FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.

 [BY S. G. MEE] 

"OH, Dogma ! Dogma! how dost thou trample underfoot, love, truth, conscience, justice ! Was ever a Moloch worse than thou ?" Such was the pathetic exclamation of one who, having seceded from their orthodoxy, found himself ostracised and denounced by those nearest and dearest to him—especially by his elder and once much-prized brother, Now I am alone in the world," he continues, "I can trust no one. The new acquaintances who barely tolerate me, and old friends, whom reports have not reached —if such there be—may turn against me with animosity tomorrow, as those have done from whom I could least have imagined it."  These were the words wrung from the brave but bleeding heart of the now long time ardent and illustrious apostle of Free thought, Francis William Newman, when suffering from the loss of the old fraternal affection of that notorious convert to, and champion of Ultramontanism (that ne plus ultra of fettered thought)—his once beloved and benignant brother, the English Cardinal Newman.

But, albeit, as poor Byron, when viewing the timidity and pusillanimity of this so creed shackled world says:—

" Men grow pale

Lest their own Judgments should become too

 bright.

And their Freethought be crime, and earth

 have too much light,"

so did not valiant Nonconformist Newman. Taking to heart Tennyson's exultant exclamation—"Truth against the world "—Our hero, in his earliest life, stood, and still stands forth as the pioneer and hastener onwards of a more intellectual, united, and compassionate era. For all this, as one of his ardent admirers. Mr. Charles Bright, tells, "he has been hugely misrepresented, abused, vilified by Christian antagonists." But (as Mr. Bright trenchantly adds) " to be thus abused, is but to say, in other words, that he is a faithful reformer and an outspoken worshipper of his highest ideal of 'Truth, Wisdom, and Love,"

For many years the works of Francis Wm. Newman have, to the present writer, been as a light shining in a great darkness. But not only the writings, but the life—the beautiful and unswerving " fidelity to conscience "—of this King of Thought inspires me with a love and veneration for him amounting to a positive passion. I view him as one who—perhaps more than any man living —tells of " what the world will he, when the years have died away "—when creeds shall be supplanted by deeds ; when our commerce shall be diverted of its present ubiquitous deadly and destructive banes; when, in a word, to deal in and manufacture those "brewed enchantments " (as Milton has it) which so degrade and deteriviate our race, will, everywhere, as in progressive America, be deemed the "gigantic crime of crimes." Professor Newman, as I will shortly show, endorses to the utmost the dictum of the late Richard Cobden—" Every day's experience goes to confirm me in my opinion that the Temperance Cause lies at the foundation of all social and political reform."

Many years ago I made copious extracts from the priceless " Phases of Faith " of Professor Newman ; and I now with delight transcribe for the MINER a few of these :—

" Nowhere, from any body of priests, clergy, or ministers is religious progress to be anticipated until intellectual creeds are destroyed."

" Religion and fanaticism are, in the embryo, but one and the same ; to purify and elevate them we want a cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be infinitely depraved."

" The man who worships a friend for a God may be in some sense spiritual but his spirituality will be a devilish fanaticism, having nothing in it to admire or approve."

" Bibliolatry not only paralyses the moral sense ; it also corrupts the intellect and introduces a crooked logic, by setting men to the duty of extracting absolute harmony out of discordant materials."

Finally Professor Newman finds himself lodged in three inevitable conclusions :—

" I. That the moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticise the contents of the Scriptures.'

" 2. When so exerted, they condemn portions of the Scriptures as erroneous and immoral.'

" 3. The assumed infallibility of the entire Scriptures is a proved falsity, not merely as to physiology and other scientific matters, but also as to morals. '

Referring to his unhappy brother having embraced Catholicism, Newman says :—" it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish its bondage. "

" For the peculiarities of Romanism," he says " I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehood, fraud, and unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition will never be destroyed while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion."

Professor Newman tells us that he renounced the Christian creed for the following reasons :—-(1 ) I found that my old belief narrowed my affections; (2) It taught me to bestow peculiar love on the people of God ; and it assigned an intellectual creed as one essential mark of his people. Its theory was one of selfishness—that is, it inculcated that my first business must be to save my soul from future punishment, and to attain future happiness."

So finding himself in exactly the same perplexing position as the world's authentic "guides, philosophers, and friends,"—the late Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson (both of whom were intended for the church,) that is to say, being conscientiously unable to (as Mr, Bright puts it) "subscribe to the bondage of the church for the sake of worldly advancement, " Newman "resigned his fellowship,' and once for all turned his back on the ' primrose path ' which for him would have led, almost indubitably, to the highest rates of the Episcopal Bench." And how much more noble and exemplary such conduct appears than that of many others (notably as pointed out in an admirable little "leader " in the Sydney Bulletin, that of the Rev. Charles Strong ) who still for mere pay and rations, remains amongst the " black dragoons." He contemptuously secedes from these; and, as a free lance in the ranks of literature, has for a long lifetime being doing deadly battle, not against " the old extinct Satans," but against the (as Carlyle tells us) "real soul-devouring world-devouring Devils that now are to wit, thoughtless, thriftless animalism, Distilled Gin, and Stupor, and Despair. Carlyle sincerely loved uncompromising Francis Newman ; and, in that noblest of all biographies, his " Life of John Sterling " speaks of him as one of " an ardently inquiring soul, of fine University and other attainments, of sharp-cutting restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious enthusiasm ; whose worth, since better known to all the world, Sterling highly estimated ;-—and indeed practically testified the same ; having by will appointed him guardian to his eldest son."

We have glanced at Francis Newman as the stern iconoclast of current creeds; let us now list to what he has to say concerning the pet and ghostly commerce of the Capital of Christendom—London; and his remarks will, alas! apply likewise to all our colonial cities :—

" Walk upon the outmost area on any side and you will find London to be in constant and rapid growth. Roads are laid out ; drains and cellars are made; and before a single house besides has arisen, lo! a lofty gin palace stands already at every chief corner of a district at present unpeopled. And for what has it been licensed ? To drain of the wages of the laborers, who are about to build the other houses. It is feared lest they should save something for wives and children in the winter ! It is feared that they will not be enough starving workmen if from any cause trade become slack. What can such conduct in magistrates mean ? Are they such fanatics as to say, " Perish frugality, perish morality, perish female honour, perish the safety of the metropolis, but give us still our bright gin palaces "? I do not believe this; I interpret their conduct otherwise. A large part of it is explained by the fact that one of them has a kinsman or a close friend in the brewers' trade ; another has put money into some brewing association or distillery ; another is a wine merchant: another is interested in a religious society to which some rich brewer is very liberal. Now will any one tell me that it is no hardship to the community to have at every corner drinkshops, which are so easily made dens of fraud ? And can any one pretend that an aristocracy cares much for morality, for honour or for justice to the lower classes, which deliberately sustains such a system ?

. . The ruling classes of England have shown themselves utterly untrustworthy and immoral as to all that concerns the trade in intoxicants."

Such is the unequivocal language— such the drastic denunciations—of one of the noblest, and truest friends of the workers and wealth gatherers of the world.

Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld. : 1874 - 1954), Thursday 4 May 1882, page 2

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article77184791