CARDINAL NEWMAN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1378, 2 March 1912, Page 9

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

AN INTERESTING BOOK. Some particulars of the forthcoming "Life of Cardinal Newman" are now available, says the ' "Westminster Gazette." The work is based on the very largo correspondence of the Cardinal, collected for publication by the lato Father Neville, his library executor. In a Prefatory "Note" the author says:— "Its interest is both historical and psychological. Historically it forms a sequel to the 'Apologia.' That work gave the story of Newman's attempt to counteract the incoming tide of rationalistic 'liberalism' in religious thought by restoring to the Church of England the Catholic beliefs and traditions which it had so largely lost. The present work shows yet more clearly that the religious /liberalism' he so greatly dreaded carried in his eyes as its inevitable sequel that total rejection of Christian faith in which it has, in our own day, so widely issued on the Continent. The pathos of the story consists in the fact that while-New-man came finally to believe that only tlio Catholic Church •in communion with Komo could be strong enough successfully to resist the rising flood of infidelity," nevertheless in all his successive attempts to further this great aim, as himself n member of the Catholic and l!o----man Church, he was for years opposed or misunderstood by those ecclesiastical authorities whoso support he most needed. The ultimate sanction of his views and aims by leo XIII, and the seal set on his writings by the Cardinal's hat, give a happy termination and a dramatic completeness to a story which might else nave proved a tragedy." On the psychological side, it is added, the letters ''reveal a singularly sensitive and complex mind and nature in one whose, spiritual aims were absolutely single and simple." Both on tho historical and on the psychological side, the biographer has aimed at telling the whole story quite frankly and fully.