The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-15 00:00:00

ARCHBISHOP MANNING.

VARIOUS OPINIONS AS TO HIS NOMINATION.
THE SATURDAY REVIEW.----TO Protestants Dr.
Manning's appointment cannot be otherwise than
welcome. He may not have much of the national
character with which he was born left about him
now. But Protestants may at least assume that,
however he may choose to conduct himself towards
them, at any rate he will understand them. He has
passed through every phase of religion that exists in
the Anglican Church, and therefore he knows by
experience something of the temper and prejudices
of mind that attach to each. He will commit no
great blunders through ignorance or misconstruc-
tion. And as our chief desire and interest is to
live at peace with the Roman Catholics, leaving our
rival claims over the allegiance of souls to the calm
arbitrement of time, we can desire no better quali-
fication for a Roman Catholic ruler than the caution
and prudence which are likely to distinguish the
archiepiscopate of Dr. Manning.
THE SPECTATOR.—Dr. Manning had a wide-
spread reputation as a religious writer before he left
the English Church. Quite without the genius and
wide imaginative insight of Dr. Newman, quite
without Dr. Newman's power of surprising each
individual conscience and intellect with the feeling
that its workings had been intuitively seen and
analyzed, the quondam Archdeacon of Chichester
had yet an influence and popularity of his own suit-
able to the thinner and less complex volume of his
religious thought. Dr. Newman, like all men
of large genius, raised far more question-
ings than he could satisfy. Over all the as-
pects of human life his intellectual imagina-
tion ranged at will ; and no man ever had a greater
power of so touching the keys of thought and
feeling as to produce the mood of mind most in
harmony with his own faith. This was not, as Mr.
Kingsley thought it, a kind of Jesuitical craft, but
the natural effect of a wild intellect, itself turned to
harmony with deep religious emotions. Granted a
specific mode of faith, and his far-ranging imagina-
tion would stray into the regions most dissonant
with it, only to track the path winding through the
desert of scepticism by which the wandering under-
standing might yet be brought back to its home.
There are no more delicately-traced pictures of the
actual forms of human perplexity and frailty, of
doubt, difficulty, and sin, of the various attitudes of
the human mind in relation to faith or the want of
faith, in the English language, than Dr. Newman's.
We speak of him and his writings, however, only
for the sake of the contrast with Dr. Manning's.
Dr. Newman stirred human nature too deeply and
too widely to give that peculiar sensation called re-
ligious comfort to ordinary minds. As you may
find at last a rest upon the sea which no sheltered
valley will give,—the rest of abandoning yourself
to the grandeur of a power so mighty and so various
in its form of solemnity, its darkness and lustre, its
calm and storm, that instead of trying to compre-
hend it you acquiesce in its comprehending you, and
feel once more as an infant (if it could be conscious)
would feel cradled in the arms of a universe of
which it knows and can control nothing,—so there
were minds that at length gained from Dr. New-
man's wonderful and varied delineations of the
human character in its relation to faith a sort of
confidence in his power to lead and comprehend
them intellectually which was wholly devoid of any
clear insight into the grounds of the leader's own
trust. But if there were many who were fascinated
by this sort of wide intellectual environment, and
trusted themselves to the currents of a great
thinker's mind as the traveller trusts himself to the
sea, there were more perhaps who felt it perplexing
and alarming, who found the echoes of their own
thoughts too subtle and exciting, the vistas of doubt
too dreary, of faith too mysterious, of feeling too
delicately-shaded to give their minds the security
and tranquillity of a sure anchorage. It was quite
otherwise with Dr. Manning. Refined, definite,
precise, never opening up widely-divergent lines of
thought, keeping to a narrow line, and carrying a
single clue to a clear conclusion, Dr. Manning was
what may be called a comfortable preacher—to the
intellect at least, of his followers. We do not mean
that he soothed the conscience to sleep. On the
contrary, his thin, clear accents were always ad-
dressed to sting it into sharper and more definite
activity. But intellectually he stirred up no deep
waters. To innocent persons who gave themselves
up as religious devotees to a strict attendance on
the Church, to frequent communions, and to reli-
gious charities, his discourses were at once awaken-
ing and re-assuring. They struck a chord well-
accustomed to be struck, which sent a deep vibration
through • the mind, and they engraved deeper and
ever deeper the same monotonous answers. The
function of the human will in relation to faith, the
value of ordinances, the spiritual nourishment of the
Eucharist, these were the themes on which, with a
certain delicate tenuity of touch but a persistency
that made up in constancy and emphasis what it
wanted in breadth, Dr. Manning insisted in all his
discourses. Even to this day, though Dr. Manning
is now a renegade, numbers of pious persons in the
Anglican communion find those thin, delicately-
traced, emphatic sermons, these sermons clear in
their drift, narrow in their scope, positive and even
ecstatic in their assurances, their most comfortable
reading, though they wonder how " so good a man
could leave the Church of his baptism."
THE WEEKLY REGISTER.—JoyfuIIy to-day we
are enabled to announce that the widowhood of
the Metropolitan Cathedral Church and Pro
vince of Westminster has terminated. In ac-
cordance with the certain intimation we gave
several weeks ago, the official announcement has
now arrived that the choice of the lloly See has
fallen upon the Right Reverend Monsignore Man-
ning, D.D., Protonorary Apostolic, Provost of the
Metropolitan Chapter of Westminster, and Superior
of the Rev. Fathers Oblates of St. Charles Bor-
romeo, St. Mary of the Angels, Bayswater. It is
said, but we cannot vouch for the fact, that his
grace is to receive consecration from the hands of
the Holy Father in Person, and that he will shortly
proceed to Rome for that purpose. Thus, then, in
answer to the prayers of the Catholics in England,
Almighty God has in his mercy been pleased to
assuage our affliction for the irreparable loss of our
great and holy Cardinal Archbishop deceased, and
to give us in his place the successor we could most
have desired, whose elevation to the Metropolitan
dignity is the seal and ratification of our hopes for
the salvation of our dear native land.. The conver-
sion to the Faith of Dr. Manning, the Anglican
Archdeacon of Chichester, was the first-fruits of
the restoration of the English hierarchy, and his
subsequent work has so far had upon it the visible
blessing of Heaven, that he has been the means of
bringing into the Church a greater number of souls
than any other missioner now living. His converts
are indeed said to have been mostly from the supe-
rior ranks of society, so that he has earned amongst
some the title of " Apostle of the higher classes."
But if this be so we can testify from personal ob-
servation that the labours of Archbishop Manning
have not been wanting to the poor. In every
work of Catholic charity and benevolence he has
ever been foremost, and those who frequent (as we
do) the Church of St. Mary of the Angels know how
its impressive services and soul-awakening sermons
are thronged by the poor, and with what rapt at-
tention they are enchained. We offer our humble
and heartfelt thanks to the Supreme Authority
which has sent this learned priest and great preacher
of penance and of justice to rule over us in
spiritual things, and we salute him with all dutiful
joy and affection ; and pray God that his archiepis-
copate may be long and happy.
THE TABLET.—The metropolitan see of West-
minster is no longer vacant, and the new archbishop,
appointed by his Holiness Pope Pius IX., is the
Right Rev. Mgr. Henry Edward Manning, D.D.,
Provost of Westminster, domestic prelate of his
Holiness, Protonorary Apostolic and Superior of the
Congregation of the Oblates of St. Charles, in the
diocese of Westminster. The nomination was made
by the Holy Father on the 30th ult., after many

