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574

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

people, who are too willing to follow the examples of their teachers. The examples of the generality of the clergy occasion many persons, committed to their charge, to run to the devil's entertainments. Good God! are these the men who are charging others with making too great a noise about religion?

INNOCENT DIVERSIONS

They talk of innocent diversions and recreations. For my part, I know of no diversion but that of doing good. If you can find any diversion which is not contrary to your baptismal vow, of renouncing the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; if you can find any diversion which tends to the glory of God; if you can find any diversion which you would be willing to be found at by the Lord Jesus Christ, I give you my free license to go to them. But if, on the contrary, they are found to keep sinners from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ; if they are a means to harden the heart, and such as you would not willingly be found in when you come to die, then, my dear brethren, keep from them. Many of you may think I have gone too far, but I shall go a great deal farther yet. I will attack the devil in his strongest holds, and bear my testimony against our fashionable and polite entertainments. What pleasure is there in spending several hours at cards? Is it not misspending your precious time, which should be spent in working out your salvation with fear and trembling? Do play-houses, horse-racing, balls, and assemblies tend to promote the glory of God? Would you be willing to have your souls demanded of you while you were at one of these places? What good can come from a horse-race, from abusing God Almighty's creatures, and putting them to a use He never designed them for? The play-houses are nurseries of debauchery, and the supporters of them are encouragers and promoters of all the evil that is done there. They are the bane of the age, and will be the destruction of the frequenters of them. Is it not high time for the true ministers of Jesus Christ to lift up their voices as a trumpet, and cry aloud against the diversions of the age? If you have tasted of the love of God, and have felt His power upon your souls, you would no more go to a play than you would run your heads into a furnace. And what occasions these places to be so much frequented is the clergy's making no scruple to be at these polite entertainments themselves. They frequent play-houses; they go to horse-races; they go to balls and assemblies; they frequent taverns, and follow all the entertainments that the age affords; and, yet, these are the persons who should advise their hearers to refrain from them. They always go disguised, for they are afraid of being seen in their gowns and cassocks; for their consciences inform them that it is not an example fit for the ministers of the gospel to set.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890)

A BRITISH CATHOLIC ORATOR

N recent times two prominent divines of the English Episcopal Church have been converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and been made cardinals in the Church of Rome. These were Cardinal Manning, of whom we have elsewhere spoken, and Cardinal Newman, with whom we are here concerned. Beginning his pastoral career as vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, Newman subsequently took a very active part in what was known as "The Oxford Movement," and himself wrote a number of the famous "Tracts for the Times." These tracts, which were in favor of the strictest Anglican orthodoxy, ended in the conversion to the Roman faith of a number of their writers, Newman among them. He resigned from St. Mary's in 1843, and subsequently entered the Catholic Church, being made a cardinal by the Pope in 1879.

As a pulpit orator Newman ranked high, winning fame in both his forms of faith. His long series of Oxford sermons contain some of the finest ever preached from an Anglican pulpit, and his Roman Catholic sermons, though less striking for their pathos, are marked by still finer rhetoric and literary finish. Aside from his reputation as an orator, Newman was an author of fine powers, alike as a logician and in theological controversy. To his prose writings he added many poems of fine touch and finish, most notable among them being the famous hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light."

THE EVILS OF MONEY-GETTING

[From one of Newman's "Oxford Sermons" we make a brief extract in illustration of his style of oratory, and also for the salutary lesson it conveys and the effective manner in which the weakness and wickedness of money seeking, for itself alone, is presented. It was preached from the text, "Woe unto ye that are rich, for ye have received your consolation."]

576

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

I say, then, that it is a part of Christian caution to see that our engagements do not become pursuits. Engagements are our portion, but pursuits are for the most part of our own choosing. We may be engaged in worldly business without pursuing worldly objects. "Not slothful in business," yet "serving the Lord." In this, then, consists the danger of the pursuit of gain, as by trade and the like. It is the most common and widely spread of all excitements. It is one in which everyone almost may indulge, nay, and will be praised by the world for indulging. And it lasts through life-in that differing from the amusements and pleasures of the world, which are short-lived and succeed one after another. Dissipation of mind, which these amusements create, is itself, indeed, miserable enough; but far worse than this dissipation is the concentration of mind upon some worldly object which admits of being constantly pursued; and such is the pursuit of gain.

