Chapter IV: Part 4

Charity, as Pope Leo frequently understands it, would indeed effect a wonderful amelioration in the world. But it is that charity "which is always ready to sacrifice itself for others' sake" and the chief characteristic of which is the love of justice. It has been degraded in these later years into the sense of alms-giving, so that the Christian pulpits of every denomination have too often thus been preaching charity while ignoring justice.

Is it any wonder the world rebelled? The victories of the Church were won when she possessed the sublime strength of weakness, and when her martyrs and saints in language only matched by that of the radicals of to-day were proclaiming the essential liberty, fraternity, and equality of all men, and denouncing the iniquities of imperial Rome. But when she took the fatuous step, and placed on her own brow the crown of the Caesars, then she too became conservative, then the words of her popes began to be regulated by policy, then charity became alms-giving, and piety degenerated into ecclesiasticism. Authority was strained until it snapped, and a suffering world revolted from the outrageous assumptions of ecclesiastical power. A return to Christianity is, indeed, needed, but the Church will have quite as much of a journey to go as the world, so far as her methods are concerned.

With regard to the position of the family in the state, Pope Leo is the advocate of freedom as against the interference of public authority in domestic affairs. He admits, however, that the state should interfere in cases of family disturbance "to force each party to give the other what is due," herein differing from the philosophical anarchists. He discerns clearly that the interests of labor and of capital are not antagonistic, but what he does not see is that the interests of labor and capital may both be antagonistic to the interests of monopoly, and that until the latter is destroyed the two former will be continually forced into positions of seeming antagonism. He denounces "rapacious usury," and says that it was "more than once condemned by the Church," conveniently overlooking the fact that the _usuria_, which was condemned, was not only "rapacious" but was all taking of money for the use of money, all interest on loans--a condemnation which, if insisted upon by the Church to-day, would soon empty her sanctuaries. He refers to the "greed of unrestrained competition" but does not grasp the idea that under conditions of justice unrestrained competition would be an advantage, constantly leading men to emulate each other, and becoming a sure guarantee of progress. It is the competition of those who have nothing but their labor, or their brains, or their capital to sell with the owners of vast monopolies who exact from production an ever-increasing toll that needs to be restrained, and this not by abolishing "the custom of working by contract," or by state interference and legislative tinkering, to which the Pope leans in spite of his protests against socialism, but by the abolition of the monopolies or their absorption into the functions of the state.

The Pope is almost a Spencerian in his bias towards individualism, but he forgets that individualism can never be maintained in practice except through the assumption by the state of those monopolies which, if left in private hands, would benefit the few at the expense of the many. True individualism requires equality of opportunity. The instant the idea of monopoly enters, equality of opportunity becomes impossible, and individualism is destroyed. It is through want of seeing this fact that the Pope, in common with most political economists, goes floundering round in a sea of contradictions, now proclaiming principles almost like those of the anarchists, and again favoring extreme socialism, while all the time imagining himself an individualist. Their theories remind one of the labored attempts to explain the solar system by the old Ptolemaic method of epicycles and deferents, when the one simple law of centripetal and centrifugal force was enough to account for all the majestic movements of the universe. What other outcome can there be of this want of a regulator in economics--like a governor in machinery--than an endeavor to patch up the machine of humanity, adding a little here, taking off a little there, doing the best that occasion seems to allow, and all the while impressed with a profound and sad conviction that the machine is in a bad way, and certain to smash up, whatever is done? Consequently we have just such weak documents as this encyclical letter, emanating now from an eminent agnostic scientist, now from a millionnaire "philanthropist" and now from the Pope--all conflicting with each other, the first denying that man has any more rights than a rattlesnake, the second lauding a "triumphant democracy" which has not the courage to attack the monopolies through which he has acquired his millions, the third writing a long paper full of pious platitudes and injunctions to the rich to give to the poor, and to the poor to be contented, and then everything will be lovely.

The main portion of the encyclical letter is directed against "socialism," and the Pope's arguments are effective as against what he evidently means by socialism. They are sadly weakened, however, by his want of a logical conception of what constitutes private property. He shows in more than one place that he believes private property to be only the result of human labor, but when he comes to apply his ideas, he admits of its extension to land and other monopolies, without realizing that because such monopolies are not the creation of human labor they cannot therefore be rightfully considered as private property. He is like the man who would divide the human race into men, women, and poets, or in enumerating the New England States would include Boston after having mentioned Massachusetts. His arguments are still further weakened by his evident leaning towards compulsory Sunday rest, and an eight-hour day, trades-unionism, and regulation by church societies, all of which savor of the very socialism which he is combatting.

