PREFACE

THE story of Father Stanton's life is the story of a clergyman of the Church of England, who for fifty years was curate in the parish of St. Alban's, Holborn. Taken baldly and literally this statement promises nothing of interest, perhaps, beyond the length of service, until the name and title of this curate catches us--'Father Stanton, of St. Alban's, Holborn.'

There it is. And at the phrase we recall something of the life of high adventure and romance lived in the back streets of Holborn, and lived joyously and fully by a man of faith and goodwill. We recall the powerful preacher, the tender minister of souls, the champion of the common people, the 'Dad' of countless children now grown to full estate, the rare and distinguished personality to whom all--save human affection--that this passing world could offer was but dross.

To the world this life of Father Stanton's presented the eternal paradox: Qui invenit animam suam, perdet illam: et qui perdiderit animam suam propter me, inveniet eam. Finding his life in the slums of Holborn and in the Church of St. Alban, he lost it to the world; and thus losing his life in the cause of CHRIST and his brethren, he found the life eternal. The rulers of the Established Church and the powerful ones of this world, seeing that Stanton neither courted their favours nor desired their praise, naturally, in turn, left him severely alone, or but noticed his existence to shake a disapproving head or utter some word of censure.

But censured by authority, Stanton could always fall back on the love of his people at St. Alban's, Holborn--his 'children'--to whom he was not only 'father' and pastor, but friend and 'pal.' After a ministry of forty-five years, he could say gladly, 'GOD has given me something better than emolument, and far better than position; GOD has given to me, blessed be His holy Name, the love of my fellow-men.' And so greatly gifted by this love, the world and its honours were well lost to Father Stanton. Unencumbered by the responsibilities imposed in the service of Mammon, he marched the more gaily, and to the end neither age nor experience could dim the vision or check the glad morning confidence that were his at the outset of life.

'. . . A friend to truth! of soul sincere.
In action faithful, and in honour clear;
Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end,
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend.'

These words of Pope's on Addison have been applied, and justly enough, to Father Stanton by his friends. Others will think of Stanton as the fearless knight, the chivalrous crusader, 'faithful servant, valiant soldier,' of the Cross of CHRIST.

'A knight there was, and that a worthy man,
That from the time that he began
To riden out, he loved chivalry,
Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his lorde's war,
And thereto had he ridden, no man farre.
He never yet no villainy ne said
In all his life unto no manner wight:
He was a very perfect, gentle knight.'

Others, again, will always carry in their hearts the remembrance of the Minister of the Gospel, the Good Samaritan binding up the wounds of the fallen, and pouring in oil and wine, and promising the sweet assurance of the forgiveness of sins.

So many-sided was Father Stanton, so wide was the appeal he made, so varied is the company that loved him and honoured him in that fifty years' service.

Heroic as he was, the place of his labours, the Church of St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn, is no less famous, too--famous for its battles with the forces of 'law and order' in Church and State, famous for its clergy with whom Stanton worked so long and so loyally. Always will that church --a city set on a hill in the Church of England--be associated with the names of Alexander Heriot Mackonochie, its first Vicar; Arthur Henry Stanton, its fifty years' curate; the Rev. R. A. J. Suckling, Vicar since 1883; the Rev. E. F. Russell, curate since 1867; and the Rev. G. R. Hogg, curate since 1874.

The time of Stanton's ministry was notable. It was a time of revival in the Church of England, when many Catholic doctrines and practices were 'claimed as the rightful heritage' of the Church of England people, to the astonishment and dismay of Bishops, Judges, and Members of Parliament. The claim was stoutly resisted, and conflicts raged in the Law Courts over questions of ceremonial, only decided in a number of cases by the imprisonment or resignation of the offending clergyman. Mainly the battle turned, as it did at the Reformation, on the doctrine of the Eucharist--for ' it is the Mass that matters '--the Catholic-minded clergy maintaining that the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer was the order of the Sacrifice of the Mass, while the ecclesiastical authorities of the Established Church denied that it was anything of the sort. To-day, when the Church of England clergy are largely left undisturbed to preach what doctrines they will, and the controversy over ritual has ended in general toleration, only disturbed by occasional outbursts of lessening Protestant energy, the indebtedness of Anglicans for the present liberties of worship to the stalwarts of 1860 to 1885 cannot be too heartily acknowledged. In the front rank of those stalwarts were Mackonochie and Stanton at St. Alban's, Holborn--Mackonochie bearing the brunt of fifteen years of litigation.

But lawsuits, episcopal charges against Ritualism, and the long-drawn-out battle over the lawfulness of certain Catholic practices in the Church of England, were only one feature of Stanton's fifty years at St. Alban's. It was a period of political reform, and the quickening of a movement towards democracy; a time when old laissez faire Liberalism passed away before the heralds of social reform, and individualism as a social creed was shattered by the prophets of economic socialism. From this democratic movement Father Stanton did not stand aside.

The time and the place and the man alike were great, and the whole story of Stanton's life amongst us is resplendent with the rare and shining qualities he possessed, and the brilliant gifts used so lavishly in the service of his fellows.

Here no attempt is made to set out in refined detail the incidents of the wonderful life lived by this curate of St. Alban's. A full and complete biography must necessarily be yet to come. All that the present writer can do is to set down something of what he knows, recall certain events, in order in the life of Father Stanton; give, as he heard it, the message of the preacher as far as possible in the preacher's own words--and sketch in outline the portrait--leaving to the reader to fill in, as he will, the obvious omissions.

It may be this little book, this brief memoir of the man at whose feet so many of us sat, will be acceptable as a tribute of lasting love to some of that uncounted multitude to whom Arthur Stanton was 'Dad' and 'Father,' and that its pages will help to keep his memory green in our day and generation and for many a year to come. It may be, too, that others, to whom 'Father Stanton' was but a name, reading this memoir will discern in it the attempted portrait of a brave, strong, and tender English gentleman, who lived and laboured for his kind as a Christian priest at a critical time in the history of his Church and his land; and looking on the faulty portrait they will at least think it well that the attempt was made, lest otherwise they might never have known what manner of man this Father Stanton was.

The writer's personal recollections of St. Alban's extended over thirty years, and he is greatly indebted to the Rev. Stewart Headlam, the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell, Mr. E. J. Peters, and Mr. Frederick Verinder for valuable help. For printed matter he is no less indebted to the St Alban's, Holborn, Parish Magazine, and Monthly Paper, The Treasury, The Church Reformer, The Church Times, the 'Memoir of Alexander Heriot Mackonochie,' by E. A. T., and 'St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn: A History of Fifty years,' by G. W. E. Russell.

But this memoir, though I have taken every pains to ensure accuracy in matters of fact, must not be taken as an 'official' biography.

J. C.
HAMPSTEAD,
May, 1913.

CHAPTER I
YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD

THE Stantons of the Thrupp are a well-known Gloucestershire family, and they have dwelt in the neighbourhood of Stroud for the past two hundred years. Strongly political, on the Liberal side, three Stantons have sat in the House of Commons as M.P. for Stroud--William Henry Stanton from 1831 to 1842, Alfred John Stanton from 1874 to 1880, and Walter John Stanton from 1880 to 1885. The first of these was the uncle of Father Stanton, the second the cousin, and the third an elder brother.

Arthur Henry Stanton was born at Upfield Lodge, Stroud, on June 21, 1839. His father, Charles Stanton, a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and later a civil engineer and manufacturer, married Miss Martha Holbrow of Bradbrook House, Stroud. Eleven children--three sons and eight daughters--were the fruit of the marriage. Mr. Charles Stanton, the eldest son, became a barrister after preceding Arthur Stanton at Rugby and Oxford. The second son, Mr. Walter John Stanton, was the M.P. Both have survived their younger brother, the curate of St. Alban's. In the house where he was born--now the residence of his sister, Miss Emily Stanton--Father Stanton returned to die seventy-three years later, when the long day's work was done, and a memory of the child of five is recalled in a letter written to the Rev. E. F. Russell, January 30, 1913:

'Now I am in the house in which I was born, and old experiences of sixty-eight years ago are renewed; for then at 8.30 the drawing-room door was opened, and nurse appeared and said, "It is time for Master Arthur to go to bed." Master Arthur got up and went out sulkily to the room opposite, the nursery, was put to bed and tucked in. To-day nurse appears at 9-45, at the drawing-room door, and says: "It is time for Father Stanton to go to bed." Father Stanton gets up sleepily, follows nurse to the room opposite, the nursery, gets to bed and is tucked up. So history repeats itself.'

As a boy Arthur Stanton was given to religion, and there was never any doubt as to his vocation. He was always fond of churches--the interest and affection of his boyish years remained till the end of his days--and his preparatory school was at Leonard Stanley, a village some few miles from Stroud, planted at the foot of the Cotswolds--a very old-world village, with Norman church and monastery buildings, long used as barns. In this church of Leonard Stanley, with its decorated chancel and the ancient, high-backed pews of the eighteenth century, undisturbed by 'restorers,' Arthur Stanton worshipped as a child during the early schoolboy days. He went to Rugby at fifteen, older than the average public schoolboy, and was entered in August, 1854, at the Rev. R. B. Mayor's House, 4, Hiilmorton Road. Dr, Goulburn, afterwards Dean of Norwich, was headmaster during Stanton's four years at Rugby, and amongst the assistant-masters were the Revs. E. W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury; G. G. Bradley, later Dean of Westminster; and Berdmore Compton, the first Vicar of All Saints', Margaret Street.

When Stanton went up to Oxford in October, 1858, and became an undergraduate at Trinity College--Cardinal Newman's old college--the religious principles of his long life were already formed. The Rev. M. H. Noel--remembered by many a generation of Oxford Anglicans as the Vicar of St. Barnabas', that very 'ritualistic' church in the mean streets of Jericho--was a contemporary of Stanton's at the University; and Mr. Noel recalls that Stanton as an undergraduate held quite definitely those Catholic beliefs and practices which the successors of the Tractarians, and in especial the clergy of St. Alban's, Holborn, were to popularise so considerably in the Church of England, though not without opposition from those who stuck to the Protestant tradition. Dr. Pusey, the Regius Professor of Hebrew, was still the recognised chief of Oxford High Churchmen in Stanton's time, but revered with awe and affection by the younger men bent on restoring the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and the practice of Confession, he was not often visible in the undergraduate world. Liddon, Dr. Pusey's pupil, then (1859-62) Vice-Principal of St. Edmund Hall, and already the most eloquent of preachers, was the real leader of Anglo-Catholic young Oxford. Liddon was also Master of the 'Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity,' a society formed in the Tractarian days, and his influence was powerful and lasting. 'He [Liddon] had been my ideal at Oxford,' Stanton wrote, 'and his influence over me was maintained by my six months' sojourn at Cuddesdon.'

The Oxford of Stanton's years had many other links with the 'Oxford Movement,' the Oxford of a bygone age. Hawkins was still Provost of Oriel; Gladstone was the representative of the University in the House of Commons; Liddell was Dean of Christ Church, and Scott was at Balliol; A. P. Stanley was the Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History; Jowett had recently been appointed Regius Professor of Greek; and Matthew Arnold was Professor of Poetry.

The President of Trinity was old Dr. John Wilson, who had been a Fellow of the college since 1816, and the Dean was F. Meyrick, subsequently one of H.M. School Inspectors--the same Meyrick who ventured forth with a pamphlet on behalf of Kingsley when that redoubtable fighter had been worsted by Newman's 'Apologia.'

The most famous of Stanton's contemporaries at Trinity was a scholar, Mr. James Bryce--a much honoured man whose learning has won the applause of students all the world over, and who, after a Professorship and a place in two Liberal Cabinets, only last year retired from the British Embassy to the United States.

The closest of Stanton's Trinity friends was Henry Thornhill Morgan, who also became a clergyman, and was Vicar of St. Margaret's, Lincoln. The love of H. T. Morgan for his friend, and for St. Alban's, Holborn, never cooled, and only when death took him in July, 1910, was the intercourse broken. Another friendship dating from Oxford days was with the Rev. F. J. Ball, of Pembroke--Provost Ball.

