Newman the Novelist
We can say that not only was St John Henry Newman the first Doctor of the Church to have visited the Isle of Wight, he is now – or will be on Nov 1 – the first Doctor of the Church to have written a novel!
Newman was quite fond of reading novels. He admired especially those of Anthony Trollope. Towards the end of Trollope’s life, they befriended one another, through exchange of letters, although they never in fact met. After reading Jane Austen’s Emma, he wrote: “Everything Miss A writes is clever, but I desiderate something. There is a want of body to the story. The action is frittered away in over-little things … Emma herself is the most interesting to me of all her heroines. … But Miss A. has no romance, none at all. What vile creatures her parsons are! That other woman, Fairfax, is a dolt – but I like Emma.” It would be interesting to know what Jane Austen might have thought of Newman’s novels!
He wrote two novels, though neither would make it into any ‘best sellers’ list. Nevertheless, they do have a profound body, a depth to them. His first novel, Loss and Gain, is set in the Oxford of his day. It explores the theme of faith. Throughout his life, the theme of faith and reason was a dominant one for him. Likely a reason for this was his concern for his brother Charles who had lost his faith. Perhaps this is also the reason why the hero of the novel is also called Charles. He draws out the fact that faith is more an act of the will than that of the intellect. And thus, a lack of faith is a fault of the heart than of understanding. One may not have a great intelligence but still have a deep faith.
His second novel, Callista, A Tale of the Third Century, describes how a Greek sculptress comes to believe in God and the importance of obeying our conscience. This is how the heroine, Callista, describe that moment:
He says to me, ‘Do this: don’t do that.’ You may tell me that this dictate is a mere law of my nature, as is to joy or to grieve. I cannot understand this. No, it is the echo of a person speaking to me. Nothing shall persuade me that it does not ultimately proceed from a person external to me. It carries with it its proof of its divine origin. My nature feels towards it as towards a person. When I obey it, I feel a satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness—just like that which I feel in pleasing or offending some revered friend.
To abide in Jesus, to love Him, requires us to listen to that Voice within, the true dictates of a well-formed conscience. It requires a continual strengthening or nourishing of our hearts on the Word of God.
In the last of his Oxford University Sermons, Newman wrote:
Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also …
On November 1, St John Henry Newman, theologian, philosopher (though he did not claim to be either), educator, controversialist, satirist with a gentle sense of humour, poet and novelist, will be proclaimed one such Doctor of the Church. Perhaps he may become the first saint in the history of the Church to have an excerpt from one of his novels in the Liturgy!