England, Cardinals, Church of England, Victorian England, Oxford Movement, conversion stories 

Journey into Faith is the story of Newman before he became a Catholic. The scene of that story is Oxford University in the first half of the nineteenth century - the Oxford whose leading figures were John Keble, Edward Pusey, Hurrell Froude, Richard Whately, Blanco White, and William Ward.

This biography shows Newman in his relations with these men and with others, all of whom played their parts in his religious development. It shows him also in his relation with his family, who viewed his progressive estrangement from the English Church with sorrow and bitterness. The book covers the years from his birth till his conversion to Catholicism in 1845 - years that included his first conversion at fifteen to Evangelicalism; his introduction to Oriel College commonroom; his visit to Rome, and meeting with Monsignor Wiseman; his trip to Sicily, at the end of which he composed the hymn Lead, Kingly Light; his rise to fame as the dynamic leader of the "Oxford Movement"; and, finally, the experiences that brought him to doubt the validity of the Anglican claim, and, after long anxiety, to leave the Church of England for the Church of Rome.

This biography does not attempt to pass any judgment on Newman's conversion, but is simply the story of the outward circumstances that contributed to his inward change. And Newman's story is more than an interesting historical episode or study of a state of mind. The motive of a man's fidelity to his vision of "the soul alone with God," that runs through Newman's Anglican life equally with his life as a Catholic, is one that has never lost its inpspiration.

Eleanor Ruggles is the author of the distinguished biography, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A Life.

Taken from the front inside flap.