Stanton was not conspicuous either as an athlete or in the examination schools at Oxford. His physical strength was great, and his countenance was beautiful to look upon. (Stanton's good looks were noted by the men of his time at Oxford--he was said to be the handsomest man up at the 'Varsity--just as the old people who remembered him when he first came to St. Alban's often remarked how handsome their curate was!)

Religion, the Gospel of CHRIST, the Sacraments of the Church--upon these things the heart of Arthur Stanton was set, and to these he would be faithful. Having great possessions--health, vigour, money, intelligence, social gifts, the power of speech--he poured them out gladly in the service of GOD and his fellows, and followed his LORD and Master with joy of heart.

The venerable lady who first set up an Anglican Sisterhood in Oxford knew Stanton when he was at Trinity, and at her behest he was always willing to stand as godfather to the many uncared-for and orphaned children whom she brought to be christened.

The four years passed. Stanton contentedly took a Pass degree, and with B.A. after his name, went down for good from Oxford in June, 1862. He was then twenty-three, and would be ordained as soon as possible. The rest of the year was spent at Cuddesdon College reading theology for the Bishop of London's Examination (with Mr. Suckling for a fellow-student) under Edward King, the future Bishop of Lincoln, and working as a layman in the parish which was to be his home for fifty years to come--the parish of St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn. 'I am very rejoiced that you like Stanton,' Liddon wrote to King in November, 1862.

Rugby and Oxford were over. Life's morning march was well begun. Fearless, with

'Faith unblenching, Hope unquenching,
'Well-lov'd LORD, and single heart,'

Arthur Stanton came to St. Alban's, to dwell amongst the people in the back-streets of Gray's Inn Lane and Holborn, and to minister to their needs. When the time came for the final passing from St. Alban's and its people,

'By contempt of worldly pleasures,
And by mighty battles done,'

Arthur Stanton had surely earned the rest that belongs to the faithful.

CHAPTER II
AT ST. ALBAN'S, HOLBORN, 1862-1882

THE Rev. A. H. Mackonochie had started the work at St. Alban's, Holborn, in May, 1862, and in June the first services were held in the basement of No. 7, Greville Street.

Stanton arrived in the following December, and has given us some account of the worship in this basement:

'The services of the newly-formed district were carried on in a very "Early Church" manner in a sort of catacomb--i.e., in a kitchen and cellar fitted up very plainly, a picture of which remains here till this day. There was nothing to suggest the magnificence of public worship which has been credited to St. Alban's since. The only light came in from the pavement, and the coal-cellar was the little vestry, not big enough for a cope, and most unsuitable for a lace alb. Our choir efforts were interrupted with "Yah" and "O Jerusalem!" shouted down the grating, and our inward recollection often interrupted by the invasion of life in other forms than that which thirsts for the Gospel."

It was not till February in the next year that the church in Baldwin's Gardens, built by the munificence of 'a London merchant'--Mr. J. G. Hubbard, first Lord Addington--was consecrated on a site given by Lord Leigh.

The parish in those days of old Gray's Inn Lane was a network of courts and alleys, hideously overcrowded, with numerous entirely disreputable common lodging-houses and other places of ill-fame, and a population as savage as it was lawless. Where St. Alban's Church stands--at the west end--a well-known thieves' kitchen existed for many years.

Mackonochie, who had left St. George's-in-the-East to become the first Vicar of St. Alban's, was an altogether remarkable man. His convictions concerning the Holy Eucharist, the confessional, and Church doctrines generally (with the exception of the supremacy of Rome) were those of Catholic Christendom, and at that time were shared by only a handful of people in the Church of England. Yet Mackonochie never had any serious doubt that his faith and practice were the true faith and practice of the Church of England, wherein he was ordained to minister, and whatever happened, he would not be driven out of that Church. His missionary spirit, devotion, and utter indifference to the world's rewards only came to be seen as the years went by. There were preliminary difficulties before St. Alban's was consecrated, and some question of Mackonochie not finally accepting the charge after all. Liddon had early observed Mackonochie's great qualities--they had been fellow-curates together at Wantage--and wrote of him in January, 1863, in the following words to Mr. Hubbard:

'My own instinct would have been to have trusted Mackonochie--I had almost said--against the world. In losing him you lose an apostle. Such men as he is do not abound. They are not made to order--at least, in Oxford. You will easily get a man who will take his place as far as the services are concerned, and the avoidance of such points as have challenged criticism. But his single-hearted goodness, his sublime indifference -to the idols of ninety-nine clergymen out of a hundred, is not to be met with every day.'

Liddon was to become a Canon of St. Paul's, the greatest Anglican preacher of his day, and a prophet in Israel. Mackonochie remained at St. Alban's for twenty years--three-quarters of the time pursued by lawsuits--and then resigned for the sake of peace; and, again resigning from St. Peter's, London Docks, whither his Protestant foes had tracked him, after a brief retirement from the storm and stress, died a solitary death, lost in the snow on his native Scottish hills.

Stanton was drawn to Mackonochie and the missionary enterprise at St. Alban's from the first. The 'single-hearted goodness,' and 'the sublime indifference to the idols of ninety-nine clergymen out of a hundred' noted by Liddon, were bound to impress the untarnished receptive soul of Arthur Stanton at the outset of life. And then Mackonochie was fourteen years older than Stanton, and that difference of years means a profound influence when the younger man is just twenty-three.

Mackonochie had proved his courage at St. George's-in-the-East, where sweaters, public-house keepers, and brothel owners had stirred up a mob of rioters to assail the clergy in the name of 'No Popery!' His religious faith was Stanton's own. The call to St. Alban's was irresistible. Yet Tait, then Bishop of London, warned the young Oxford man, in the summer of 1862, that a curacy under Mackonochie was not the way to the good things of the Established Church. 'If, Stanton, you go to Mackonochie of St. Alban's, you must never expect any church preferment,' said the Bishop. Stanton's reply to this speech is not recorded, but we know that Bishop Tait prophesied truly. Forty-five years later, at the Holborn Town Hall, Father Stanton reminded us of the Bishop's warning, and said: 'It is perfectly true that one living--only one--has been offered to me, and that came from Chicago. It was a good living. It was a thousand pounds a year, and a house, and all my expenses paid with American generosity. My refusal was on two grounds. First, I said, I was too old, for you cannot transplant a tree when it is of many years' growth; and, secondly, I have made such a mess of it in the Anglican Church that I could not go and make the same trouble in the American Church.'

During his last illness, at the age of seventy-three, Father Stanton was offered the titular honour of a Prebendary's stall in St. Paul's Cathedral by the present Bishop of London, and declined the compliment.

In going to Mackonochie of St. Alban's at the very beginning of his clerical life, Arthur Stanton then deliberately turned his back on the world and its rewards, and, valiant soldier of the Cross that he was, went to a post that promised nothing but obscurity and a lifelong battle in the slums of central London against the forces of evil; and it was with enthusiasm that the post was accepted, as Stanton has told us:

'It had been a remarkable Christmas [1862] for me. Just ordained deacon at the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, it was the handsel of my clerical career. I had come up from Cuddesdon in December full of enthusiasms and anticipations such as might be expected of a young zealot from a theological college. Would not London yield to the Gospel if it were preached in the streets? Would it not bring light into the dark lives of myriads? Would not the sweet story bring out the love that must lie somewhere in the hearts of men, and could not I do this? So I dreamed when I saw the lights as I came into the great city. Oh, if it were not that our young men saw visions, hope would die out! Then at once the reality, dirt, squalor, indifference, hatred, misery; and ere the year died out the disillusionment had set in, and now all that is clean knocked out of me. I dream no more.'

(Stanton could say this in 1903--more than forty years after his coming--but there was no loss of faith, hope, and charity, for all the 'disillusionment '; and the enthusiasm for the Gospel and for the welfare--spiritual and temporal--of mankind remained in spite of the dirt, squalor, indifference, hatred, misery. If there were no more 'dreams,' there was ever the vision of the kingdom of GOD, the new Jerusalem, the land that is far off, a vision that was not to be dissolved when the dreams of youth melted.)

If the post at St. Alban's promised only a hard tight and obscurity, obscurity was the one thing not to be granted to this new Church of St. Alban the Martyr and its clergy.

Arthur Henry Stanton was ordained deacon by Bishop Tait in December, 1862, and, in St. Paul's Cathedral, priest in June, 1864. In his own words: 'No sooner was I ordained--while I was a deacon--than my troubles began. A Scripture-reader represented my teaching and action to Dr. Tait, the Bishop of London, and made certain charges which were so absurd in themselves that Dr. Tait told me he could not consider them--only I was to look out, for they were watching me.' He was henceforth to be continually watched and beset, first by hostile critics--in high places most of these--and later by an ever-increasing army of friends, who loved him with a love that few men are given to receive in this world.

The Scripture-reader's complaint was unimportant, but censure and prohibition came speedily, and Stanton never forgot how his ministry had been rebuked and restricted at the outset, though , he bore it all without bitterness and with characteristic good humour. In that same reminiscent speech at Holborn Town Hall in 1907, he, said a good deal about the inhibitions and prohibitions laid upon him in the early years of his ministry:

'After I was ordained, two of the Chaplains of a garrison town asked me to preach a mission to the soldiers, which I did. I threw all my heart and soul into the mission, and we had some success. But the dreadful thing about the mission was this, that some few of the soldiers came to Confession and Communion, and, as was reported in a City church, when the Archdeacon asked whether any availed themselves of the privilege of private prayer in the church, which was open for the purpose, the old man said: "Not many; but," he added, "I 'ketched' two at it once"--so it happened at the mission. Those who made their confession were, I suppose, "ketched" at it. At any rate, it was reported to the Chaplain-General, who sent for me and told me that henceforth and for ever I was never to preach again in a garrison chapel.

'Well, I took this very much to heart, for I had put all my soul into the mission. And then for the first time I asked myself: "Am I right in ministering at all in the Established Church?" Then came to my rescue the kindness, the consideration of my people at St. Alban's, Holborn. It healed the wound, and I went on again.'

And it was always the 'people at St. Alban's,' so dear to his heart, that enabled Stanton to go on again when Bishops frowned upon him. For the Church of England as an 'Established' institution he had neither respect nor regard. Its formularies chilled him. The Prayer-Book, with its dignified ritual, 'sound rule of faith and sober standard of feeling'--beloved of Keble and the Tractarians--made no appeal to Father Stanton. The limitations and restrictions imposed by Anglican authority were irksome to him. With the evangelical fervour of an eighteenth-century Methodist, he combined the sacramental beliefs of a devout Catholic and a reverence and affection for the Blessed Virgin Mary entirely foreign to English Protestantism. The whole position at St. Alban's was a puzzle to the ordinary Church of England man, and Mackonochie, Stanton, and the other clergy attached to the church were consequently, and naturally, suspect. For what is not understood by the average Englishman is always suspected and disliked, so pronounced is our aversion from new ways of thought, and from the labour of trying to understand a new point of view.

Tait and his colleagues on the episcopal bench had no sympathy with Catholic doctrines. Good Protestants themselves--for fifty years ago the rulers of the Church of England were not at all ashamed to call themselves 'Protestant,' and great would have been their astonishment had they been told that their successors would repudiate the term--the ritual practised and the doctrines taught at St. Alban s seemed altogether out of place in the Church of England. Bishop Tait was far from being an intolerant man, but he was a stout Erastian, satisfied with Presbyterianism in Scotland, and the Book of Common Prayer in England, and anxious to curb all seeming eccentricities in public worship that might endanger the good relations of Church and State, or disturb the existing order of things within the Establishment. As long as St. Alban's was left alone by the outside world, Tait was willing to leave it alone too; but when he was told that British Protestant feeling was outraged by the goings-on at St. Alban's, and that Mackonochie must be put down, Bishop Tait at once hastened to disavow any sympathy with these troublesome clergy of St. Alban's, whose ardour threatened the peace of Israel, and put to shame the slumbering shepherds in a thousand parishes. The lawsuits against Mackonochie for his 'ritualistic practices' lasted fifteen years, only ending with his resignation in 1882, and are ancient history now.

