In the summer of 1833, John Henry Newman, a young minister of the Church of England, was a passenger on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Because there was no wind, the ship was becalmed in a fog bank for a week in the Straits of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia. The usually brilliant landscape of that area was obscured by the motionless fog. Lost were the rocky shores of Sardinia on one side and the stark perpendicular cliffs of Corsica on the other.

Newman, the eldest son of a prosperous London banker, had begun his ministry at Oxford University. In his travels in 1833, he had been seriously ill in Sicily and had grave concerns about his work in England. The uncertainty of his future work hung heavily on him. His faith in the divine purpose of God is evident in this hymn written under these circumstances.

When he returned to his church at Oxford, England, he became a part of a group of Anglican ministers who sought diligently to bring renewal to the church. A dozen years later, his intense concern caused him to leave the Church of England and become a Roman Catholic.

Newman was ordained a Catholic priest at Rome in 1846. Except for four brief years at the Dublin Catholic University, he spent the rest of his life at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri near Birmingham, England.

Pope Leo XIII made Newman a cardinal in 1879. He remained one of the most revered Catholic leaders in England until his death in 1890.

The music so fittingly wedded to these words was written by the noted English composer John B. Dykes. He wrote the tune in the summer of 1865 while walking through the Strand, the famous theater and shopping district in London.

The popularity of the hymn was quite surprising to Newman, who quickly attributed its success to Dykes' tune. The composer named the tune Lux Benigna, meaning "kindly light."

-- Wm J. Reynolds