by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: October 20, 2010   Last Updated: May 24, 2011

Not all church hymns start out the same, all all as individual as are their writers, but one thing unites them, they are dedicated to the worship of the Lord. John Henry Newman, author of Lead, Kindly Light, a poem set to music, is still showing the way where education is concerned. The poem was originally titled, The Pillar of the Cloud, when he wrote it after recuperating from an illness while traveling in Rome.  He had few friends, was tired, ill, wanted to get home, but after much prayer, saw light shining through his darkened spirits, through the clouds as he first thought of it:

"Lead, Kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, / Lead thou me on!..." Returning home in 1833, on board the ship, he penned the poem. Probably he was at want for something to do, and his feelings of love for his Creator needed an outlet. For several months he had been visiting the Mediterranean area, and possibly the ordeal was exhausting and sapped him of his energy, causing him to lie near death in Sicily for three weeks.

"The Night is dark, and I am far from home - / Lead Thou me on!" He was born February 21, 1801, in London. By the 1930s, because of his work as an Anglican minister, educator, and thinker, he was well known. His work centered on his work as a leader in the Oxford Movement.
this no doubt caused him much anguish. He was concerned with bringing the Church of England back to somewhere near what it had once been before the Reformation. Conflicts and negativity met him everywhere.

"Keep Thou my Feet: I do not ask to see /The distant scene, - one step enough for me. " It was through this kind of interaction with his work, and his learning, that led him to read the works of St. Augustine and caused him to convert to Catholicism on October 5, 1845.

"I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou - Should'st lead me on. / I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on! " I never asked for this, he told his Creator, but since it has come to this, I will do as you wish, could have been his day to day thoughts. In 1846, he went to Rome and was ordained a priest and received his Letters (D.D.) by Pope Pius 1X. Later, he became a Cardinal.

"I loved to choose and see my path; but now / Lead Thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, / Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. " Reflecting back as an older man and especially as a Cardinal where his duties were ever present, and confession was never far from his mind, he asked his Savior to kindly

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