From 1867 to 1886 Mackonochie and a number of clergymen in various parts of England were prosecuted for introducing Catholic ritual at the Holy Communion, and five were imprisoned for disobedience to the decisions of the law courts, while others, under the pressure, resigned their livings or yielded to the storm. In each case the Bishop of the diocese allowed the prosecution, and treated the offending clergyman as a disloyal minister of the Establishment. To-day the doctrines and practices for which these earnest men contended are no longer an offence in the Church of England, and multitudes now enjoy the liberties of worship won at no small cost by the much-abused 'ritualists' of the Victorian era--the ridiculed and insulted 'ritualists' whom Punch and the Press generally derided, and whom Mr. Worldly Wiseman thought contemptible.

No church was so long and so bitterly assailed as was St. Alban's, and Stanton was the most loyal of lieutenants to Mackonochie throughout the years of persecution. Prohibited from conducting missions in garrison chapels, Stanton was not yet prohibited from preaching elsewhere, and in 1869, at the first London 'Twelve-Day Mission,' he went east to the big 'Red Church' of St. Columba in Kingsland Road, to preach the mission in that parish. 'Mother Kate,' of St. Saviour's Priory, Haggerston, has told us in her 'Memories' of that mission how Stanton had a bed made up in the vestry of the church, and slept there so as to be at hand for any poor sinner who needed his help. One morning during the mission, when the preacher was walking along Kingsland Road, a man with a cartload of bricks upset his goods in the middle of the road. A small but interested crowd soon gathered at sight of the disaster, but, as is the custom of a crowd, no one moved a finger to help the unhappy carter replace his bricks. Then Stanton appeared, and the powerful young preacher, whose sermons were drawing all sorts and conditions of folk to St. Columba's, instinctively came to the rescue, and between Stanton and the carter the bricks were replaced. It was quite a small and trivial incident this, but very characteristic of Arthur Stanton in the complete absence of hesitation, of self-conscious shyness and thought as to what onlookers might think, or doubt as to the possible propriety of a Church of England curate picking up bricks in the Kingsland Road. Doubtless there are plenty of clergymen to-day who would act as simply and naturally as Stanton did under similar circumstances, but forty years ago the proceeding struck people as odd.

Stanton's loyalty and affection for Mackonochie are well known. The latter was a strong, clearheaded, fearless man whose only business was, as he understood it, to preach the Gospel of CHRIST, to minister to the sick and needy, and to celebrate the Sacraments according to Catholic usage--the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist being to him as to Catholics everywhere the Sacrifice of the Mass. That his doctrine was the true doctrine of the Church of England Mackonochie was convinced, and if Bishops and others in high places denied it, they were simply mistaken, and did not represent the Church of England. It was this complete confidence in his position and his exalted spiritual life that were Mackonochie's strength. Humble before GOD, charitable to his fellows, never thinking or saying evil of those who worried him with litigation over rites and ceremonies, conscious of his limitations, the world of art and music absolutely closed to him (and yet the Protestant world spoke of him as 'a sensuous priest who would substitute his aesthetic fancies for the plain Word of GOD'!)--Mackonochie went about his work calmly and quietly, bravely supported by Stanton and two other curates, Doran and Walker, in the early years, and by the Rev. E. F. Russell and the Rev. G. R. Hogg (who are still curates at St. Alban's) in later times.

Mackonochie was not to be put down. Dean Stanley, visiting St. Alban's one Sunday morning at the high celebration of the Holy Communion--it is always called the Mass at St. Alban's, and the ritual is that of the Roman Catholic Church, only the service is in English--reported to Bishop Tait: 'I saw three men in green, and you will find it difficult to put them down.' Men of faith and goodwill seeking neither preferment nor honours, and counting this world's gain but loss, are not easily put down.

Mackonochie might be silenced under a temporary inhibition, but Stanton would be there to take his place, and the two were at one in their faith and practice. There was never any gospel of doubt, or atmosphere of uncertainty at St. Alban's. The Mass and the confessional were as real to the clergy and their flock as they were to the ordinary Roman Catholic. CHRIST'S Mother was 'Our Lady,' to be honoured with the worship due to her. These things--the Mass, the confessional, and devotion to Our Lady--were not whispered about, or spoken with bated breath, or left as 'open questions,' matters about which Churchpeople might reasonably differ. At St. Alban's they were part and parcel of the Catholic faith, as true as the Gospel, the priceless heritage of the ages. This note of authority in the teaching at St. Alban's, the boldness of conviction not to be shaken by any passing wind of contrary opinion, the sense of being planted on the Rock of Catholic Christendom--despite the unhappy separation from Rome--all made St. Alban's for those who belonged to its congregation so different from the churches of Anglican worship elsewhere. The years of prosecution knit still more closely clergy and people at St. Alban's, and made it seem increasingly a church set apart from the rest of the Church of England. To many it was Stanton even more than Mackonochie who personified St. Alban's, and gave this church its own distinctive note, its singular character. Certainly Stanton's preaching and ministry spread abroad the fame of St. Alban's as 'a city set on a hill,' and kept the fires of enthusiasm glowing when Mackonochie had been laid to rest.

Mackonochie, ever strenuous and faithful to his beliefs, was in command at St. Alban's during the first twenty years of Stanton's curacy; to him, with his many great qualities, must be assigned the first place in the history of that famous church, for he bore the brunt of the fighting. But it was Arthur Stanton, with his youth, his charm of character, his rare gifts of preaching, his buoyant faith and wonderful love for his fellows, his utter freedom from all professional manner, and his steadfast loyalty to his chief and to their common creed, that made St. Alban's so dear to thousands, and built up the lasting love for the religion learnt within its walls. Mackonochie was revered as a priest of holy life; but Stanton was not only a priest to the people of St. Alban's, he was the friend and 'pal' of all kinds of non-respectable persons who never worshipped in the church, and knew nothing of Catholic doctrines or the mysteries of religion; children of the slums, criminals, and all 'of whom the world was not worthy' had their place in Father Stanton's heart, and counted him their friend.

St. Alban's, banned by high authorities in Church and State, was the natural home for outlaws and rebels. Stanton, frowned upon by Bishops, and seeing Mackonochie condemned by judges, could sympathise with all--more sinned against than sinning--upon whom the law had come down with its heavy hand. And for fifty years that sympathy never failed, nor did the springs of his great love for men run dry; for the source of that unfailing sympathy, that unquenchable love, was in the depths of his love for his crucified Master, in the sacrifice on Calvary daily before his eyes at every Eucharist he celebrated.

But Stanton's great love for his kind was not the sort of love that burnt up all indignation at injustice. If, on a memorable occasion when the lawyers of the Privy Council had been moved to make one of their many pronouncements against the ritual of St. Alban's, Stanton could astonish the crowded Sunday morning congregation by preaching on the text, 'He giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes,' dwelling on the weather and omitting all reference to the excitement of the hour, he could at another time, when Mackonochie had been inhibited, burst out with passionate ardour for his much-tried leader in a sermon on the text, 'O man, greatly beloved, fear not, peace be with thee: be strong, yea, be strong.'

When at the end of November, 1870, Mackonochie was suspended for three months for ignoring the decisions of the Privy Council as to the manner of celebrating the Holy Communion. Stanton from the pulpit of St. Alban's denounced fiercely the injustice of the whole proceedings in the law courts, the contradictory judgments given in successive cases, the different interpretations of the rubrics by various judges, the uncertainty of the law, and the grossly unequal measures meted out to Socinians and Ritualists by the same authorities. It was the old undying hatred of the world for the truth of CHRIST'S Presence in the Blessed Sacrament that was responsible for this injustice, he declared. Then he turned to speak of Mackonochie in memorable words: 'It is the crowning honour of a priest of JESUS CHRIST to suffer for his Master's sake. You will not hear the voice of your beloved priest for three months, but as he sits in his stall, his silence will speak more powerfully than the rarest eloquence. Remember the words of the Psalmist, "I became dumb, and opened not my mouth, for it was Thy doing, O LORD of Hosts." Now are we all here at St. Alban's not only one in faith, but one in suffering also.' And yet the injustice and the insult were not the last word. Stanton bade us not forget that our duty was still to think of those who have done the injury with feelings of kindness and love. They had not understood what they did. A time would come when the mists should have vanished, and all things have become clear, and for that time we must look forward.

Of course, whenever Mackonochie was inhibited or suspended, Stanton always held the fort, and kept the flag flying at St. Alban's, the services being conducted in the accustomed manner. In June, 1875, additional responsibility was imposed upon him. Mackonochie, popularly labelled a lawbreaker, was in reality a great stickler for law. His very disobedience to legal monitions came from his sense of the necessity of obedience to what were to him the laws of the Catholic Church, and as far as he possibly could, without absolutely breaking these laws, he endeavoured to carry out the commands of the ecclesiastical courts and the Privy Council. But in May, 1875, after eight years of litigation, Mackonochie decided that it was useless to hope for a fair hearing from the then constituted Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to that effect: 'The whole history of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from its first existence makes it impossible to trust its impartiality as constituted for ecclesiastical cases, and my own personal experience has taught me that I have no ground to expect from it either consideration or fairness.'

He added a word of personal and dignified remonstrance to this statement: ' I have been now more than twenty-six years in Sacred Orders. During the whole of that time I have endeavoured to the best of my power to obey the laws of that Church (the Church of England), and minister her offices for the glory of GOD and for the edification of His people. How I may have served in that capacity for the first of these objects it will be for the Great Day to show; as to the latter, it would be a foolish assumption of ignorance not to own that GOD has blessed me. What has been the result? With the very rarest exceptions, I have received not one word of encouragement from my superiors in the Church. I have now been four times dragged before courts. I have stood in court side by side as a fellow-culprit with a clerk charged with adultery. I have found in the highest court of appeal every door for his escape obsequiously held open by his judges, and the one door of justice and equity as vigorously barred by the same hands against me.

'I do not, your Grace, complain, but venture to state facts.'

The answer to this was that on June 13 Mackonochie was suspended for six weeks. Thereupon he went abroad for his holiday, leaving Stanton in charge of St. Alban's.

The trouble in this case was what was known as the Purchas Judgment. Mr. Purchas was a clergyman at Brighton, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which included the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London, had declared in 1871 that at Holy Communion he must not wear the vestments, or stand in front of the altar (the Eastward Position), or use wafer bread. (A year before the Court of Arches had said he might do these things!) It was for disobedience to this judgment that Mackonochie had been suspended. At the same time in more than one wealthy and fashionable parish, the ritual for which Mackonochie was condemned was practised without let or hindrance--a fact pointed out by Stanton on the first Sunday of Mackonochie's absence.

Submission to the Purchas Judgment was impossible for those clergy of the Church of England who believed in the Real Presence of CHRIST in the Holy Communion, and were anxious to emphasise and extend that belief. The special vestments at Holy Communion were not so common in Anglican churches in 1875 as they are to-day, but at least a stole or scarf was worn over the surplice, and stole and scarf were both equally illegal according to the Archbishops and judges who had condemned Mackonochie. Stanton wore the vestments as usual on Sunday, June 20, and a day or two later the Bishop of London directed him as curate in charge of the parish to celebrate the Holy Communion according to the Purchas Judgment, wearing no vestment but a surplice, and using plain wheaten bread.

To this decree Stanton replied by fixing the following notice on the church doors:

'N.B.--There will be no celebration of Holy Communion in this church until further notice. All other services as usual.

'A. H. STANTON.

'ST. ALBAN'S CLERGY HOUSE,

'June 24, 1875.'

