'And I too should go from St. Philip
to
Our Lady, and to St. Peter and St. Paul, and to St. Laurence and
to
St. Cecilia, and, if it happened to me as to Lucas, should come
back to die.'
Yet, in spite of all, in spite of these exasperations of the
flesh, these agitations of the spirit, what was there to regret?
Had he not a mysterious consolation which outweighed every grief?
Surely, surely, he had.
'Unveil, 0 Lord, and on us shine,
In glory and in grace,'
he exclaims in a poem written at this time, called 'The Two
Worlds':
'This gaudy world grows pale before
The beauty of Thy face.
'Till Thou art seen it seems to he
A sort of fairy ground,
Where suns unsetting light the sky,
And flowers and fruit abound.
'But when Thy keener, purer beam
Is poured upon our sight,
It loses all its power to charm,
And what was day is night...
'And thus, when we renounce for Thee
Its restless aims and fears,
The tender memories of the past,
The hopes of coming years,
'Poor is our sacrifice, whose eyes
Are lighted from above;
We offer what we cannot keep,
What we have ceased to love.'
Such were Newman's thoughts when an unexpected event occurred
which produced a profound effect upon his life: Charles Kingsley
attacked his good faith, and the good faith of Catholics in
general, in a magazine article.
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