Description

Reprinted from the archives of the Catholic Truth Society, St John Henry Newman’s famed Second Spring sermon still bursts with the same fervour and evangelical zeal that brought Newman’s listeners to tears when he preached it. An introduction by Dr Andrew Nash explores the context in which the great saint and Doctor of the Church made his impassioned appeal for the re-evangelisation of England to the Catholics of the late 19th century, an appeal that will resonate as deeply with Christians of today as it did then. More than a century on, St John Henry Newman’s crie de coeur still has the power to awaken in the hearts of the baptised to the urgency of their vocation, displaying as clearly as his more subtle theological writings what this Doctor of the Church has to teach about the universal call to holiness.

What! Those few scattered worshippers, the Roman Catholics, to form a Church! Shall the past be rolled back? Shall the grave open? Shall the Saxons live again to God? Shall the shepherds, watching their poor flocks by night, be visited by a multitude of the heavenly army, and hear how their Lord has been new-born in their own city? Yes; for grace can, where nature cannot. The world grows old, but the Church is ever young. She can, in any time, at her Lord’s will, “inherit the Gentiles, and inhabit the desolate cities.” “Arise, Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee….” “Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. For the winter is now past, and the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land… the fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come.”