He argues well, however, against the theory which proposes that the state should administer individual property as common property for the benefit of all. This would be more correctly termed state socialism or, in its extreme form, communism. But the Pope fails to recognize that there is such a thing as public property, created by the mere presence of large communities, and which those communities have a perfect right to administer. While endeavoring to uphold the rights of private property, he impugns what Father William Barry called in a recent review article, "The Rights of Public Property." His Holiness' ignorance on this point can be best shown by a quotation:--

"If one man hires out to another his strength or his industry, he does this for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for food and living; he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and real right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of that remuneration as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings, for greater security, in land, the land in such a case is only his wages in another form; and, consequently, a workingman's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his own disposal as the wages he receives for his labor."

It would be interesting to know what the Pope would say if the workingman invested his savings in a slave, and whether the Holy Father would consider the slave only the workingman's "wages in another form." Pope Leo certainly never could have intended to state that the mere purchase of a thing was sufficient to convey ownership. Yet that is just what the last sentence quoted amounts to. The justice of the ownership depends entirely upon whether the thing purchased be rightfully capable of ownership, in the first place, and whether it be obtained from the rightful owner, in the second.

"As effects follow their cause," Pope Leo says a little further on, "so it is just and right that the results of labor should belong to him who has labored."

There he strikes the key-note of the right of property upheld alike by the best churchmen and economists in all ages. That is the natural law of labor. It is opposed to the theory of State socialism, and to what many in this country understand by nationalism. If the Pope had adhered to that proposition, he would have been saved from his illogical position. It is undoubtedly true that a man is entitled to that of which he is the producing cause. And in some branches of labor which are more intimately associated with the earth than others, such as agricultural operations, it is true that the results of labor, and the improvements made upon land, become physically inseparable from the land itself, so that he who would own what his labor has produced must also have security of tenure, and exclusive possession of "that portion of nature's field which he cultivates."

It is for want of distinguishing carefully between possession and ownership that the Pope falls into his ludicrous economic blunders. This part of his encyclical is absolutely self-contradictory. He is arguing for the securing to the laborer of the fruits of his labor. The workman on land must have ownership of those things he has produced, and hence must have exclusive possession of that part of the earth which he tills. He must have such disposal of it as will enable him by the exertion of his labor to secure a proportionate reward. But this is not ownership. Ownership carries with it something more than this. Once "divide the earth among private owners," as the Pope puts it, and you have this condition of things: that those who do not happen to be among the private owners must compete for the privilege of living on the earth, they must pay a part of the results of their labor for permission to work, and on the other hand the fortunate owners receive something for which they themselves render no labor. It is strange that the Pope did not see the absurdities of his own propositions. He says:--

"Moreover the earth, though divided among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all; for there is no one who does not live on what the land brings forth. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; so that it may be truly said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth."

Pope Leo is mistaken. All human subsistence is not derived either from labor on one's own land or from some laborious industry. Some human subsistence, as the Pope says, is derived from labor on one's own land. Some human subsistence is derived from laborious industry on the land of others. And--what the Pope seems to ignore--some human subsistence is derived by owning land and letting others work upon it, taking from them part of the fruits of their labor in exchange for the mere permission to labor. By no construction can such ownership be classed as a "laborious industry." Yet such owners generally enjoy the very best of "human subsistence."

Nevertheless, a few sentences further on, the Pope naively asks: "Is it just that the fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by another?" Had the Pope pondered over that question more profoundly, he might have come to far different conclusions from those which he seems to have reached.

It is unfortunate that the Pope through a desire to uphold the just rights of property should have been led to maintain the privileges of monopoly, and still more unfortunate that so many Catholics will consider his blunder an article of faith and feel it binding upon their consciences to oppose all further efforts to impair private ownership of land by taxation--the only way in which individual possession can be reconciled with the common right of all mankind to the earth.

In one place the Pope seems to doubt the extent to which the principle of private ownership is applicable to land, for he says: "The limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry _and the laws of individual peoples_." But if the laws should tax the monopoly value out of land, then the holder of land would not be able to get any profit out of it except by his own labor. It would be no longer such ownership as exists to-day which allows private owners to confiscate the results of other's labor. The Pope here abandons the unqualified ownership which he elsewhere maintains. It might well be asked if he is prepared to excommunicate the legislators and assessors who, in nearly every civilized country to-day, do tax land, and thus to a certain extent impair ownership. And if the same principle were extended so that the tax would equal the entire rental value there would be no chance for the land monopolist to exploit the earnings of labor. Man's means should not be "drained and exhausted by excessive taxation," as the Pope seems to fear, showing that he has a vague idea of the method by which it is proposed to destroy ownership. But as the rental value to-day is already paid by labor, the proposed plan could not drain or exhaust labor any more than at present, while such a tax falling upon lands held for speculation would cause their abandonment, and thus open new fields for labor. Workingmen would then be really "encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land," and that prosperity which the Pope hopes for would result. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that taxing land, unlike a tax upon any product of labor, makes it cheaper and easier to obtain for possession and use.

