A Note on the University Sermons

Extract

A thorough discussion of the content of Newman’s University Sermons would exceed the proper length of an article in a review. It would involve a study of his thought as a whole, for they are essentially incomplete, and deal with problems that exercised him throughout his life. In particular, a careful comparison would have to be made between them and the Grammar of Assent. By incomplete, however, we must not be understood to mean that they are sketchy or immature or unimportant. We mean simply that they represent the first stage, the initial orientation, of a synthesis which being organic and alive, naturally in the course of time developed. Far from being unimportant they are an impressive statement of the relations between faith and reason and mark a turning point in the history of modern religious thought. Newman himself, re-reading them in Rome after his conversion, wrote in a letter to Dalgairns: ‘I must say I think they are as a whole, the best things I have written, and I cannot believe that they are not Catholic, and will not be useful’ and writing to James Hope he characterises the volume as ‘the best, not the most perfect, book I have done. I mean there is more to develop in it though it is imperfect.’ Clearly he felt that they treated of fundamental issues and were personally significant as expressions of his thought.