Nor is it a slight aggravation of the evil that anxiety is almost sure to attend it. A life of money-getting is a life of care. From the first there is a fretful anticipation of loss in various ways to depress and unsettle the mind, nay, to haunt it, till a man finds he can think about nothing else, and is unable to give his mind to religion from the constant whirl of business in which he is involved. It is well this should be understood. You may hear men talk as if the pursuit of wealth was the business of life. They will argue that, by the law of nature, a man is bound to gain a livelihood for his family, and that he finds a reward in doing so-an innocent and honorable satisfaction-as he adds one sum to another, and counts up his gains. And, perhaps, they go on to argue that it is the very duty of man, since Adam's fall, "in the sweat of his face," by effort and anxiety, "to eat bread." How strange it is that they do not remember Christ's gracious promise, repealing that original curse and obviating the necessity of any real pursuit after "the meat that perisheth.” order that we might be delivered from the bondage of corruption, He has expressly told us that the necessaries of life shall never fail His faithful follower any more than the meal and oil the widow woman of Sarepta; that while he is bound to labor for his family, he need not be engrossed by his toil; that while he is busy, his heart may be at leisure for the Lord. Be not anxious, saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; and your Heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things."

I have now given the main reason why the pursuit of gain, whether in a large or a small way, is prejudicial to our spiritual interests-that it fixes the mind upon an object of this world. Yet others remain behind

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

577

Money is a sort of creation, and gives the acquirer even more than the possessor an imagination of his own power, and tends to make him idolize self. Again, what we have hardly won, we are unwilling to part with ; so that a man who has himself made his wealth will commonly be penurious, or at least will not part with it except in exchange for what will reflect credit on himself and increase his importance. Even when his conduct is most disinterested and amiable (as in spending for the comfort of those who depend on him), still this indulgence of self, of pride, and worldliness, insinuates itself. Very unlikely, therefore, is it that he should be liberal towards God; for religious offerings are an expenditure without sensible return, and that upon objects for which the very pursuit of wealth has indisposed his mind.

Moreover, if it may be added, there is a considerable tendency in occupations connected with gain to make a man unfair in his dealings; that is, in a subtle way. There are so many conventional deceits and prevarications in the details of the world's business, so much intricacy in the management of accounts, so many perplexed questions about justice and equity, so many plausible subterfuges and fictions of law, so much confusion between the distinct yet approximating outlines of honesty and civil enactment, that it requires a very straightforward mind to keep firm hold of strict conscientiousness, honor, and truth, and to look at matters in which he is engaged as he would have looked on them supposing he now came upon them all at once as a stranger.

And if such be the effect of the pursuit of gain on an individual, doubtless it will be the same on a nation. Only let us consider the fact that we are a money-making people, with our Saviour's declaration before us against wealth, and trust in wealth, and we shall have abundant matter for serious thought.

HENRY EDWARD MANNING (1808-1892)

ROME'S FAMOUS CONVERT

M

ANNING, a graduate of Oxford, began his ecclesiastical career as

a rector in the Episcopal Church of Great Britain, in which he was made Archdeacon of Chichester in 1840. Eleven years later he made a decided sensation by going over to the Catholic Church. In 1865 he was appointed Archbishop of Westminster, and ten years later was raised to the high dignity of Cardinal. He took part in the Ecumenical Council at Rome in 1869-70, and in it maintained the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope. As an orator Manning ranked high among English pulpit speakers, his sermons being marked by purity of diction, strength of thought and directness of style.

ROME THE ETERNAL

[On the two thousand six hundred and fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Rome Manning delivered an oration on the subject of the Eternal City, especially in its aspect as the capital of the Church, whose sentiments seem to solve the problem of his conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. His promotion to the Cardinalate is thought to have been influenced by this sermon. We append an extract showing its character.]

I know of no point of view in which the glory of Rome is more conspicuous than in its civil mission to the races of the world. When the seat of empire was translated from Rome to Constantinople, all the culture and civilization of Italy seemed to be carried away to enrich and adorn the East. It seemed as if God had decreed to reveal to the world what His Church could do without the world, and what the world could not do without the Church. A more melancholy history than that of the Byzantine Empire is nowhere to be read. It is one long narrative of the usurpation and insolent dominion of the world over the Church, which, becoming schismatical and isolated, fell easily under its imperial masters.

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