On the following Sunday morning Stanton explained to the congregation of St. Alban's that to celebrate the Sacred Mysteries with the maimed rites enjoined by the Judicial Committee would be an irreverence they, the clergy, could not commit. 'What! would they have him stand at the altar in a common choirboy's surplice?' The only thing to be done was to go across Holborn Viaduct and through Newgate Street to St. Vedast's Church, in Foster Lane--behind the old General Post-Office--where a solemn celebration of Holy Communion with full ritual took place every Sunday at 11.40.

Thither the congregation promptly trooped off to worship as they were wont to do at St. Alban's, Stanton preaching on the text: 'Be ye therefore merciful, even as your Father also is merciful.' Mr. Pelham Dale, the Rector of St. Vedast's, was later sent to prison for his 'ritual,' but his kindness to St. Alban's was never forgotten.

Of course, everybody who wanted 'ritualism' suppressed and St. Alban's 'put down' was extremely angry at what Stanton had done, and inhibitions and prohibitions fell heavily on the curate in charge for his daring. But the St. Alban's people were as determined as were the clergy that there should be no surrender over the celebration of the Eucharist with Catholic rites. Interviews were sought with Tait, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury, and with Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London. The latter declined to receive a deputation, and Tait only offered the cold comfort of advising submission to the law. 'Supposing you belonged to the Roman Catholic Church,' said the Archbishop to the deputation of working-men of St. Alban's, 'and you said that you wished to receive the Holy Communion according to the law of the Protestant Church, of course you wouldn't get it.'

It seemed all nonsense to Tait this fuss about what a minister should wear, but since Protestant 'public opinion' was hot against the Ritualists, the Ritualists must give way. But St. Alban's never could be persuaded that it was a Protestant church, for all that the Archbishop might say.

Mackonochie, on his return, fully approved of Stanton's proceedings, and put the matter plainly to Bishop Jackson:

'Some will say, "Well, but surely the consecration of the Sacrament is valid even without a priestly vestment." Yes, my lord. Just as a subject needs only personal soundness to serve truly and loyally his Sovereign, but would be thought hardly respectful if he therefore went in dressing-gown and slippers, instead of Court attire, to the levee.'

To his people Mackonochie said in 1877: 'Ceremonial, purely by itself, is an infinitely small thing; but looked upon as the Divinely-chosen form of worship, in which sense Holy Scripture of both Testaments witness to it, it is great.'

In 1878 the lawsuits were resumed against Mackonochie, and only ceased on his resignation of St. Alban's in 1882.

Stanton referred to the incidents of 1875 at the Holborn Town Hall in 1907:

'Mr. Mackonochie was suspended, and that brought me into direct relations with the Bishop as Vicar and curate, who ordered that nothing should be worn at Divine service over the cassock but the surplice, and we at St. Alban's went to Mass every Sunday at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane. I don't know why it was, but that seemed to be a very wicked thing to do; and the Press made it rather hot for me, because they talked about a wily curate having got round a poor simple Bishop. After that I was continually prohibited or inhibited. The Bishop of London prohibited me from preaching anywhere but at St. Alban's; the Bishop of Gloucester inhibited me; the Bishop of Rochester inhibited me; and the Bishop of Llandaff as well. I remember sitting round a table one day when we at St. Alban's asked ourselves plainly this question: "Can we go on? Is it possible?" And then again the old thing came back--the consideration and the love and the help of the people who supported us; and on we went again.'

And so it was to the end. Always the people of St. Alban's, his friends and neighbours, had the first claim on Father Stanton, and as long as they received his message he would go on, let Bishops and those in high places thunder never so harshly against the curate of St. Alban's.

But Stanton was a warm-hearted man, and felt these censures keenly for all he took them bravely and without faltering. He held himself an alien in the Established Church after 1875; from St. Alban's alone for many years did his influence radiate. A further reference from his speech in 1907 brings out his standpoint: 'Mind you, never from that moment [June, 1875] have I preached a mission, and never taken a retreat. I never could think again that I should consider myself a prophet in the Anglican Israel. I felt I must keep as quiet as I could, and do all that I could for St. Alban's, Holborn, and that that was to be my ministry. Mind you, I could give a retreat, you know. At the last one I ever took I had sixty old women, and the food was very good, and the weather was very hot, and we were very sleepy; so I made the retreat as lively as I could to keep 'em awake. When it was over a Sister asked one of the old women: "How did you like the Reverend Father's retreat?" "Oh," she said, "it was beautiful; it was better than the 'theayter.'" I tell you that story to show you that it was not from any inability, but I did not wish, after what had been done, in any sense to come forward as a prophet in Israel. I have never stood on a polemical platform since that.'

Father Stanton could crack a joke over his isolated position--he would have gone to the scaffold joking as Blessed Thomas More did if he had been called upon to die for his religion; but the isolation had its bitterness all the same. However, the colder the winds of episcopal displeasure blew upon St. Alban's, the more fervently glowed the fire, and the closer was the fellowship.

It was not all lawsuits and ritual troubles at St. Alban's in those twenty years of Mackonochie's captaincy.

Poverty, sin, disease, crime, and misery in a thousand forms surrounded the church, and against these evil things Mackonochie and Stanton and their fellow-clergy strove continuously. There was scanty public recognition of this work, for the Press was far too busy 'exposing the ritualists' to find time to report the heroic labours done in the name of love on behalf of health and decency; but in 1868 a significant and solitary article did appear in Good Words, then edited by Dr. Norman Macleod. Good Words was an excellent magazine in those days, quite definitely Protestant in its religious outlook, but of a good standard in literary matters. The writer of the article--one Richard Rowe--had no sympathies with 'ritualism,' and his 'Afternoon in St. Alban's Parish' is therefore the more remarkable. Mr. Mackonochie had willingly given the writer every facility for inspecting the parish, and Mr. Stanton received the visitor at the clergy house 'with a smile of courteous welcome,' and acted as guide.

The impression made upon this unprejudiced reporter was favourable at once, and it is worth while to quote at length from his article, because it gives both a stranger's portrait of Father Stanton in 1868, and a faithful picture of what life meant in St. Alban's parish forty-five years ago.

Says this writer:

'I soon found that my animated interlocutor was no mere dreamy or dilettante admirer of an ecclesiastical past galvanised into seeming spasmodic vitality in the present, but firmly convinced that his form of Christianity was the only one that could get a real practical grip on living men and women--especially on the degraded ones swarming around the clergy house. The basis of Ritualism, he said, was a belief that all human flesh was lovable and venerable, because CHRIST had worn the human form, and therefore the most depraved ought to be looked on and looked after as saintly brethren in obstructed embryo. Confession, this politely but unflinchingly outspoken young priest did not apologise for, but championed as the only means by which a spiritual director could give individual guidance to his people: "mere preaching was like talking to a flock of sheep." A dread of confession was felt at first, but those who once resorted to it soon thought it an inestimable privilege. Just before Easter and Whitsuntide Communions, it was as much as four priests, sitting all day long at the clergy-house, could do to get through the confessions.

'My "Father Clement" [i.e., Stanton] had a considerable sense of humour. He described with great gusto the response which his appeal to the "unrespectable classes" evoked, when he addressed them as being himself "quite unrespectable," a "sad scamp," who, in ratepayers' estimation had 'lost his character ever so long ago"--finishing off with "birds of a feather," etc. He seemed to find more amusement than annoyance in the efforts made by the emissaries of what he called "the Protestant party" to thwart the tenants of the clergy-house in their parochial labours, flocking after them in their visitations to. uproot the just-sown wicked tares, openly calling them "Jesuits," and placarding the parish with posters, from whose small type stood out in bloated capitals:

BEWARE!

CREEPING PRIESTS!!

BLEEDING LIES!!!

'Altogether, he was so different from the prim, pompous being a "High-Church parson" is often supposed to be that I could not help remarking to him how widely he differed from the popular notion. Instead of a dogmatist, as stiff as starch, a somewhat spooney spectre, "walking ever with averted eyes," fixed on its beloved Middle Ages, I had found a genial, quick-witted man of nineteenth-century flesh and blood, able to laugh with all his lungs, and whilst fixedly (however funnily) of opinion that his own theological system is by far the best adapted to the wants of the present, willing (at any rate, in word) to make wide allowance for diversity of views, even to bid God-speed to the worthy City missionary who dogs him on his rounds, under the conscientious conviction that he must be somewhere branded with the mark of the Beast.'

On the offer of Father Stanton the writer set out on a round of visits in the parish, ' visits, of course, on this occasion chiefly friendly instead of spiritual. 'St. Alban's district was broiling like rancid bacon on the bright May afternoon on which I joined my clerical guide for a parochial ramble. I had half expected to find him still in his cassock, but that was doffed, and he wore the dress, clerical "dog-collar" included, in which Roman Catholic priests usually take their walks abroad. It did not seem, however, to win him much reverence from the Romanists amongst his parishioners. They glanced at him suspiciously, as if they could not exactly make him out--somewhat as young swallows might at a bat zigzagging past their nest; he was very much like the parent bird, but still he was not the real thing. Some of the shopkeepers, too, silently scowled at him, but he made charitable allowance for their hostility. They disliked his views, and even if they were inclined to come to their parish church on Sunday, the chances were that they might be crowded out of it in the morning by the fashionable folk who flock to its services; "but what can we do?--the seats are free, and the first-comer is first served." The poorer parishioners, too, he said, were but sparsely represented at the forenoon services. "They had their Sunday dinner to cook--an important item in the poor man's economy." A good-natured excuse to be made by one who leads the abstemious life with which, not in Lent only, the inmates of the clergy-house are credited. The great majority of the poor amongst whom we passed, however, were perfectly respectful to their pastor. It is something like calling on a rabbit in a warren to find out the tenant of a particular room in St. Alban's. We had now and then to stop to inquire which of several common stairs was the right one to go up, and in every instance the loungers appeared to answer the "parson's" question with civility--some of them with smiling cheerfulness and welcome. The only thing approaching to a personal insult was a very innocuous one. An exceedingly small boy, no yet promoted to the dignity of breeches, and vague in his notions of ecclesiastical polity, shrilly shouted: "There goes hold S----o' the Hirish Church!" and then took to his heels as if such caustic satire must necessarily provoke the most vindictive vengeance. My guide certainly merited civility, for nothing could be more courteous than his manner to the poor. There was not the slightest trace of Mrs. Pardiggle-ism in it. He chatted with the old women, and joked with the little ones far more like an eldest son or a big brother than the conventional "proud priest." He took off his hat to bobbing apple-women, and shook hands with any of his "children" he met in the street, however dirty might be their paws. One of these "children" was a stout young man, labour-stained and perspiring. Another was a grey-haired old man who sold lettuces and watercress, who, when asked if the fine weather did not spoil his market by making vegetables too plentiful, answered that he "didn't care how cheap greenstuff got, for then the poor could buy the more of it."

' Stumbling up a low, narrow, crooked, wooden staircase, one flight of which had just been scrubbed, but most of the steps of which were very dirty, we reached, at the top of the house, what was far more like a triangular manger than a human habitation. It was simply a corner boarded off from the landing. A patched sack was the only door, and within, in the dark, lay a moaning old woman--a sad drunkard.

In a somewhat larger and lighted room in another house--larger, but almost filled by a small bedstead, whose posts had been truncated to suit the lowness of the ceiling--a stifling-hot fire was burning. Two tiny earthenware teapots stood upon the hobs. A tea-tray was upon the floor. There were only two chairs in the room. Propped up in one sat a poor creature, wheezing for breath, whose husband had recently stabbed her and broken three of her ribs. The other chair was given up to me as a stranger, whilst the clergyman and the sick woman's sister, who had come to take tea with her (bringing her own teapot), seated themselves on the two ends of the bed. When the pastor spoke gently to the sufferer of the peace to be derived from resigning our wills to that of "the good GOD," whether for life or death, the poor creature burst into a flood of tears. The idea of death .was awful to her. To soothe her she was told that even the most holy men had thought it a solemn thing to die; but here the sister, accustomed to the often deadly brawls of Holborn courts, struck in, scouting such feeling as cowardly. "Oh, come now, Mr. S----, I don't see that. Do the best you can, you know, and then I don't see as it matters when or how you dies. That's my way o' lookin' at it."