--110°^-
prayers had been said, and many masses offered
up to obtain the Divine assistance in the
,momen-
tous choice, and the news has been known in Eng-
land since the beginning of the week. We are suffi-
ciently familiar with the Catholic press to be aware
that the appointment of a new bishop is generally
considered as affording a Catholic editor an oppor-
tunity of reassuring the Holy See, by a decided ex-
pression of editorial approbation, and of comforting
the flock by the announcement, upon editorial au-
thority, that a better choice could not possibly
be made. But we have never attained this sublime
view of the editorial mission, and have always held
to the old Catholic and Conservative doctrine, that
when a ruler or a superior is appointed by a compe-
tent authority he is to be accepted and revere
within the sphere of his commission as one whose
claims are founded on a right divine. It hap-
pens, indeed, that the new archbishop is known.,
as a holy priest, zealous and devout, endowed
with. more than ordinary power both to con-
vince the reason and to move the will of raw'
And it is right and natural that ProtestantS
as well as Catholics should appreciate and recognise
these qualifications. But for us Catholics who be-
lieve that the prayers of the successor of St. Peter
and of the faithful are powerful to obtain light ane,
inspiration for the government of the Church and
the appointment of its rulers, the highest recom-
mendation to our allegiance that a canonically in-
stituted bishop can bring is, that he is an apesuie
who comes because he has been sent to us by God
And our Protestant readers must not be surprised 1-1
the appointment of a Catholic archbishop Is not
deemed by a Catholic layman a fit occasion for offer-
ing to the new dignitary such complimentary con-
gratulations, and such flattering testimonies, as
newly made Minister or Chancellor properly exPects
and receives from his colleagues at the bar or in
Parliament. Such language would accord ill with the
circumstances or with the spirit in which the net
archbishop undertakes the heavy burden laid upon.
him, and enters on the thorny path which be
called to tread. Truly an arduous task, a diffielll,l'
situation in trying times ! The burthen of the firs"
Archbishop of Westminster was not light ; that of
his successor will be heavier still ; and the most
meet and becoming tribute which we can offer Ls.
prayer that he may be plentifully assisted with
strength and light and grace from on high, and a
hope that he may receive from all his spiritual sub:
jects that loyal obedience and that generous support'
which it is his right to expect and their duty to
render.