More than all does he forget that what labor needs is not the protecting arm of Church or State, but equal opportunity and the fullest possible freedom of access to Nature's bounties. He is untrue to himself and talks like the veriest socialist when he says: "Among the purposes of a society should be to try to arrange for a "continuous supply of work at all times and seasons." Bountiful nature in the great storehouse of the earth has provided a "continuous supply of work" for the whole human race for all future ages. Make monopoly, by taxation, loosen her grip upon the earth, and labor would have abundant opportunity for all time to come without the necessity for paternal, socialistic tinkering on the part of either State or Church.

THE AUSTRIAN POSTAL BANKING SYSTEM.

BY SYLVESTER BAXTER.

There is a possibility that the plan for the establishment of postal savings banks, so ably advocated by the postmaster-general, may result in a radical change in our entire banking system. The demand for postal savings-banks is so popular that it is not likely that there will be much further delay on the part of Congress in realizing the project. Now it happens that among the new political issues that have arisen, the question of the currency has assumed a most prominent place. There can be no doubt of the intensity of the feeling that has developed against the national banks, which have supplied a large proportion of the circulating medium since the war, and the demand for a currency issued directly by the government, without the intervention of the banks, is growing both in volume and in force.

The sense of the inadequacy of the national banks to the financial necessities of the country is by no means confined to those who, by theory or experience, have been made hostile to them, and regard them as detrimental to our institutions, and as dangerous instruments for the oppression of the common people. It extends to those who recognize that the national banks have been of invaluable service to the country, and are a vast improvement over the banking system that preceded them. Nevertheless they feel that grave defects are showing themselves, and that for the security of the community something better is needed. There is not the confidence on the part of the business community that there should be, and events like the recent occurrences in connection with the Keystone National Bank, in Philadelphia, are not likely to enhance that confidence. One of the most frequent of surmises is as to how many similar cases there may be, and a very commonly heard query is that as to the state of affairs that a general financial panic might reveal, with the banks loaded with collateral upon which it would be hardly possible to realize at such a time.

Then there is the moral aspect of the case, so well expressed in an essay[22] by one of the soundest philosophical and political thinkers whom America has known, the late David Atwood Wasson. Said he: "At present the government permits itself to become indirectly,--or, if we speak of the State governments, worse, sometimes, than indirectly,--confederate with those who amass fortunes by making credit precarious, and forcing the hazards of the gaming-table into all the legitimate operations of business. The comptroller of the currency has publicly said that about one half, on an average, of the means of the national banks, in one chief city--institutions, observe, created by government, and charged, in effect, with one of its most distinctive functions, that of supplying a medium of exchange--are loaned to speculators; that is, to men who subsist largely on artificial disturbances of credit, upon corners in the stock market and money market, upon alternations of inflation and stringency, the ups and downs of a disordered constitution. Without going into the matter closely, which is aside from my present purpose, I leave before the reader the main facts of the case: that the system of credit centred in the modern banking system plays a vast and increasing role in our civilization; that while of a utility not easily overstated, it affords peculiar opportunities of fraud and exaction; that aside from these, its unregulated condition is dangerous, resulting in alternations of inflation and depression, like the alternate extremes of fever and ague; that vast and growing combinations exist for producing artificially this disorder; that those institutions which credit has created under the express sanction of government, at once to supply its necessities and hold it healthily in check, are managed only as private property; that much oppression, alike of labor and capital, and also, I fear, much demoralization--which is an interior and worse oppression--are suffered in consequence; and that hitherto our statesmanship wants the studious leisure, and our method of government the stability and precision of operation, which these exigencies demand."

[22] "The New Type of Oppression," in "Essays: Religious, Social,
Political." Lee & Shepard, Boston.

A truer statement of the case never was made, and these words should be well pondered by patriotic citizens.

Probably the reason why the feeling against our present banking system has not yet taken shape in legislation is because no sound constructive measures have been proposed. Faulty as the system is, what is there better that can take its place? is asked, and to this no satisfactory reply has been given. Even though the notes of the national banks should be retired, and currency issued directly from the national treasury should take their place, we must have banking facilities of some kind.