'Our next visit was to a bedridden old woman, sitting up in bed in a pretty good-sized room, which, amongst a little other furniture, held a sheet-covered sofa. Her pale face lighted up when she saw who had come in.

' "Yes, indeed, Mr. S----, I'm glad to see you. It's so lonesome lying here without a soul to speak to. Oh yes, the dear lady called, and most kind to me she's been. She's given me stuff for two beautiful bed-gowns, and the money to get 'em made up. Of course I'm glad to see any friends of yours--can't the gentleman find a seat?" So the old soul cheerfully ran on at first, but she soon modulated into a minor key. Her "lodgers," late occupants of the covered sofa, for whom she had done "ever so much," had left "ever so much" in her debt, and she feared that she should lose what she called her "pension" from the parish for bringing such people into it. "However, the Almighty'll make it up to me where I'm going," she remarked in a tone of somewhat constrained resignation, as if she would have preferred the bird in the hand. Whilst she talked she went on stitching strips of grey squirrel's fur into a child's boa. She had done this work for the same house for I forget how many years, making, when she had paid for her thread, about three farthings on each boa.

'I saw so many poor creatures in bed on that bright and, in the suburbs, balmy afternoon, that I cannot exactly remember the order in which I saw them; but the next, I think, was a little woman literally wasted to skin and bone. She was so pale and pinched, her chin stood up so sharp that, when she ceased to speak, I could scarcely believe that she was not already a corpse. Because she was ill her husband had deserted her--left her to lie alone in a dreary closet, November dim, though the streets blazed in the May sunshine. She spoke hopefully of being able to get into an hospital as soon as she was strong enough to go before a board of gentlemen in Piccadilly; but she looked far more likely to go, let us hope, to Paradise. Ill as she was, she could think of others. The son of a lodger in the same house, who sometimes visited her, was ailing, she thought, and the 'mother would like to see the priest. This mother was a hearty Yorkshirewoman, seated at tea in a room better furnished than any we had yet visited. A great bedstead, with heavy hangings, stood in one corner, and on a little chiffonier there was a display of glass and crockery, and a tiny fern under a case. The room was very close, but for her children's sake, the good woman said, she could not open the window. The lodger above was a "verra wrathful wummun," and her language was downright awful. For her part, she fain wearied to get back to York. She was diffusely communicative on her domestic concerns. One of her boys was to be taken next day--at least, not to be taken, for they'd made him pay three shillings for it--to a school treat at--what was the name of that hill where the young gentleman that got twenty years jobbed his young woman?--that the calves saved, you know, sir?--ah, yes, Buckhurst Hill--that was the name. At this point Bill, the boy on whose behalf we had called, came in--a chubby, clean, rosy, neatly dressed little urchin, whose ailment turned out to be nothing more serious than an earache. Bill blushed through bashfulness when his mother informed the priest of his ambition to become a "singing boy," and with delight when the priest took him on his knee and held out hopes of the chorister's cassock and surplice being within Bill's reach. The Yorkshirewoman was one of the faithful. She expatiated on the comparative beauty of the church's appearances on different past festivals, listened delighted to a forecast of the eclipsing splendours it would display on the approaching St. Alban's Day, and proudly showed a little engraving of CHRIST on the Cross, which one of the clergy had given her, and which her husband was going to frame and glaze for her.

'The next good soul we visited was a still Higher Churchwoman, "although," said my guide with some pride, "she came from a Low-Church parish, and at first was most bigotedly opposed to us. I'm going to take you to our West End now," he added with a laugh, as we turned into the quadrangle of the Model Buildings. Although hemmed in by other buildings, they certainly did look refreshingly light and airy after the holes in which we had been burrowing, and the room we entered was not only spotlessly clean, but had even an elegant appearance. Illuminated texts ran round the walls, which bore also a crucifix, Scripture prints, red-crossed devotional bills of some kind, and a "St. Alban's, Holborn, Parochial Almanac." A striped scarf, the gift of one of the ladies, made a pretty cover for a side-table, and on it, in a glass sugar-basin, stood a bouquet "from Devonshire this morning," the gift of the same kind lady. The occupant of the room, an invalid middle-aged woman, who sat, neatly dressed, upon her bed, said that she had not seen a single violet this spring, and expressed a hope that flowers would be more plentiful this year than they were last. "I know there were not many then," she said, "because I did not get as many as usual from the church." She looked very pleased when her clergyman told her that he had tried hard to find her some cowslips when he was on his last "mission" in the country, and that he meant to try every now and then to get a special hamper of flowers for distribution amongst the parishioners. The conversation turned from cowslips to auricular confession. I listened astonished whilst the good woman talked glibly about the "octave" of this and the "octave" of that, and named a day on which she would feel obliged if the priest would call to confess her.

'We went into another comparatively cheerful scene. In the midst of the dirt and noise of St. Alban's, there is a clean, quiet, little paved quadrangle, bordered by low, old-fashioned little tenements of the almshouse order of architecture. A few children of a tidier class than elsewhere were skipping and trundling their hoops on the hot grey stones; the neat, squat little houses seemed to be nodding in the sunlight. In one of these cottages my guide met with the heartiest welcome he had yet received; but it seemed to be due to his kindness of heart rather than his clerical character. He had been in the habit of visiting there daily whilst the children of the house were ill. "Oh, I am glad to see you, Mr. S----," said the mother; "you, as used to come so horfen. I was sorry a'most to see you every day, 'cos why you came; and in course I'm glad my boys is better; but it's lonely like not seeing you now. It's so nice to talk to a gen'l'man as takes a hinterest in a party. I likes all our clergies, but I'm used to you, you know, sir."

'One more sample of parishioners' welcome will suffice. At the bottom of a'narrow court we had knocked so long at the door of a little cottage, jammed up in a corner, without getting an answer that we were just turning away, under the impression that it must be empty, when the door was opened by an unshorn, lame old man. "Good-day, sir," he said, not looking over-pleased. "My wife's gone to the horsespittle to git my physic; but walk in, and set down." He hobbled before us into a little room, whose air smelt strong enough of tobacco to explain the secret of the old man's crustiness. We had, no doubt, disturbed the poor old fellow whilst he was smoking, and whilst we had been knocking he had been puffing away at his pipe like a locomotive, to finish it before he let us in. The conversation somehow turned on Ascension Day. The lame old man made a most lame attempt to appear interested in an assertion of its equal right with Christmas Day to be kept as a general holiday, and in the announcement that there would be four early communions at St. Alban's on that day, for the convenience of workmen who wished to communicate before proceeding to their work. The epochs of the Christian year had a very faint hold on the old man's mind, save as associated with personal material benefit. If he could have been told that Ascension Day would bring him roast beef and plum-pudding and a pot of beer, his appreciation of its claims to respect would have been marvellously stimulated. His stolidity changed into attentive listening with droll suddenness when he was informed that henceforth he would be allowed a weekly dole out of the offertory.

'I have kept the visit that struck me most for my last record. At the top of a squalid house lay two smallpox patients, in the same room with a corpse disfigured by the same dreadful disease. I started back with a sick shudder when I ascertained who and what were the occupants of that room; but my companion entered it as calmly, to all appearance, as he had entered any other. Whilst he was in that awful chamber, with the dying and the dead, I stood at an open window on the landing below. At a workshop on the other side of a dirty little yard, in which the sunshine seemed to stagnate, carpenters were whistling music-hall tunes over their planes and up-curling shavings; up the staircase every minute came the filthy, blasphemous language of a knot of sluttish women, squatting on the step of the open door, uttered with as little malice prepense as when the decently bred use "the" or "and."'

The round of visits were ended for the writer in Good Words. But for Father Stanton and his companions of St. Alban's they went on daily, year in and year out. Changes took place: rookeries were pulled down and blocks of dwellings built. But sickness and misery, and all the shame of 'man's inhumanity to man,' still remained, and still call for the ministry of reconciliation in St. Alban's parish as elsewhere. And throughout the fifty years that cry of the weary and heavy-laden was never left unanswered. Neither can it ever be while St. Alban's stands, and the faith of its ministers endures.

CHAPTER III
AT ST. ALBAN'S, HOLBORN, 1883-1912

THE Rev. R. A. J. Suckling took up the charge of St. Alban's, Holborn, as Vicar of the parish in January, 1883, exchanging his living of St. Peter's, London Docks, with Father Mackonochie, in the hope--a vain one--that the latter might henceforth be left in peace.

It was not an easy thing to do what Father Suckling did, but it has been well said of Mackonochie's successor that he is 'a man of inspired Christian tact,' and the loyalty of the curates of St. Alban's to their new chief was conspicuous.

When in February, 1908, the people of St. Alban's celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coming of Father Suckling, Canon Newbolt, of St. Paul's, explained something of the situation at that coming:

'The history of Father Suckling's connection with this parish carries us back to a very dark period in the last century in our Churchmanship here in England. His coming here was in consequence of a sort of rift in the clouds at that time, and was the one bright spot in many things that were very dark, and I think the best thing is to forget them. But the difficulties to which he succeeded at such a time, we can all of us imagine must have been immense. There were of course the public difficulties at a time when men's minds were charged with every kind of party feeling. He was asked to come here in a most complicated state of things, when Father Mackonochie was gradually being worried to death, prison being the ordinary mode of showing your dislike to another's opinions. All sorts of cross issues were going on, and it was a very complicated state of things indeed into which Father Suckling entered at that time. Added to this, St. Alban's had the faults of its virtues. There were a great many of what we might call private or personal difficulties in stepping into a wonderfully worked parish, and into a parish with such a history as this. It is a difficult thing at all times for a priest to step into a parish where the old machinery is going on. But when he was called to enter such a parish as this, with such clergy under him, to act as Vicar, it was a call of unusual difficulty. I do not suppose that the reign at St. Alban's is anything like an absolute monarchy; but there is a sort of recognition which is claimed, and which anybody must have felt rather difficult, especially in the case of those who were fellow-students with him at Cuddesdon years ago--and such curates! There was the fiery zeal of Father Russell to be repressed; there was the coy, shrinking nature of Father Stanton; and there was Father Hogg to be taught the first elements of liturgical science--all these things to be enterprised by a person who was placed in the position of Vicar.'

A few of Father Suckling's words on that occasion may also well be quoted:

'When the exchange was thought right, we were first of all to have been instituted on the same day (December 7), but the Bishop of London (Bishop Jackson) thought that the first step should be the resignation of Father Mackonochie, and this accordingly took place on December 1. After his resignation I saw Father Mackonochie very frequently, and many letters passed between us. I cannot find words to express the admiration that I felt for him, his strength and courage, his absolute singlemindedness, as well as for the work he had done in defence of the Church of England. And with the thought of him I must always link the name of Father Stanton, whose help and patient sympathy have never failed me. I cannot resist mentioning here, and with a certain pride, some words of his which have been a great consolation to me to remember. He told me, shortly after my induction, that had I not come to St. Alban's, he himself could not have stayed here. I may therefore claim that my being here has done some good, for it has secured for you his presence.'

There were several other speeches at that meeting, and for us Father Stanton's must be recalled here, not only for its light on Stanton's relations with Father Suckling, but because it was a thoroughly characteristic speech, typical of many speeches made at St. Alban's at various festive and social gatherings:

'I speak, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the clergy of St. Alban's. You have heard of the difficulty--our chairman has told us--that Father Suckling had to face when he came here. He was thrown into the midst of ecclesiastical polemics, and to undertake so strenuous a work, that the incumbent who preceded him was, in most people's opinion, done to death. Yet he came, and, as you know, here he is still. He met the clergy of

St. Alban's. He came and took on the clergy frankly and freely.

