It abounds in rare touches of satire; while
Kingsley, in his reply, indicates excitement and bitterness.
The younger brother, Francis William Newman, has led a sad and changeful
life. It has many features in common with Blanco White, both of whom
betray the destructive absence of a positive evangelical faith. In some
skeptics there is a strength of will which gives a successful appearance
to their cause in spite of all their doubts; but when the will is
subjected to the domination of opinion; when religion, whether true or
false, is not an appendage but the principle of life, the power of mere
sentiment is fully manifested. The younger Newman is an illustration of
the position in which one is left when he throws himself into the arms
of a false creed.
He reveals his inner life in the _Phases of Faith_, one of the most
touching pieces of biography in the realm of literature. While a student
at Oxford, he became enamored with the "Oriel heresy about Sunday." One
by one the views of the standard authorities of the Church lost their
hold upon him, and he imbibed the opinion that the Old Testament is not
really the rule of life, according to the Pauline idea; infant baptism
is an excrescence of a post-apostolic age, and Wall's attempt to trace
it to the Apostles a decided failure; Episcopacy has been so
contemptibly represented by incumbents, some of whom opposed the
Missionary and Bible Societies, that it is not entitled to respect; and
the Church Fathers are greatly overrated, Clement alone being
respectable.
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