Newman: The Heart of Holiness
RODERICK STRANGE
(HODDER & STOUGHTON, 176 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £12.99 • Tel 020 7799 4064

St John Henry Newman told William Neville, one of the priests of his Oratory, that he prayed best “with a pen in his hand”. Roderick Strange observes that this might suggest that prayer, for Newman, was “a rather detached, cerebral exercise”, but this was not so. Newman did not pray as a “cerebral exercise” – rather he wrote prayerfully, and the prayerfulness of Newman “inspired and found expression in his sermons”. He wrote with a sense – which seems to attest to personal experience – that there is much in the spiritual life “which no one can communicate to another”: “wonderful secrets … strange truths about ourselves, about God, about our duty, about the world, about heaven and hell, new modes of viewing things, discoveries which cannot be put into words, marvellous prospects and thoughts half understood, deep convictions inspiring joy and peace”. Newman avowed a “preference of the Personal to the Abstract”, and his writings convey a vivid sense of his personal presence.