'Now, I think that is a very great point, being one of them, because one of the officers of the Church who were in and out with us at that time described us in this way: "Oh," he said, "as to Mr.'Ogg, 'e'svery'Igh Church; 'e's as 'igh as they make 'em. As for Mr. Russell, 'e is Broad Church; and as for Father Maxwell, 'e's very low." And I said, "Well, but what am I?" "Oh," he says, "you ain't any Church at all."'55' Now, that was the job-lot that Father Suckling took on. And here we are, three of us still, all four working together. I don't believe there is a parallel in the Diocese of London to this, and, in our dear old homely mother-tongue of Holborn, I think that fact fairly captures the bun.

'Well, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all distinctly to know, for I am sure that I am voicing all your feelings when I say, that the present given to Father Suckling is the expression of our heart. Father Suckling does not need any present at all. It is not his need; he is not broke, and the clergy are not going to shoot the moon. He does not need to have the present, but the need is on our side--we need to give it him. It is the expression of our feeling and goodwill, and we must express it in this way; and we believe it is a way which he himself will appreciate. And here I want just to say something to you who feel that, perhaps, we ought to have given him a personal present. I feel with the givers; and, as one who received a gift here, I think that personal presents are at times a little embarrassing. When you gave me those two beautiful pictures six months ago--well, I had to displace others to put them up. And if any of you will go into Father Suckling's room, you will see that there are so many personal gifts that I am afraid he will tumble down and break his crown. We might, perhaps, have got one of those new-made diamonds of which you have heard so much lately. But what would he have done with it? He wouldn't have worn it in his stock or on his finger. He would have put it into a pyx at St. Alban's, or sent it for a chalice to Ascot. And so we have given him the present as it is, that he may use it just as he likes. Now, I do not know that there is anything happier in that sort of way than being able to help and give what we like, out of our own hearts, to objects that we have at heart. I do not think I ever like anything so much as giving to what I love to give to, and I do not think that Father Suckling will ever be more happy than when he has the money to use exactly as he pleases. And all we want is that he should be the happier in the gift, and we are happy with his happiness. I know money is money--i.e., matter--but matter conveys spirit, and with it comes our hearty good wish, our gratitude for all that he has done, and our hope that he will continue with us right on to the very end.'

So, then, Stanton's work at St. Alban's went on and prospered under Father Suckling as it had done under Mackonochie. The ritual at the services in the church was unchanged; folks continued to flock to the confessional, and there were no more lawsuits or prosecutions to disturb the peace of clergy and people in their worship of GOD. From time to time the Bishop of London --first Dr. Creighton and then Dr. Winnington-Ingram--required, under pressure of Protestant public opinion, some modification of ceremony, some closer following of the Prayer-Book; and by episcopal command the asperges were given up, the Ten Commandments recited, and incense used more sparingly at the Sunday morning service. But the church was no longer banned, as the years went by, by the Bishop of London, as it had been under Tait and Jackson. Archbishop Tait had justified the refusal of Dr. Jackson to hold a Confirmation in St. Alban's, saying bluffly to the deputation which waited upon him in June, 1875: 'Quite right, too. If he were to go to St. Alban's and mix himself up with your ceremonies, it would be taken as a recognition of them.' Dr. Temple, without ' mixing himself up' with other people's ceremonies, was content to do what seemed to him his duty by St. Alban's, and held a Confirmation there as in other churches. (It was said that Temple, in the Clergy House after the service, spoke in his wonted gruff manner, saying: 'I like your work here, but I don't like your incense,' and that Stanton replied: 'Well, my lord, it's the best we can get at eight shillings a pound.') If St. Alban's came to win some measure of episcopal approval, and was no longer shunned by Bishops as a place unclean, Father Stanton received no favours from high authority. His powers as a preacher increased, and he loomed ever larger at St. Alban's, a living manifestation of the gospel of goodwill, a continual witness to brotherhood and fellowship. He had started the St. Martin's League for postmen in 1877, and, with Dolling helping him for some years, this was at its height in the late 'eighties. Then there was the Brotherhood of Jesus of Nazareth, and all that it meant--to be noticed later--and Father Stanton's famous 'Mothers' Meeting,' with its annual excursion to Southend or some similar delectable place.

Stanton went to America for a holiday in the summer of 1885, and his annual letter to the St. Martin's League was written from the Rocky Mountains. 'You won't recognise me,' he wrote to his postmen friends; 'real swagger, large-brimmed, white felt hat, with rattlesnake skin round it, flannel shirt laced with twine, leather straps on knees, hair on chin, and knowing twinkle in eye--but I will soon let you know all about it.'

Mackonochie, driven out of St. Peter's, London Docks, by his relentless pursuers, had returned to help in a voluntary capacity at St. Alban's in 1884; and then, on December 15, death took him in the Highland solitudes and snows of Mamore Forest. Father Russell brought the body back to St. Alban's, and vast crowds watched respectfully the funeral procession of Alexander Heriot Mackonochie through the London streets. 'I did not,' said a local tradesman, 'agree with him; but he was a holy man, and did more for London than most of us; so I for one shall put my shutters up.' At Woking, in the St. Alban's burial-ground, Stanton said the last prayers over his dead chief; and committed his friend's body to the dust, and his soul to GOD.

'It is ungracious (Stanton wrote of Mackonochie), and beyond just surmise, to say that the enfeeblement of his manly, strong, loving life was the necessary result of the repeated prosecutions which the Church Association thought it their duty to maintain; but there can be little doubt that underneath the brave cheerfulness with which he met all the reverses, and submitted to the indignities consequent upon, them, there lay a very keen sensitiveness, and that the "iron entered his soul." For, although never admitted by him, it was observable; so that no one wondered at the storm-beaten expression on his face, and the broken utterances of his lips, which marked the two declining years of his life.'

In Father Stanton, too, under 'the brave cheerfulness' and joyous faith in GOD and man, 'there lay a very keen sensitiveness.' After more than twenty years had been spent in St. Alban's parish, he was still a suspected and dangerous person in the Established Church, to whom no favour should be shown, and no character given.

Stanton might preach here and there outside St. Alban's, and he did, raising funds by his preaching for the Curates' Fund; but it was at St. Alban's, and amongst his own people, that his office was fulfilled. With nothing of the recluse about him, always thoroughly alive to what was passing in the world around him, and interested in public affairs and the movements of the times--a reader of newspapers, and well disposed towards pressmen--Stanton understood that he was of no account in the Established Church, and accepted the situation frankly and without complaint.

In the years of ripe and experienced manhood, and on till the very last year of his life, Stanton was accustomed to preach every Sunday morning at St. Alban's, except in Advent and Lent, when, as in August, he preached on Monday evenings, and on Good Friday he would preach the Three Hours. Of course, the congregation of St. Alban's is not confined, and never was from the first, to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; it is made up of people from far and wide--many of them, it is true, old parishioners who have removed to a more salubrious district, but who are bound by ties of association and lasting affection to the church where they first heard the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST and learnt the meaning of religion. Old worshippers at St. Alban's may be found in the far corners of the earth--in Australia, Canada, South Africa--and there is generally a picture of Father Stanton to be seen in their homes. For mankind is apt to personify all great causes in some human being, man or woman, and must needs look upon a picture or image of the person honoured and beloved, especially when the conditions of time and space make faith grow cold and hearts grow hard. And the 'great cause' Stanton personified to thousands at St. Alban's was always the same through the years--it was the religion of JESUS CHRIST, involving the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, the love for CHRIST'S Mother, Our Lady, and brotherhood and neighbourliness amongst men, to the utter obliteration of all lines of social caste, rank, and racial difference. That Gospel he preached in season and out of season at St. Alban's, in that faith he lived and died.

No wonder that the spirit of fraternity brooded over St. Alban's, and the sense of fellowship fell on its worshippers, when for fifty years Arthur Stanton ministered at its altar, preached from its pulpit, and went in and out amongst us as a man amongst men.

Many tokens of the goodwill at St. Alban's--the consciousness of a common cause built up, so largely under Stanton's ministry, by common worship, and by the realisation of a common faith in the things that matter for mankind: things temporal, but, even more, the things eternal--can be recalled by old members of its congregation.

Mr. John D. Sedding, the architect, an artist of singular genius, a man of singular strength and beauty and attractiveness of character, was churchwarden of St. Alban's from 1882 to 1889, and on his death, in 1891, Mr. Selwyn Image described (in the pages of The Church Reformer) how his friendship with Sedding came about:

'I remember well the first day I ever spoke to Mr. Sedding. It was many years ago now, at the time when I was in the habit of attending the morning service at St. Alban's, Holborn. One Sunday I was strolling back with a friend along Holborn, when Mr. Sedding came up with us from behind, and, stopping us, held out his hand and said: "Mr. Image" (I do not know how he knew my name), "there is a sort of freemasonry amongst us worshippers at St. Alban's. I have seen you many a time; let us make acquaintance." The action, the manner, the sunny look in his face, the firm grasp of his hand, were all eminently characteristic of the man.'

They were all no less eminently characteristic of St. Alban's, and quite eminently uncharacteristic of the Church of England generally.

If in social matters St. Alban's had its special atmosphere of good-fellowship, so, too, in its worship there was a feeling that nowhere else in the Church of England did such devotion exist. St. Alban's was the

'. . . dedicated city, Dearly lov'd by GOD on high.'

Here it was, in this most homely of churches, the 'faith of our fathers' had been restored, and was 'living still, in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword.' People far removed from old Gray's Inn Lane and Baldwin's Gardens would make a point of getting to St. Alban's at the Annual Festival in June, and would throng the church at Easter and Christmas, and drop in for Stanton's Monday night sermons in Lent and August.

It was Stanton's habit on Sunday mornings to come into church and go direct to the pulpit for the sermon; and then, the sermon over, he would go out, and come in again at the back of the church towards the end of the service, and squeeze in somewhere, unobtrusively, in the men's seats. As people went out, friends and acquaintances could shake his hand, and exchange a few words of greeting. The presence of Arthur Stanton, the smile of recognition, the grasp of the hand--all these things made St. Alban's a place of home for men and women, and gave it a human touch which never jarred on the high and solemn worship of GOD, nor distracted the spirit of devotion. It was GOD'S house, this St. Alban's--that was unmistakable; but it was a place consecrated by GOD'S love for mankind, and by the love of GOD'S ministers for their fellows. It belonged to GOD, St. Alban's, but it belonged to man also; and here GOD dwelt with man, and was present among men at the Holy Eucharist all the days.

So Father Stanton taught us. And so we believed.

And as the years passed the conviction never waned, for the teaching never failed.

At the altar, in the confessional, in the pulpit, at the back of the church shaking hands with his 'children' Arthur Stanton was ever one and the same man--'Father Stanton, of St. Alban's. He might be no prophet in the Israel of the Establishment, but he was the 'Father' of St. Alban's, and countless children grew up to call him 'Dad.' For it was on St. Alban's and its people he lavished the riches of his gifts, and to St. Alban's and its people he gave his strength and his very life. None of the official or respectable High Church societies of the Church of England could claim his services; he never spoke at May meetings, nor appeared on platforms at Church Congresses. He was not 'a prominent figure' at important public gatherings--religious, political, or philanthropic; to the world at large he was but a name, and to the Church of England but a curate of St. Alban's, Holborn. He did sometimes preach for the Guild of St. Matthew and for the Church and Stage Guild in the 'eighties; but both these societies, now no longer in existence, were thoroughly unrespectable. In the 'nineties Father Hogg's Guild of St. Edmund had his cordial support.

So the years went by for Arthur Stanton, and the handsome youth who came down from Oxford and Cuddesdon to serve as deacon under Mackonochie passed from the prime of manhood to old age, without abating one jot of his enthusiasm for the souls and bodies of men, or faltering in his ministry of the Gospel of CHRIST.

