The San Francisco call., 1906-06-10

! my last directions. I gave them, as he
wished, but I said, I shall not die 1
/ repeated, I shall not die for 1 have
sinned against the Light; have sinned
/ against the Light have never been
able quite TO make out what / meant.
I got to Castro-Giovannf and was laid
! UP there for nearly three weeks. Toward
/ the end of May left for Palermo. TAX
ing three days for the journey. Before
starting from my inn on the morning
OF May 26 or 27 ] sat down on my bed
and began to sob violently. My SER
want who had acted as my nurse, asked
what allied me. l could only answer
him, have work to do in England L
was aching to get home: yet, for want
OF a vessel I was kept at Palermo for
three weeks, l began to visit the
churches and they calmed my inn
patience, though l did not attend any
Of the services. At last 1 got off in
an orange boat bound for Marseilles.
Then it was that l wrote the lines.
Lead, Kindly Light We were be-
Gained a whole week in the Straits of
Bonifacio. l was writing the whole of
my passage"
1t was the period of young Newman's
greatest spiritual adversity Tempest
tossed mentally and amid the loyeliest
and most soothing scenery in Europe,
he contrived to pen his immortal verse
He has written much in metrical form.
Memorials from the Past" as DIR.
William Barry says, belong to the
stage known in spiritual writer's as the
dark night of the soul The sea
cycle, Mari Magno," comprise some
of the eighty-five poems written from
December, 1882. until he left Marseilles.
June 1888, Lead. Kindly Light"
among the rest Barry suggests that it
may be called the march of the tract
arian movement. 1t is pure melody
austere, yet hopeful, strangely not un-
like the stanzas which Carlyle has made
familiar TO the whole English race
the Mason Song of Goethe, in its
sublime sadness and invincible trust
Both are psalms of life. Hebrew or
Northern, chanted in "a clear obscure
where faith moves onward heroically
to the day beyond" 1t is worthy of
mention that at Palermo, while visiting
numerous churches, Newman wrote. 20
that thy creed were sound. thou Church
of Rome!" an examination that saw
strange modulations a dozen years
afterward.
The tractarian movement seems to
US, after a half century and more, like
Old, unhappy. far off things
And battles long ago.
But it stirred Great Britain to its
center in the third decade of the nine
teenth century, and it's wavelike i'm
petus. set in molion by John Keble, who
was. Newman said. the true author of
Froude, "the'bright, the beautiful" John
Henry Newman, Pusey and others, was
felt IN every Christian coast of the
globe. Motley called it that potentous
birth of time, the Tracts for the
Times" 1t meant much for Newman
and therefore means much to-day for
his coreligionists. However, let us
Siance at NeWmanS ancestry. Father
larry, whose study may be considered
within its scope as deinitive, tells us
that John Henry Newman (born in
London, February 81. ls01l was the
son of John Newman and Jemima
Fourdrinier, Dutch and Huguenot
stock.
The father, like the father of Robert
browning, was engaged in the banking
business. was an enthusiastic lover of
music, OF Shakespeare and an admirer
of Benjamin Franklin. The original
name was spelled rNewmann," and as
Barry writes. was understood to be
of Dutch origin, and its real descent
was Hebrew" John Henry Newman's
cast Of features was markedly Jewish |