it's just the reverse."

      "But isn't it so, dear mamma?" said Charlotte, "isn't it something much more beautiful, this continued concourse, flowing and ebbing, changing yet full, than a way of praying which is as wooden as the reading-desk?—it's so free and natural."

      "Free and easy, I think," said her mother; "for shame, Charlotte! how can you speak against the beautiful Church Service; you pain me."

      "I don't," answered Charlotte; "it's a mere puritanical custom, which is no more part of our Church than the pews are."

      "Common Prayer is offered to all who can come," said Louisa; "Church should be a privilege, not a mere duty."

      "Well, my dear love, this is more than I can follow. There was young George Ashton—he always left before the sermon; and when taxed with it, he said he could not bear an heretical preacher; a boy of eighteen!"

      "But, dearest mamma," said Charlotte, "what is to be done when a preacher is heretical? what else can be done?—it's so distressing to a Catholic mind."

      "Catholic, Catholic!" cried Mrs. Bolton, rather vexed; "give me good old George the Third and the Protestant religion. Those were the times! Everything went on quietly then. We had no disputes or divisions; no differences in families. But now it is all otherwise. My head is turned, I declare; I hear so many strange, out-of-the-way things."

      The young ladies did not answer; one looked out of the window, the other prepared to leave the room.

      "Well it's a disappointment to us all," said their mother; "you first hindered me going, then I have hindered you. But I suspect, dear Louisa, mine is the greater disappointment of the two."

      Louisa turned round from the window.

      "I value the Prayer Book as you cannot do, my love," she continued; "for I have known what it is to one in deep affliction. May it be long, dearest girls, before you know it in a similar way; but if affliction comes on you, depend on it, all these new fancies and fashions will vanish from you like the wind, and the good old Prayer Book alone will stand you in any stead."

      They were both touched.

      "Come, my dears; I have spoken too seriously," she added. "Go and take your things off, and come and let us have some quiet work before luncheon-time."

      CHAPTER IX.

       Table of Contents

      Some persons fidget at intellectual difficulties, and, successfully or not, are ever trying to solve them. Charles was of a different cast of temper; a new idea was not lost on him, but it did not distress him, if it was obscure, or conflicted with his habitual view of things. He let it work its way and find its place, and shape itself within him, by the slow spontaneous action of the mind. Yet perplexity is not in itself a pleasant state; and he would have hastened its removal, had he been able.

      By means of conversations such as those which we have related (to which many others might be added, which we spare the reader's patience), and from the diversities of view which he met with in the University, he had now come, in the course of a year, to one or two conclusions, not very novel, but very important:—first, that there are a great many opinions in the world on the most momentous subjects; secondly, that all are not equally true; thirdly, that it is a duty to hold true opinions; and, fourthly, that it is uncommonly difficult to get hold of them. He had been accustomed, as we have seen, to fix his mind on persons, not on opinions, and to determine to like what was good in every one; but he had now come to perceive that, to say the least, it was not respectable in any great question to hold false opinions. It did not matter that such false opinions were sincerely held—he could not feel that respect for a person who held what Sheffield called a sham, with which he regarded him who held a reality. White and Bateman were cases in point; they were very good fellows, but he could not endure their unreal way of talking, though they did not feel it to be unreal themselves. In like manner, if the Roman Catholic system was untrue, so far was plain (putting aside higher considerations), that a person who believed in the power of saints, and prayed to them, was an actor in a great sham, let him be as sincere as he would. He mistook words for things, and so far forth, he could not respect him more than he respected White or Bateman. And so of a Unitarian; if he believed the power of unaided human nature to be what it was not; if by birth man is fallen, and he thought him upright, he was holding an absurdity. He might redeem and cover this blot by a thousand excellences, but a blot it would remain; just as we should feel a handsome man disfigured by the loss of an eye or a hand. And so, again, if a professing Christian made the Almighty a being of simple benevolence, and He was, on the contrary, what the Church of England teaches, a God who punishes for the sake of justice, such a person was making an idol or unreality the object of his religion, and (apart from more serious thoughts about him) so far he could not respect him. Thus the principle of dogmatism gradually became an essential element in Charles's religious views.

      Gradually, and imperceptibly to himself; for the thoughts which we have been tracing only came on him at spare times, and were taken up at intervals from the point at which they were laid down. His lectures and other duties of the place, his friends and recreations, were the staple of the day; but there was this undercurrent ever in motion, and sounding in his mental ear as soon as other sounds were hushed. As he dressed in the morning, as he sat under the beeches of his college-garden, when he strolled into the meadow, when he went into the town to pay a bill or make a call, when he threw himself on his sofa after shutting his oak at night, thoughts cognate with those which have been described were busy within him.

      Discussions, however, and inquiries, as far as Oxford could afford matter for them, were for a while drawing to an end; for Trinity Sunday was now past, and the Commemoration was close at hand. On the Sunday before it, the University sermon happened to be preached by a distinguished person, whom that solemnity brought up to Oxford; no less a man than the Very Rev. Dr. Brownside, the new Dean of Nottingham, some time Huntingdonian Professor of Divinity, and one of the acutest, if not soundest academical thinkers of the day. He was a little, prim, smirking, be-spectacled man, bald in front, with curly black hair behind, somewhat pompous in his manner, with a clear musical utterance, which enabled one to listen to him without effort. As a divine, he seemed never to have had any difficulty on any subject; he was so clear or so shallow, that he saw to the bottom of all his thoughts: or, since Dr. Johnson tells us that "all shallows are clear," we may perhaps distinguish him by both epithets. Revelation to him,

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