This year we celebrate the centenary of John Henry Newman's death. The new ecumenical interest in Newman has centered largely in his parochial preaching in sermons he first gave as an Anglican and reissued as a Roman Catholic with no substantial changes. It was through Newman's preaching that he gained and exercised a position of prominence and influence in the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century.

One of the outstanding things about Newman's life is the brilliant preaching he did week after week for almost two decades after his ordination. From his first parish appointment to St. Clement's in 1824 to his farewell sermon to his parish and friends at Littlemore Oxford in 1843, he preached over a thousand sermons.

Horton Davies says: "Men of many denominations still turn to his sermons chiefly for their penetrating understanding of human nature and destiny and for their moral guidance and spiritual illumination which are admirably expressed in the economy of nervous and subtle English prose."

There are eight volumes of his Parochial and Plain Sermons delivered in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford from 1835-41. In 1849 he published Discourses addressed to mixed congregations and in 1857 Sermons preached on various occasions. The sermons he preached as a Roman Catholic are more direct and challenging, have deeper pathos, and bolder flights of the imagination. The Anglican sermons have more refinement and delicacy of feeling.

I commend to your attention a book published in 1969 by Fortress Press, The Preaching of J. H. Newman, edited with an introduction by W. D. White. It contains his own selection of his best sermons preached at St. Mary's. Two outstanding characteristics are clues to his magnetism: the sheer spirituality of this man and his uncanny psychological penetration.

Newman was free from the temptation to exalt preaching for its own sake or to luxuriate in his own powers. He did exalt the office and calling of a minister but his exaltation of his office was the basis for his deep sense of awe and reverence before his own vocation.

In 1859, Newman published an essay on University Preaching. The first principle that dominates his thought is that each sermon must have a clear and consistent intention, a definite aim or end. He said: "Definiteness is the life of preaching. Nothing that is anonymous will preach, nothing that is dead and gone."

The ultimate aim of all preaching is the salvation of the hearer. He never succumbed to the temptation to be a pulpit orator. He concentrated in his preaching on the concrete, the definite, the individual.

In preaching, purity of heart is to will one thing. Singleminded commitment to a particular spiritual good is the one thing necessary for effective preaching. Since the art of preaching is persuasion, the preacher must instruct and convince the intellect as well as move the affections and fire the will of his hearers.

What is Newman's secret? His superb intelligence, his knowledge of language and disciplined use of it, his pursuit of truth, his intense spirituality are all qualities that he possessed. He rejected topical or timely preaching. His preaching is apologetic and polemical. His parochial sermons deal with the enduring verities of the Christian faith and the deposit of revealed truth in the Bible and tradition.