Absolute security of bank deposits is what is desired, and any measure that would secure that end could hardly fail to be joyfully welcomed by the business community, with the exception of the small minority either selfishly interested in present banking corporations, or whose prosperity is derived from operations based upon a state of insecurity. Powerful as these interests are, there is no reason why they should be permitted to stand in the way of the realization of a better condition of affairs, should that prove attainable.

The leading merit of the national banking system comes from the absolute security of its circulating medium, proceeding from the governmental guarantee. Meanwhile the interests of the depositors, in supplying whose convenience the bank derives its business, remain inadequately guarded. Is not some system possible whereby in place of this partial guarantee we may have a complete guarantee, covering both circulating medium and deposit?

Fortunately, with the experiences of other countries furnishing examples so available as they do nowadays, we are not left entirely to our own resources in devising solutions for problems that confront us. We have but to look to Austria for a most successful example of a truly national banking system, that completely meets the demand. When Austria established its postal savings bank, in 1882, a regular check and clearing system was made a feature thereof. This, offering substantially the same convenience as our ordinary private or national banks in this country, together with the additional advantages of absolute security of deposits, and checks good in all parts of the country, has become enormously popular with the mercantile public, so that the regular banking department has quite overshadowed the savings department, important as the latter is.

Every post-office in Austria, therefore, has the function of both a savings-bank and a bank of deposit. A permanent deposit of one hundred florins, or forty dollars, is sufficient to make a person a member of the check and clearing department. No limit is placed on the amount that may be deposited, but a single check cannot be drawn for more than ten thousand florins [four thousand dollars]. Interest is paid on deposits at a rate not exceeding two per cent., while the interest on savings may not exceed three per cent. A charge of two kreutzers [eight mills] is made for each entry, together with a commission of one fourth per mille. Another function of the postal bank is the buying and selling of government securities, for which a commission of two per mille is charged, with a commission of one per mille for the cashing of coupons.

It is interesting to learn that two years before the adoption of this system by Austria, a very similar plan was advocated by an able American student of finance, the Hon. L. V. Moulton, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In his book, "The Science of Money and American Finances," published in 1880, he said: "The government ought to provide a deposit system of absolute safety to depositors for all who choose to avail themselves of it. A system of postal savings-banks somewhat similar to the British should be adopted. The government receiving a deposit, and allowing the depositor to check out at the same or any other office, paying no interest and doing no loaning, receiving the use of the funds while on deposit, as compensation for storage and transportation of funds. No actual transportation would, of course, be required, except to settle balances between offices. This would be the safest possible deposit and most convenient exchange system, and is quite as proper for the government to undertake as the postal or money-order business. As it is, the government coins money and transfers money, but will not take it on storage, which is absurd, and forces the people to deposit with loan and discount concerns, liable to explode at any time and leave them penniless."

Although interest on deposits is paid in Austria, there appears to be no good reason why it should be paid were the system adopted in this country. There is no need of it as an inducement, for the absolute security and the greatly increased convenience of the system would be sufficient for that. The present national banks pay no interest on deposits, the facilities afforded being adequate to secure all the deposits needed.

It appears desirable, however, to pay interest on deposits of savings. In the bill prepared by Postmaster-General Wanamaker, it is provided that this shall not exceed 2.4 per cent. This low rate is fixed upon in order that the interest may be considerably less than the average paid by private bankers to depositors. The great obstacle to the establishment of postal savings-banks in this country has been the lack of available means for the investment of the funds, the rapidly decreasing national debt making government bonds out of the question for the purpose. Mr. Wanamaker proposes to overcome this obstacle by loaning the funds to national banks within the State where the deposits are made. The objection to this course lies in the objection to the national banks themselves, as heretofore stated. To give them disposition over such a vast amount--it is estimated that the deposits in the postal savings-banks would soon reach $500,000,000--would be to increase vastly their power for harm.

Mr. Wanamaker's alternative proposition, to utilize the funds in the direction of greater and much needed expenditures for public buildings, particularly post-office structures, is, on the other hand, a sound one. They might also be employed to advantage in providing the means for the much needed extension of the postal service now so widely demanded, as in the adoption of a parcels post equal to that of Germany, England, and other countries, and in nationalizing the telegraph and telephone and incorporating them into the postal department.

The deposits in the proposed check and clearing department would place an enormous amount at the disposal of the government, in addition to the postal savings-bank funds. Paying no interest on these deposits, the government might utilize the money in its own expenditures, and thus to a considerable extent reduce taxation. Or, just as the ordinary banks loan their deposits, the government might loan this money for mortgages on land and on staple products, somewhat as demanded in recent agitations.

