The Spiritual Quest of John Henry Newman and Lead Kindly Light as a Hymn for Postmodern doubters?

John Henry Newman is by any standards a giant of the Victorian age. A supreme literary artist, a profound religious thinker, a man of delicate feelings and gifted with a conscience which sought and found its magnetic north only after much wavering. His conversion to the Catholic Church shocked and shook the English Establishment to its foundations. His spirituality is rooted in an intellect suffused with deep religious affections, informed by long immersion in the Church Fathers, disciplined and kept alert by a conscience both precise and commanding, nurtured and nourished by prayer and meditation on the mystery and majesty of God. Newman loved God first with his mind, then with his heart, and finally with his whole being. 

Much will be said about him today, and there are over a dozen new books to coincide with his Beatification. But you know, there is probably no more appreciative and careful assessment of Newman in print than that written by Dr Alexander Whyte, in which warm admiration, reverent and restrained criticism, and spiritual affinity are distilled into an essay replete with sympathetic insight and balanced in generous judgement. It is one of the great acts of ecumenical courage that Dr Alexander Whyte, Minister of the Free Church of Scotland, the most influential preacher and churchman in his denomination, a Moderator and Principal of the Free Church College in Edinburgh, should be one who on his CV had a warm and friendly visit to Cardinal John Henry Newman at the Birmingham Oratory. Whyte was an example of the "hospitable hearted evangelical" a phrase he himself coined, a man of catholic spirit, theologically generous and for these reasons, in the view of many in his denomination, a maverick.

But in Cardinal Newman, Principal Whyte found a kindred spirit. Both were men of principled conscience, devotional constancy, intellectual range and grasp, first class literary and theological scholars in an age of information explosion, loyal and tenacious to their respective church traditions, and exemplary in the living out of their respective spiritual traditions.The Dream of Gerontius Whyte thought the best religious poetry since Dante.

But it is Newman's best known hymn I'm reproducing today. Why? Because it is an honest expression of doubt, uncertainty, wistfulness, self-knowledge, and hard won trust. There are few times I've sung it - it's now too gloomy for contemporary worship tastes, it's plummeting down the list of funeral choices, and as with much else Victorian it's simply too cleverly written for an age more attuned to strap lines, sound bytes and alternative devotional books like The Dark Night of the Soul for Dummies!

But as an articulation of what it feels like to not be sure, to have lost your bearings, to pray for re-orientation and recognisable landmarks;

as an affirmation of trust that is half way between defiance and surrender, and lives the tension between fear and faith;

as a prayer that reads like the experience of looking into a dark night, hands groping forwards to intimate danger, feet inching and feeling their way but going on nevertheless;

as a poem that uses words as a means of grace, and shapes them to the needs of the human heart

All this and much else makes Lead Kindly Light a devotional treasure that belongs to the whole church. Today is a day he would have been embarrassed by. Not because he did not believe the Church should canonise its finest examples of Christlikeness; but because he would never have thought himself worthy. And self-disqualification may be the more important qualification for sainthood. Anyway, as I make my way to church, I read again, slowly, this hymn for pilgrims.

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus,
nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path;
but now lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me,
sure it still will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent,
till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I
Have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Comments

[Catriona]

Och weel, Jim, had ye stayed in Dibley you'd hae sung it oft enough.

Maybe there's a cultural thing about hymnody too, that and that this has been a firm favourite of mine since childhood? I've always especially loved the end of the first verse with its trust that one step at a time is good enough... and more than that, is sufficient and complete.

[ruthg]

and if you were in bloomsbury you would sing it too - though to be fair, we haven't sung it much recently. But I love it, mostly for the reasons you list. I learned it when we sang it regulary at Dublin St (we sang it a lot - wonder what that means!) and so I discovered it in my teens. It mattered a lot then, and still does.Glad to see the reason why so well expressed