FATHER STANTON.* As a remarkable and inspiring preacher and a
militant Churchman, the late Father Stanton was well known in his lifetime ; the scenes at his funeral—" perhaps the most wonderful ever accorded to an English priest "—were an eloquent testimony to the affection which he inspired among the London poor, and his memory will long be cherished by persons of all shades of religious belief with whom he came into contact. He was not a man of great learning ; he made no contribution to the theological literature of his time ; and the impression that he created as a preacher, though vivid and stimulating, was limited, after his comparatively early abandonment of mission work, and in consequence of his frequent conflict with episcopal authority, by his resolve to confine his energies exclusively to St. Alban's, Holborn. This made for concentration, and the posi- tion he occupied was one of greater prestige and slower than if he had accepted or courted preferment. But there were moments when ho felt his isolation. In 1899, writing to a friend, he defined his position with great frankness :—
" I fear I am neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring. Romanism is to me a lie, and Anglicanism hopelessly Erastian. This hait now to me. I joined the Liberation Society in despair 36 years ago. But never has the Erastianism before been so boldly stated without varnish as Temple has done it. Mind you, I think the thrust that slays -me is straight, and tho sword true steel. Ever since thoy inhibited me I've only been curate at St. Alban's, not a minister of tho Established Church. The St. Alban's people cannot think I leave them in the lurch—for I've held on for 20 years. don't expect to live another 10 years and they can't complain if I go behind the scones, and enjoy the 'extinction' which I think I've earned. But things are most kindly done which are done gradually and considerately, and I wish to be always kind. It would be far better for this place if a young clergyman would come, and ono who like Suckling can stand the Establishment. This parish suffers from those who have been hero too long."
The real greatness of the man stands revealed not in his sermons— brilliant and electrifying though they were—nor in the extreme and narrow views which he courageously, unflinchingly, and often violently maintained, so much as in the broad humanity and tolerance which governed his intercourse with his fellow-man. "He was always spending and being spent in the service of others, and the poorer, the more miserable and—humanly speaking—the more worthless they were, the more he gave himself for them. He once said to me : 'I would lay down my life for the roughs ' ! " We have seen what he said of Rome, and of conventional Anglican- ism. Protestantism was his bite noire. He regarded it as "simple irtual infidelity," and he prayed God to dispel it as the sun dispels the gloom of night. But his practice belied his professions. Ho was prepared to appear on the same platform with Bradlaugh, or even with the Devil himself, if they espoused the cause of Peace, And he was no proselytizer. One of his fellow-curatea in a long and most interesting account of Stanton's daily life in the Clergy House at St. Alban's shows how his tender-heartedness was leavened by humour :—
"All kinds of folk, rich and poor, came hero to consult him or to claim his sympathy ; the mon far outnumbered the women ; the poor, especially the poorest poor, far outnumbered the well-to-do. He was at his happiest with the brokon-down, the lost sheep. In simple truth, not in word only but in deed and in truth,' ho loved them, with an infinite pity for the overwhelming difficulties of their ease, and with the fullest belief in their capacity for goodness, if only a cruel world would but give thorn a chance. He poured himself out upon these wrecked souls, and taught them the love of God, by the love which they found in himself. . . . It was not only Church of England people that sought his help ; all and any were welcome to his best, and he never seemed anxious to convert thorn to his own belief. Lapsed Romans were sent off to Ely Place to their
• Arthur Stanton : a 31ensoir. By the Right Hon. George W. E. Russell. London : /eel/mans and Co. [10e. ed. net.I -
duties, and the various sects were each encouraged to go to their respective pastors. It was said of St. Francois de Sales that if you wished to secure his friendship, you had only to do him an
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Injury. I think that certainly one of the lost sheep was of the same opinion as the Saint, for when he begged a shilling, and ' Dad' refused it, he clinched his argument with the reason, ' It was I, Dad, who sneaked your watch.' Father Stanton looked at him silently for a minute and then said, ' Well, I think that does deserve a bob,' and gave it to him. Amongst many more or less distin- guished persons who came to this room to visit him, came on one day Mr. Kensit the elder. He, like the rest, had felt the charm of the Father's preaching. He came, on this occasion, to try to snatch him from the burning,' to detach him from, the cause which he himself so deeply hated and so completely misunderstood. He had brought with him a roll containing drawings of various instruments of penance= disciplines,' chains, hair-shirts, and the like. • These,' he said, ' are the devices by which the miserable priests sock to enslave silly women.' Father Stanton examined the roll for a minute or two ; then looking up at Mr. Konsit asked, with much earneatness, Whore can I buy them 1 They are the very thine for our ladies. Would do them a world of good.' Even Mr. Kensit must have been betrayed into the flicker of a smile. On another day, ono of his old lads who had moved to the south of the Thames came to see him. Ho to7d Dad that he now thought St. Alban's was quite Protestant. • You should see what we do over at —! Why ; last Sunday evening we had 00 candles on the Altar ! " Oh ! ' said Father Stanton, ' that is nothing to us ! ' Well, Dad, and what do you do?' ll'e, we have a clergyman that takes snuff.'" Turning to the record of his life, one learns that neither at Rugby nor at Oxford was he distinguished above his fellows, except for his good looks and his excellent character. He never reached the Upper School at Rugby, and speaks feelingly of the agony he endured when put on to construe by 0. 