A person so eminent in the discussion of these questions as Mr. Edward Atkinson has recently stated, in substance, that, increase the volume of the currency as we may, still it would not be adequate to certain exigencies of regular recurrence, like the annual moving of the crops. He thus practically concedes the justice of the farmers' demand, as formulated in their "sub-treasury project," but he would supply this want through private banking institutions organized expressly to loan money for this purpose.

Such institutions would, however, naturally take advantage of the necessities of the farmers by obtaining the highest rates of interest possible, while the underlying purpose of the other plan would be that of making the loans at the lowest rates consistent with the expense of the transactions. Is it not better, it may be asked, and more in accordance with the principles of true self-help, for the people thus to supply their own financial needs in the cheapest way possible through the instrumentality of their governmental organization, rather than depend upon "private enterprise" organized to take advantage of their necessities for its own profit?

At first glance there might seem to be an objection in the fact that, while the government was lending money at two per cent. it was paying on savings deposits interest possibly as high as 2.4 per cent., which would appear to be an unbusiness-like and unprofitable proceeding. But on striking an average between the sums on which it was paying that rate and the large amounts on which it was paying no interest, but receiving two per cent., it would probably be found that it was getting the whole at a rate considerable less than two per cent.

A more valid objection to the lending of money by the government at a fixed low rate of interest, instead of at whatever rates it might obtain according to the state of the money market, as private banking institutions would do, might be found in the liability that the parties to whom it was loaned might reloan it at higher rates, and thus use the good offices of the government as a means of personal profit. The measure could hardly fail, however, to lower very greatly the general rate of interest in the business world. It would be important, of course, to keep this large sum in circulation, and thus avoid the evils arising from hoarding. Its utilization for the regular expenditures of the government would be likely to do this, and the consequent reduction of taxation would be a great public advantage. Although the idea of loaning money at fixed low rates upon certain securities, such as land and staple products, might prove impracticable from various considerations--such, for instance, as the injustice of discriminating in favor of any particular classes in the community, as such a scheme would appear to do--there should be no difficulty in devising some practicable system for using to the advantage of the entire public the extensive funds which thus would be placed at the disposal of the government.

The postal banks would doubtless very largely take the place of present institutions of deposit. To what extent this would be the case, it is, of course, impossible to say. For all ordinary purposes, and for the needs of the average business man, their advantages could not fail to be great. Their effect would probably be to withdraw from the market large sums now available for speculative purposes, and divert them to legitimate uses. The speculative tendency would, therefore, be likely to be discouraged by so much. Necessary limitations might make the postal banks unavailable for those whose financial transactions are conducted on a great scale, and their wants would continue to be met by private institutions, which would offer special inducements to large depositors, just as the trust companies now offer special inducements over the present national banks by paying interest on deposits.

ANOTHER VIEW OF NEWMAN.

BY WM. M. SALTER.

I suppose I should never have felt toward Cardinal John Henry Newman as I do, had I not been once in a certain state of mind. It was my lot, as a divinity student, to feel under the necessity of examining into the grounds of my religious belief. I could not accept what my teachers gave me, simply because it was taught, much as I revered some of them. I had to test, examine, and conclude for myself. I evidently felt the difficulties of belief, as most of my fellow-students did not. At New Haven the main outlines of evangelical orthodoxy, at Cambridge the fundamental ideas of theism, were accepted, as a rule, without serious question. I envied my fellows their assurance; I, too, craved assurance, but I had to get it in my own way, and I was plunged into investigations, and beset by doubts that did not seem to occupy or perplex them. The question was, where could I find a point to start from; not what was the whole truth, but what was the truth I could be immediately sure of,--what was light that I could not question (or, at least, reasonably question)? For, once in possession of that, other things might naturally and logically follow. It seemed to me, that if there was any sure ground for the Christian believer, it was to be found in Christ himself; that if ever a voice from another world had spoken to this, it had been through him. The fundamental problem was, Was his consciousness to be trusted? It was after three years of examination into the origin and trustworthiness of the gospel records, of effort to form a faithful picture of Jesus' mind, of weighing of probabilities as to whether he could have been mistaken, and a decision that he could not have been, and that he was, under God, my appointed Lord, and Saviour, and Judge, as he was that of all men,--it was at this time that I fell in with the writings of Newman, and that he began to exercise a charm over me, which, amid all my subsequent changes of thought, I have never been willing to disown.