But even after more than forty years as a curate, and an unpaid curate at that, at St. Alban's, Father Stanton was not allowed to continue his ministry without rebuke from those in authority.

One of the periodical 'crises' in the Church of England had been started in 1898 on the old subject of ritual, and the Press had managed to keep it going at intervals, in spite of the South African War, right on till 1904. Then the Conservative Government decided to quiet the 'crisis' down by the good old plan of a Royal Commission on the alleged 'disorders' in the Church of England. For two years the Commissioners, of whose number were the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Davidson), the late Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Paget), and Dr. Gibson (Bishop of Gloucester), were busy collecting evidence concerning ritualistic practices in various churches; and though it was quite outside the particular instructions issued to the Commission, they also reported on certain 'manuals' used by Anglicans at their private devotions.

Now, one of these manuals was 'Catholic, Prayers for Church of England People,' sixth edition (twenty-first thousand), 1904, and this book had a commendatory preface by A. H. Stanton, and was generally supposed to have been compiled by him. As a matter of fact, it was compiled by the late E. A. Harris, who was a curate at St. Alban's from 1887 to 1900, and resigned his curacy to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. But Stanton gave his approval to 'Catholic Prayers,' and stated in the preface: 'It is not for a moment maintained that all the prayers are in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer--by the very terms of their issue they are in addition to it'; and added these words: ' Surely our private devotions are not regulated by the State. Ubi autem Spiritus Domini ibi libertas.'

On investigation, the Royal Commissioners found that these 'Catholic Prayers' included inter alia the Canon of the Mass in English, the office for the Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Litany of Our Lady--the Litany of Loretto in Latin--and the prayer of Pope Leo XIII. to Our Lady for Unity. There was also the instruction that everyone ought to go to their Easter duties--that is, to Confession and Holy Communion at Easter.

The Commissioners were horrified that such a book of devotion should be issued by a Church of England curate, and declared in their Report published in June, 1906: 'We have difficulty in understanding how the author of "Catholic Prayers for Church of England People"--described by the present Bishop of London (Dr. A. F. Winnington-Ingram) as "a thoroughly disloyal work"--has been allowed to hold a licence in the Diocese of London under successive Bishops without being required to withdraw the book from circulation.'

At once the newspaper men came buzzing round St. Alban's wanting to know what Father Stanton was going to do about it all. As to the Report, it seemed to Stanton that the matters reported on were very trivial by the side of the open attack on the fundamentals of the Christian Faith by Modernists, and Rationalists, and 'New Theologians.' He refused to make a pronouncement in the press, on the ground that he was 'only a curate,' but at St. Alban's, on July 8, he spoke out:

'This controversy about the details of public worship sinks into insignificance before the destructive criticism which attacks our common Christianity. I cannot hear the chatter as I listen to the enemy thundering at the gates of our citadel. If the Old Testament is given up, and the Gospel of St. John (said not to be his at all), and the Synoptic Gospels are almost all of them untrustworthy, then we all, Catholics and Protestants, fall with them. The Catholic priest must pull down his altar and discard his chasuble, and the Protestant minister destroy his pulpit and pull off his gown, for the ground is cut away from under the feet of both of us, and we have been teaching as the Gospel of our LORD JESUS CHRIST the invention of man, and--GOD help us all.'

A year later, at the great meeting held in Holborn Town Hall, Stanton, in his speech, referred to the personal allusion in the Report:

' Well, then, the next trouble that came upon me, when I thought everything was going on all right, when everybody was kind to me, and all you people came to my Monday evening services--there is one thing I hope you will never forget: there is nothing so inspiring to a man as to meet his fellow-men in this way--everything was going -well, till one evening when I was taking a class, I was told a reporter wanted to see me. I went down, and he said: "Have you heard about the Royal Commission?" I said: "Well, I have heard about it, but I don't care anything about it." Then three more came, and I began to get a little irritated. One shouted up: "Well, but supposing they turn you out of the Church, what are you going to do?" And then I did shout down: "Sell cat's-meat."

'Well, of course, as you know, the Bishop of London sent for me, He was exceedingly kind, It never entered into his head for one moment to take away my licence, and he knew perfectly well that, as 'far as I was concerned, he might throw me out to fill the maw of the Protestant wolf, rather than that he should be torn to pieces. He would not think of it for a moment. But he asked me to withdraw my name from the preface of the little book, "Catholic Prayers," which, it seems, had brought me into trouble. Of course, I consented. But I did say this to him: "You may think 'Catholic Prayers' disloyal to the principles of the Reformation and to the Advertisements of Elizabeth, but this I will say to you about the book: there is not one single word in it against the inspiration of the Word of GOD; there is not one word in it against the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; there is not one word in it against the atonement of our Blessed LORD and SAVIOUR on the Cross, or His Resurrection; nor is there one word in it against the Sacraments and the Saints."

'But, of course, I could not help feeling it sometimes. As the shadows of life begin to gather round me, I ask myself, as every man in my place would ask himself: "Well, now, am I right? Why should I be right and the others wrong?" There are always moments when a man asks himself those questions when he has passed through vicissitudes like those I have named, and been inhibited over and over again. And so it is that a meeting like this is an assurance which I shall carry with me to my very end.'

The meeting whereat these words were said was got up in the first place by Sir John Buchanan-Riddell, and other men who attended Stanton's Monday night services, and the chief arrangements were made by the Rev. E. F. Russell and Mr. F. E. Sidney. It was held in the Holborn Town Hall, on June 26, 1907, under the chairmanship of Mr. George W. E. Russell, and it took the form of a resolute and unmistakable answer to the uncomplimentary opinions of the Royal Commission. A chalice and paten, and two pictures--one of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the other of the altar at St. Alban's--were presented to Father Stanton, with the following address, signed by 3,600 men:

'DEAR FATHER STANTON,

'The signatures which follow this are the names of some only of a large body of men who count themselves deeply indebted to you for your teaching and influence at St. Alban's, Holborn, in particular, but also in many other churches.

'For some time there has been an impression amongst us that you could only imperfectly know how singularly helpful these services have been to us. Year after year we have listened to and profited by your words, and our appreciation and gratitude for them has grown until we can no longer keep silence, but, simply for our own relief, must tell you, in the simplest and most direct way we can, just what we feel. Your labour of love on our behalf has not been a wasted labour; it has done great good to many people, in particular to many men, who thank GOD for having given them the opportunity of knowing you. It has been not only the charm of your speech which has drawn us to you, but--what is, of course, of far higher value--the depth and reality of your religious teaching, your devotion to the LORD JESUS CHRIST, and your conspicuous ability to enter with sympathy into our thoughts and needs, and into all that which at this time makes faith and life difficult for men.

'We do not forget that there are women, in numbers not less than our own, who share our gratitude to you, and who would like, if opportunity were given, to express that gratitude; but it seems to us that your message has been preeminently a message to men, and has proved itself pre-eminently serviceable to men. For this reason we have kept this expression of appreciation and thanks to the men only who have profited by your ministry.

'Accept, dear Father Stanton, the heartfelt gratitude and prayers of us all, of those of us whom you know personally, and of many more whom you can never know; and believe us to remain, ' Your greatly obliged and affectionate friends.'

The meeting, with its wonderful enthusiasm, brought out not only the depth of affection felt for Stanton, but the wide appeal his ministry had made.

Father Suckling, as Vicar of St. Alban's and as Stanton's friend, declared that chief amongst the parishes that were 'indebted to Father Stanton for his broadcast sowing of the seed of the Gospel was St. Alban's, Holborn,' and added a personal tribute: 'I have known him--I have been trying to think back--and I fancy the first time I met him was in 1860. That is a long time. But there are three things which, according to an American writer, would really make the knowledge of a person worth having. They are these: First, says this American writer, "Have you travelled with that individual?" I have. Second, "Have you lived with him?" And I answer, "I have." The third, says this writer, is the most important, because it is very often a test by which many persons fall, and that is: "Have you had any money transactions with him?" And to this also I answer, "I have." Now, having been in those three positions, I want to bear my unhesitating testimony, and say how fully in accord I am with this splendid meeting in trying to do the utmost honour to him. We cannot do too much.'

Mr. George W. E. Russell mentioned that, as a Harrow boy in 1871, he had of his own free choice, and without any intervention or advice, placed himself, while still a schoolboy, under the spiritual guidance of Father Stanton.

Two well-known Nonconformist ministers--the Rev. C. Sylvester Home, M.P., and the Rev. F. C. Spurr (of Maze Pond Baptist Church)--contributed their testimonies to Father Stanton's ministry. The former wrote: 'I signed the Address to Father Stanton with the greatest pleasure, in token of my appreciation of his social work.' Mr. Spurr, who is now in Australia, spoke, "first of all, as a personal friend of Father Stanton; and, secondly, as the mouthpiece of a large number of intelligent Nonconformists who have signed the Address to Father Stanton, and who admire with the greatest admiration his magnificent evangelical teaching, and the splendid social work that he has accomplished for the last thirty years.' Mr. Spurr went on to speak of Father Stanton's influence as a preacher and as a man: 'My lips are sealed as to names, but some who are tied to me by very close bonds, and who were once outside all religious influences, drifting into scepticism and worse, have been brought through that man's Monday sermons at St. Alban's to a humble faith in JESUS CHRIST, a faith of the intellect, a faith of the heart, and of the practical life. ... GOD has put a great love into his heart, and it seems to me that that is the secret of his magnetic and marvellous personality, through which GOD has accomplished so much during these forty years. Father Stanton appears to me to be a perennial. . . . He will remain a young man to the end; and when GOD has finished with him here, and he passes beyond the veil, he will be like all GOD'S servants yonder--a young man.'

Mr. William Richards, an old member of the Brotherhood of Jesus of Nazareth, a workman, 'born in St. Alban's parish, and educated in St. Alban's schools, added his word to the chorus of goodwill.' Father Stanton told some of us one Sunday afternoon,' said Mr. Richards in the course of his speech, 'that he was travelling on a certain railway, in a third-class carriage--as I believe he always does, unless he can get into the guard's van--and one of the railway employees got into the same carriage. The Father, in his usual way "palled" on to this chap, and they got talking! The railwayman told Father Stanton of the large number of hours he worked, and the smallness of his pay; and the Father said: "Well, now, don't you think it's a shame that a good many men receive from the company for which you work a very much larger sum in the shape of dividends on their investments, for which they do nothing, than you receive as wages after working the very long hours you do work in the week?" That is a point which seems to call for a word of appreciation from me as a workman.'

Much of what Father Stanton said on that memorable night has already been quoted, and the conclusion of his speech revealed something of the secret of his life.

'This is a remarkable meeting, and you must account for it. There you are come together; and here am I--nothing but a miserable curate. Why should you come? I have not " kidded" you. What is it? I will tell you what it is.

'Don't make any mistake. Why are you here like this, to do me this honour and to show your love for me? It is because GOD has given me something better than emolument, and far better than position. GOD has given to me, blessed be His Holy Name, the love of my fellow-men. And amor vincit omnia--love conquers everything--and the one verse in GOD'S Holy Word that I pick out, which I should like to be written over my grave, is this: "GOD hath made of one blood all nations of men." Those words lie at the bottom of all credal and social difficulties and differences to unite all men together. It is blood and heart that make men one; for love ever, as you can see to-night, is reciprocal, and the words I should like to end with are Lowell's--

"He's true to GOD who's true to man; wherever wrong is
To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding
That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.

"GOD works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free
With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea.
Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.'

'So I end with the words of St. Paul, in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians: "Therefore, my brethren " (do not forget the my) "dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and my crown, so stand fast in the LORD, my dearly beloved."'

This meeting was the vindication of Father Stanton by the multitude whom he had taught and inspired, and for whom he had laboured in the ministry, against the gainsaying of Royal Commissioners.