0. Bradley (afterwards Head-Master of Marlborough and Dean of Westminster). He read as a private pupil with the Rev. Charles Bradley, the Dean's elder brother, before matriculating at Trinity College, Oxford, and it is curious to find his tutor prefacing an estimate of his abilities with the words "he is not deficient," and commenting on his lack of concentration. Indeed, the sudden development of an unim- pressive boy into the vivid and eloquent preacher is a puzzle which this Memoir fails to solve. But from childhood his thoughts were set on the ministry. His earliest letters home almost invariably contain some reference to churches or preachers ; at Oxford he came under the influence of Lidden, assisted in parochial work, consorted with undergraduates of High Anglican tendencies, and chivalrously supported the clergy of St. (leorge's-in-the-East in the riots provoked nominally by their ritualistic praeVees, but really, according to Mr. Russell, by their intervention on behalf of sweated workers. His resolve to take Orders was of long standing. and he readily availed himself of the offer of a curacy at St. Alban's, Holborn, which was being built and equipped with a Clergy House by the munificence of Mr. J. G. Hubbard, afterwards the first Lord Addington. Before his ordination he spent some time at Cuddesdon. His father had purchased the presentation to a Gloucestershire living for his benefit, but he declined on conscientious grounds to avail himself of such an arrangement. He inherited means which rendered him independent of a stipend, and though in the summer of 1862 Tait—then Bishop of London—had told him : "If you go to Mackonochic of St. Alban's you must never expect any Church preferment," the warning, which was fully justified by the sequel, had no terrors for him. Only twice in fifty years was there any likelihood of his leaving. The first occasion was in 1864, when, learning that Pusey was looking out for some one to work at St. Saviour's, Leeds, he and his friend Arthur Tooth offered to undertake the duty, and at the same time to fcirm the nucleus of a Brotherhood. The scheme fell through owing to irreconcilable divergences of opinion between Pusey and Stanton as to the relations between the parochial clergy at St. Saviour's and an already established Sisterhood. Stanton held out for a Sisterhood entirely under his own supervision. Mr. Russell prints the correspondence in full, and it is impossibls not to be impressed by the greater sagacity and moderation of Pusey, as well as by his superior skill in the conduct of a controversy. Again, in 1870, Stanton was on the point of breaking away from St. Alban's, on the ground that Mackenochie, while personally trusting him, exhibited mistrust of his work ministerially ; but his suspicions were allayed by the convincing and generous letters of his vicar, and, as his biographer puts it, " the ministry which, but for Mackonochie's gentleness and humility, :night now have come to an end, lasted with ever-increasing poise: and acceptance for forty-three years."
The portrait which emerges from these pages is that of a noble- hearted but quick-tempered and combative inan. Ho was not exactly quarrelsome, and did not bear malice ; the sun seldom wont down on his wrath, which for the most part was like summer light- ning. Ho was not skilful or conciliatory in controversy, and his violence often distressed those who loved him—notably King, the saintly Bishop of Lincoln. Throughout the long campaign waged by the Church Association against Mackonoehio, Stanton's attitude was far more uncompromising than that of his vicar, and when Mackonochie was suspended Stanton "raved "—the word is his , biographer's—in the pulpit against the decision of the Privy Council. Iliac Christianity reminds us of Milton's definition of poetry; it was "simple, sensuous, and passionate." He had no sympathy with the Higher Critioiant, and deplored the tendency of Essays and Reviews. Indeed, after the Bible, his favourite religious books seem to have been the sermons of Spurgeon and Dr. Parker of the City l'etnple. He was not a ".scientific ritualist," his interest in medi- aeval art being aesthetic rather than historical. In a very touching Jotter to his mother, after declaring his belief in the Real Presence and the significance of genuflexions, candles, incense, and vestments, he goes on : "Because religion is simple it does not follow that Public worship should be mean. The Public recognition of our King and God in my opinion, which is that of the Catholic Church, ought to be as magnificent as possible." With him ritual was ft imply a means of premoting God's greater glory ; and in another letter to his mother he passionately declares that the doctrines of the Adorable Mystery, of the Sacrifice of the Altar, and Confession to a Priest were much dearer to him than all the incense, vestments, and music in the world. "They are my hope of Salvation, for one is to inc Jesus Christ, and the other pardon in His Precious Blood." But while he was prepared to go to the stake or be hacked to pieces for these doctrines, he was, as we have said, no proselytizer ; he never sought to constrain those who could not share his beliefs. His white to o boy of eighteen who nisho.(1 to .come to the Con- fi-r-tsionat against the wishes of his parents was honest and wise. " Confession is not essentially necessary to Salvation, any more than Confirmation. . . . I cannot but think that your yielding up your own wish to that of your parents for a time would be the surest way to secure their acquiescence in what you know must be
ory painful to them. . . . Do not Clink that you are un- forgiven of God because you have paused to respect instincts which He Himself has woven about our hearts."
Mr. Russell, who enjoyed the intimate friendship of Father Stanton and shared his views on Church discipline and the relations of Church and State, has for the most part lot his hero tell his story in his own words, supplemented by the testimony of his colleagues and correspondents. The result is a volume of engrossing interest, and a worthy memorial of a true servant of Christ and humanity.
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