I felt in the first place that he had a profound sense of the difficulties of faith. There was no evidence that certain questions had ever been open questions to him (such as the being of God and the reality of a revelation), but he seemed to be as keenly aware of the difficulties attending them as if they had been. He believed and yet he knew the other side. Few are the apologists who have dared to say what he has said; few are the unbelievers who could state their case more strongly than he has stated it for them. It was this width of imagination that, for one thing, separated him from the ordinary theologian. One of his precepts to a zealous follower was, "Be sure you grasp fully any view which you seek to combat." Let me illustrate. Newman admitted in so many words that it was a great question whether atheism was not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world as the doctrine of a creative and governing power. He allowed Hume's argument against miracles to be valid from a purely scientific aspect of things, and doubted the conclusiveness of the design argument (though not the argument from order) for the being of God. He knew to the full how hard it was to hold one's faith in God in face of all that seems amiss and awry, purposeless, blind, and cruel in the world. He held this faith, he believed there were reasons for it (chiefly in man's conscience), it was the starting-point of his religious system, and yet when he looked out of himself into the world of men, the lie seemed to be given to it and the effect was as confusing, he said, as if it were denied that he was in existence himself. "If I looked into a mirror [these are his words] and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when I look into this living, busy world and see no reflex of its Creator.... Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an Atheist, or a Pantheist, or a Polytheist.... To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity; the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'Having no hope and without God in this world'; all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution." To have one's doubts, one's misgivings, one's own blank confusion portrayed with such appreciation and in such vivid detail by another--how could it fail to powerfully affect me? Surely, I said to myself, whether this man's faith was true or not, he did not hold it because the tremendous obstacles in the way of it had not been brought home to him. Similarly he appreciated the difficulties in connection with revelation itself, as when he said that God "has given us doctrines which are but obscurely gathered from scripture, and a scripture which is but obscurely gathered from history," as when he admitted the real obstacles in the way of the Jews admitting that Jesus was their Messiah.

But I will not linger over this point, and pass on to say that Newman impressed me as one of those few men, in any age, who have an intellectual life of their own. His was no hereditary belief; he had faced the problems of religion for himself. What looks like faith in many cases, he himself said, was a mere hereditary persuasion, not a personal principle, a habit learned in the nursery, which is scattered and disappears like a mist before the light of reason. His own admiration went out evidently to the "bold unworldliness and vigorous independence of mind" shown by one of his early teachers, Thos. Scott; to the type of mind illustrated by an Oxford associate, who had an intellect, he says, "as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold." Whately, he records, had taught him to see with his own eyes and to walk with his own feet; he thought of dedicating his first book to him, in words to the effect that he had not only taught him to think, but to think for himself. It was a first hand dealing with almost all the problems he took up, that I had the sense of in reading Newman's pages, however far ahead he was of me in the line of (what seemed then) religious advance.

And because he had thought, he had moved, he had had a history. He started with certain truths (as he supposed them to be), but instead of accepting them mechanically, he thought them out; he studied to see what they implied, what other truths were consistent with them and what were not; in other words, he gradually worked his way out to something like a system, and therein consisted his history. The ordinary idea of Newman (leaving the past tense for the moment) seems to be that he sacrificed his intellect, that out of weariness he threw himself into the Catholic fold. Such may be a true account of some conversions, but it is a pitiable travesty of the facts in the case of Newman. Newman went into the Church because it seemed rational to him to do so; and it is still the great question, whether once assuming certain fundamental ideas held by Protestant and Catholic alike, any other course is rational. The "trouble" with Newman, as with his brother Francis (in some ways also a remarkable man), was simply that, as the London _Truth_ banteringly said, neither was able to swallow the Athanasian creed in a comfortable and prosaic way, as good Britons should; or, as the _Saturday Review_ in all seriousness urged, that he did not hold as his supreme principle pride in the Church of England as such, determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with others "in resisting the foreigner, whether he came from Rome or from Geneva, from Tuebingen or from Saint Sulpice"; in other words, that he opened the windows of his mind, instead of keeping them shut; that he set out on living a life of reason instead of one of prejudice; that he determined to seek out and follow the truth on whatever shores that quest should land him.

"Most men in this country," Newman once wrote, "like opinions to be brought to them, rather than to be at the pains to go out and seek for them." But Newman himself was cast in another mould; rationality, consistency, were an imperative craving with him; and feeling that the popular religious creed lacked these things, he went in search of them and started, as it were, on a journey. A memorandum, written down at the age of twenty-eight, speaks of himself as "now in my room in Orell College, slowly advancing, etc., and led on by God's hand blindly, not knowing whither He is taking me." His touching verses, beginning "Lead, kindly Light," betray the same feeling. Gloom did encircle him, but in the midst of it there was a light, which he strove and craved to follow. Though mystical, in a certain sense, by temperament, he resolved, he tells us, to be guided, not by his imagination, but by his reason. He had once a strange emotional experience, but when it was over he wished that it should not unduly influence him. "I had to determine its logical value," he says, "and its bearing on my duty." "What are we doing all through life, both as a necessity and as a duty," he wrote many years afterwards, "but unlearning the world's poetry and attaining to its prose? This is our education as boys and as men, in the action of life and in the closet or library; in our affections, in our aims, in our hopes, and in our memories. And in like manner it is the education of our intellect." This is little more than saying that the supreme rule of life is reason, that it is our life-task to bring all the varied motions of our minds into harmony with this ideal. The fact is that he became ultimately persuaded that the Catholic creed was that rational and consistent creed of which he was in search--rational and consistent that is, in the sense of being in harmony with, and an outgrowth of, those fundamental ideas of a God and of a revelation with which he started; and in addressing others after he became a Catholic, he said, "Be convinced in your reason that the Catholic Church is a teacher sent to you from God, and it is enough. I do not wish you to join her till you are."

Yet while he was in search of the truth, while he was on the journey, he excited no little suspicion and distrust. The very thing that lends him charm to those who love to see intellectual movement and development allowed apostles of prejudice and good, but narrow-minded, men to think of him as insidious, leading his disciples on to conclusions to which he designed to bring them, while his purpose was veiled. But, says Froude, who tells us this, and was himself at Oxford in those early days, he was on the contrary "the most transparent of men. He told us what he believed to be true. He did not know where it would carry him. No one who has ever risen to any great height in the world refuses to move till he knows whither he is going." Such are the words of one who, though he felt the spell of Newman, soon struck on a different intellectual path. Matthew Arnold, too, experienced the spell. "Who could resist," he says in a lecture on Emerson, "the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music--subtile, sweet, mournful." To Arnold, he was a man "never to be named by a son of Oxford without sympathy;" and this, though Arnold, too, regarded his solution for the doubts and difficulties which beset men's minds to-day as impossible. Once Charles Kingsley brought against him a charge of intellectual dishonesty and falsity; but, as Mr. Conway remarks, Kingsley's sword broke in his hands and on all sides the demolition which he received in Newman's reply (the _Apologia pro Vita Sua_) has been regarded as complete. Even the _Saturday Review_ says, "His conversion was transparently honest; no one, save the most contemptible of party scribes, can ever hint a doubt of that." "He deliberately shut his eyes," an "intellectual suicide," "his sympathies and sensibilities were always his ultimate test of right thought and action." Such are the comments of a recent reviewer; but on the morning of the day in which Newman was received into the Catholic Church, he wrote to a friend, "May I have only one tenth part as much faith as _I have intellectual conviction_ where the truth lies! I do not suppose any one can have had such combined reasons pouring in upon him that he is doing right."

But how can Newman have had _reasons_ for his course? we may incredulously ask. And here I revert to my particular state of mind years ago. The question for me was, holding as I did that in Jesus, God had spoken to the world, and that under God he was the Lord, and Saviour, and Judge of men, could I remain standing in such a position? It was a starting-point, but did it not lead somewhere? Holding so much, despite the difficulties, was it not possible that consistently therewith, I must hold more, despite further difficulties? Looking about me among Unitarians, with whom I was then associated, I felt that even this faith had scant acceptance among them. For example, taking a country church for a year, I found that not in a decade or more had there been any additions to the church membership, or even efforts in that direction; the church was, practically, simply an assemblage of pew-holders. My own efforts to induce persons to confess Jesus as their Lord, to take his name, to become his avowed follower before the world (i. e. to join his church), were something novel; yet a church, an assembly of followers, was essential to my idea of Christianity,--Jesus having said, "Whoever will confess me before men, him will I confess before my Father who is in heaven," and a king without a kingdom (or right to a kingdom) being in itself absurd. I could not help the foreboding that Unitarianism was not a finality or more than a camp for a night; nay, the question was whether Unitarianism was not doing more to dissipate Christianity, than to build it up in any historical sense of the term.

Moreover, Protestant orthodoxy did not have any firm hold on some fundamental parts and evident implications of the faith I already held, and was struggling to keep. The idea of the Church itself was weak in most Protestant mind; they "spiritualized" it, as they said; but when Jesus spoke of confessing him _before men_, he evidently laid the foundations of a visible Church. Again, Jesus felt that he spoke with Divine authority, and as he was commissioned, so he commissioned others to stand for him before the world, and to speak in his name. He left them to be his witnesses, to continue his message and his work after he should be gone. He had the power to forgive sins, for example, and he conveyed it to others, solemnly saying that whatever was bound or loosed on earth, should be bound or loosed in heaven. Was it exactly natural, I asked myself, that divine light and guidance and forgiveness should be thus present, as it were, on earth for a few years, and then become entirely a matter of history and antiquarian research? If there was reason for Jesus' commissioning the apostles, was there not equal reason for the apostles commissioning others who should take their places? Protestants said the revelation was in a book; but Jesus never spoke of a book. If something else was authoritative in the apostolic days, what absurdity was there in supposing that something else might be authoritative in later days? And yet, no Protestant church or synod or council ever claimed to be such a living witness of God on the earth. The most zealous Protestants were careful to say that they gave only their human, fallible interpretations of the distant revelation; that it was even blasphemous for a man to claim to forgive sins; that the Bible, and the Bible only, was their religion. And yet, the Bible, it was severally claimed, gave the basis to the Presbyterian creed, to the Methodist creed, to, one might say, a hundred creeds, even including the slender one of Unitarians. How certain words of Newman came home to me in the midst of such reflections! "There is an overpowering antecedent improbability in Almighty God's announcing that He has revealed something, and then revealing nothing; there is no antecedent improbability in His revealing it elsewhere than in an inspired volume." I do not mean to say that I was converted by Newman; but I was open to light on that side. I did not shut my mind, as most Protestants seemed to, and I dimly felt, I had a sort of foreboding that, if what I already held was true, reason might be on his side. And it was reason--the demand for a set of views that should be harmonious and consistent--that made me dissatisfied; and so I could give credit to the idea that Newman in his changes, and in his final act, was influenced by reason.

To Newman, the main difficulty of all lay in the being of God. If there was a God, it seemed rational to him that there should be a revelation, taking into account the actual condition of men. If there was a revelation, the Catholic Church presented more signs of being its bearer and custodian than any other body or institution of men. I think if we are disposed to question the rationality of his course, we shall find, if we examine the matter carefully, that it is because we question his postulates, not his reasoning or results. Granted that there is a God, as men ordinarily understand that term, and I think that a revelation is antecedently probable; granted that a revelation has been made, as Protestants (save Unitarians) are agreed, and I think it but reasonable to suppose that some such body as the Catholic Church claims to be should be its bearer and unerring interpreter to men. We are mistaken if we think that Newman devised any short-cut to mental peace, or used any other instrument or method for arriving at his results than we ordinarily employ in sound reasonings of every day. He claimed no intuitions, no vision of theological truth, and he was less arbitrary and fanciful in defending Catholic dogma than I have known "philosophers" to be in defending the being of God and the immortality of the soul. He tells us in his _Apologia_ that he believed in a God on a ground of probability, that he believed in Christianity on a probability, and that he believed in Catholicism on a probability, and that these three grounds of probability, distinct from each other in subject-matter, were still, all of them, one and the same in nature of proof, as being probabilities--probabilities of a special kind, a cumulative, a transcendent probability, but still probability.

But did he not by some magical metamorphosis turn these probabilities into a certainty? No; he simply claimed that they were sufficient to produce certitude, which is a different matter. Certitude, he held, was a quality or habit of mind; certainty, a quality of propositions; and probabilities that did not reach to logical certainty might suffice for a mental certitude. We are mentally sure almost every day of many things which could not be demonstratively proved; we are practically as sure of them as if they could be proved; we are ready to act on the basis of them, and that is the test of practical certitude. The word of a friend on a matter of which we are ignorant is an example; we may be as sure of what he tells us as if we had seen it ourselves; yet he may be mistaken; strictly speaking, his word is only probable evidence. But did not Newman substitute faith for reason? Yes, in a sense; but not in a sense in which it is of itself irrational to do so. How much could the reason of any of us tell us of Central Africa? We know of it by testimony, do we not? not by reason. From our own notions alone we could not tell whether it was a desert or a forest; whether it was inhabited or uninhabited; whether full-grown human beings or dwarfs lived there; but a Livingstone, a Du Chaillu, a Stanley, tell us, and we accept their word. The fact is, that trust in testimony is what we daily practise. We learn of what is going on in a neighboring town, of much in our own town, of much in our own house (unless we are there all the time, and in every part of it at the same time) not by reasoning about it, any more than by sight, but by faith in what others tell us. "Why should we be unwilling to go by faith?" asks Newman. "We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. By faith only we know our positions in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality; why should religion be an exception? Why should we be willing to use for heavenly objects what we daily use for earthly?" There is really nothing mystical about faith; it is not peculiarly a religious principle, nor is it the ideal way of getting knowledge. As Newman says, "The word of another is in itself a faint evidence compared with that of sight or reason. It is influential only when we cannot do without it."