Only a little more than five years of active work remained, and in those five years the full round of sermons was preached. Episcopal displeasure could still manifest itself, for even in 1912 the Bishop of Liverpool (Dr. Chavasse) declined to allow Stanton to preach in his diocese, though as far as London was concerned all was peace. But the disapproval of Bishops was a small matter to Stanton now. He was conscious of his length of years, despite all his buoyancy of spirit, and talked of 'slowing into the terminus.'

'I once remarked to him (we were nearly of the same age) that one sometimes wondered why young people did not care for our company as much as at one time they seemed to,' wrote Provost Ball, 'and then the recollection came to one, we are getting old, and the old are seldom attractive to the young. With almost passionate grief he exclaimed, "Oh, how bitterly I feel that myself!" Of late he had more than once spoken in confidence to me (and I suppose to others) of the way in which he felt that his powers and energies were wearing out. "I do not know how long I can stand it," he said. "I shall at all events stay on at St. Alban's as long as Suckling wants me, but if anything takes place that shows I am no longer of any special use to him, I shall probably go down to my sister's at Stroud, and remain there quietly till I shall see what my best course for the future will be."'

Illness fell upon Father Stanton early in 1912, but he got the better of this, and after a short visit to Stroud came back to preach his usual course of Lenten sermons at St. Alban's.

On November 24, 1912, Father Stanton preached his last sermon at St. Alban's, Holborn, from the text, ' He said unto them, How is that ye do not understand?' It was a sermon on the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes--the feeding of the five thousand--just an average sermon, such as Stanton had preached at St. Alban's any time in the years that were spent. But because it was the final utterance from the pulpit of St. Alban's, Holborn, of the preacher who for fifty years, through good report and ill, had set forth the Gospel of CHRIST with a plainness of speech and a flame of enthusiasm that drew multitudes to listen, and kindled faith and love in their hearts, the words spoken on that Sunday morning are cherished in the memory, and are graved on the recollection.

A few sentences from that farewell sermon stand out:

'We lose so much because we do not remember the things that are past, how that GOD has ever been mindful of us. He will bless us.

'I know that GOD has held you up ever since you were born, and your praise should be always of Him--He who gave you your breath, and gives you the breath you breathe at this moment. Look back into the past, and just remember how faithful and true GOD has been to you all your life.'

'Very often things seem very difficult indeed; but we forget this--the Providence of GOD over all things.'

'Our LORD made the situation all round about us. He has placed us under the circumstances in which we live, and we had better make the very best of it. It's no good saying we can do nothing, and dropping feeble hands beside us.'

'"Make the men sit down." Get to work; do the good you can. You did not make the situation, but you are placed in it. Thank GOD, then, and do all the good you can.'

'They took care of the broken pieces. Don't let any of the fragments be wasted. We lose so much because we waste it.'

'Perhaps something is said in the sermon you might remember. Do not forget it. Treasure it up and keep it.'

'Perhaps there is some verse of a hymn which touched you, and the warmth of soul came over your whole being. Well, do not forget it! Look it out. Keep it. It will come in some day when the shadows begin to fall around you, and you begin to hear the murmurings of the river beyond, and your eyes grow dim and you cannot see.'

'Treasure up the fragments: the text you love, the hymn you love, the memory of some visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Do not let anything be lost.'

'In keeping God's commandments there is great reward, and they that bless are blessed; and they that give, give more; and they that are kind, are kind again; and they that help, help again. They that bless are always blessing, and they that are blessing are blessed of GOD. Oh, how is it that we do not understand?'

Surely for Arthur Stanton on that day when the shadows began to fall, and the murmurings of the river beyond began to be heard, and the eyes grew dim to the fleeting vision of this world, was there a treasury of unwasted fragments. And he, whose life had been a life of blessing, was, living and dying, blessed of GOD and of man; and he who had given, and given again, and helped, and helped again, did understand in that day that in keeping GOD'S commandments there is veritably great reward, and they that bless are blessed.

On that same Sunday morning, November 24, 1912, Father Stanton celebrated the Holy Communion at eight o'clock for the last time at St. Alban's.

CHAPTER IV
THE PREACHER

STANTON preached his first sermon, at Mackonochie's request, in the basement of the Greville Street Chapel, in the last Sunday of the year 1862. The place was small, not more than fifty would it hold, and the preacher had only been ordained deacon a few weeks earlier. It was a trying ordeal, as Stanton has told us: 'I remember feeling the same creepy sensation I used to at Rugby when Dr. Bradley, my tutor, afterwards Dean of Westminster, put me on to translate a portion of a Greek play, with which my acquaintance was of the thinnest description.' But he counted on a sympathetic audience, and was not disappointed, as far as his hearers were concerned. Writing forty-two years later in the Treasury, Stanton recalled the text--'the subject of the sermon I forget'--and noted that ' it was the passage that the aged Bishop Fisher found when he opened his New Testament on the way to execution, a tragedy of our history that had at that time fixed .itself upon my mind. It was John xvii. 3: "And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true GOD, and JESUS CHRIST, whom Thou has sent." ' (The martyrdom of Blessed John Fisher under Henry VIII. was to Stanton a standing witness against 'establishment' and the tyranny of the State over the Church.)

Referring to this first sermon, the preacher did 'not remember any discomfiture in the delivery,' in spite of the nervousness in anticipation.

'Father Mackonochie made a few criticisms, adding some very kind remarks, and showed his appreciation of my efforts by very soon asking me to preach again. After this I took my regular turn with the others, and, perhaps, had rather more than my natural share of preaching.'

The manuscript of the first sermon was kept in the pocket unused, and very soon after manuscript was dropped altogether, and Stanton preached extempore for the rest of his life.

When Bishop Wilberforce went to St. Alban's one Sunday morning, February, 1866, to see what it was like, he heard Stanton preach, and commented on it in his diary: 'Stanton preached an earnest, useful, practical sermon on fasting: its duties, uses, difficulties, and temptations--thoroughly evangelical, but rather an imitation of Liddon.'

This idea of 'an imitation of Liddon' struck Stanton as most extraordinary. But others, besides Wilberforce, observed it who were at St. Alban's fifty years ago. Of course, the imitation was entirely unconscious, and perhaps to those who have only heard Father Stanton preach in the last twenty years the notion is as absurd as it was to Stanton himself.

But the 'thoroughly evangelical' note of the preaching which struck Wilberforce no one would deny. It was sounded all the time. That love for the Bible, which comes of knowing what it contains and is kept alive by close and intimate study of the sacred Scriptures--for with most of us only when we leave off reading the Bible do we cease to care for it, and the same thing is true, of course, of the writings of many profane authors--was a great factor in Stanton's ministerial life, and mightily affected his preaching. The 'music of the Gospel' was ever leading him home, and he must needs bring all who would give ear within sound of the brave song.

It was this love for the Bible, with the Evangelicalism that dwelt so constantly on the personal SAVIOUR, that endeared Stanton's preaching to many old-fashioned, earnest-minded Protestants, both Nonconformist and Church of England, whom the 'higher' criticism and the 'new theology,' and the general incursion of rationalist modernism, had driven from their accustomed places of worship.

At the Watch Night Service on New Year's Eve, and on the Monday evenings in Advent, Lent, and August, multitudes came to hear Stanton preach who never went to St. Alban's at any other time. On the Sunday morning Stanton's sermon was given in the middle of the solemn ritual of High Mass, but on the Monday nights the preacher had the service to himself, and, as an indignant High Churchman once complained, 'the service and sermon were more suitable for a Methodist chapel than for the Church of England.' As another indignant remonstrant was of opinion, after hearing Stanton preach on a Monday in August, at the time of the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, that the preacher, if he were an honest man, would join the Church of Rome, Stanton, not displeased, decided that his ministry was many-sided. He read out both letters from the pulpit the following Monday night after they were received.

The clear, shining sincerity of the preacher, his vitality--Father Stanton even in old age was so much alive--his great dramatic gifts, and his deep understanding of the people he was addressing, an understanding rooted in the intense sympathy for his fellows--all these things must be taken into account. Father Stanton had personality, and distinction of character in the pulpit as elsewhere. We who heard him were conscious of it, and our hearts went out to his, for the appeal was irresistible. It was no high-flown rhetoric this appeal, neither was it oratory or eloquence as these accomplishments are commonly understood. The very simplicity of speech had much to do with its charm and its power. It was but one man talking to another, only the man who spoke was a man of GOD, and that made all the difference.

The casual visitor to St. Alban's might think a sermon of Stanton's was made up on the spot, so free was it, apparently, of all laboured preparation. In reality the preparation for each sermon was considerable. Could any man preach every week for fifty years in the same church without making careful preparation, or boring his congregation? Both the text and the occasion required thought. Favourite writers were consulted, and verses, often from familiar hymns, looked up. (But when the time came for preaching the sermon the probability was the verse would not be quoted with literal accuracy.) Spurgeon was one of the writers for whom Stanton had a great fondness, and the sermons of that famous Baptist preacher were studied with an interest that never flagged. Dolling used to say that one could always tell when Stanton had been reading Spurgeon, but in latter years it would have been hard to say when Spurgeon had not been read.

The Watch Night Service at St. Alban's, which Stanton always conducted, was started on New Year's Eve, 1863. Neither Mackonochie nor the regular church-goers desired it. There is no authority for such a service in the Book of Common Prayer, and no precedent in Catholic tradition. In fact, they had all gone to bed as usual at the clergy house in Brooke Street on the first New Year's Eve after the church was consecrated.

But the people of the courts and alleys round St. Alban's wanted a service. It was understood to bring good luck, and belief was strong that no blessing could be expected from GOD in the coming year unless the old year had been seen out in church. So there was much ringing of the clergy house bell, and much shouting at the door for a service, as ,the time drew on towards midnight. Stanton got up, and Mackonochie assenting, went down and opened the church, and the people streamed in until the place was filled to the doors. And every New Year's Eve after that the service, entirely unadvertised, has taken place, the church always packed with a congregation that is not seen at other times in St. Alban's. Of course, Stanton had a host of stories about this Watch Night Service of his.

'On one memorable occasion--it was when New Year's Eve occurred on a Saturday night, which here is always an alcoholic, noisy night--just after I began my discourse, a woman astraddle on the rim of two seats adjured me in a loud voice to come down, saying: "You ain't no priest; come out of it!" To which several of my rough lads answered: "You let the genelman alone, or we'll knock you silly!" Mr. Russell came to the rescue, and led the "lady" out; but she, in departing, poured out upon him a thick vocabulary which could be heard when he got her outside, and died away in the distance, but such as may be only described, not repeated.'

On that same night, 'being rather disconcerted,' Stanton proposed the singing of a hymn, and came down to give it out, 'at which a tall man, making me a profound bow of reverence, fell on his head, and I had to raise him again to an upright position.'

Then, on another New Year's Eve, after the service was over, a poor woman put a sixpence into Stanton's hand, saying: 'Father, you must be dry; get yourself a drink.' 'Of course, I took it,' said Stanton, 'and I put it into the alms-box, for I knew she had had quite enough that night.'

The wildness lessened at Stanton's Watch Night Service--it was always peculiarly 'hie service'--with the changes in the neighbourhood and under the steady influence of St. Alban's and elementary education; but the poor and the outcast, the felon and the drunkard, still remained to throng the church at the passing of the year.

It was at one of the later Watch Nights when Stanton, having asked everybody in the church to kneel down for a general confession of sins, heard the mother of a tall, lanky boy, who was standing up, adjure her son very audibly with: 'Go down on your knockers, Jim, and go in for it, can't yer? He's a very good genelman.' The preacher accepted it as 'a very great compliment' when someone remarked aloud at the end of his address, 'Can't he chuck it orf 'is chest!'

It was on the last night of 1908 that Stanton spoke of the brighter days coming for the aged poor, and how much the Old Age Pensions would mean for them; and at this there were some shouts of 'Hear, hear,' and clapping of hands. 'It is a sort of tie to us, at any rate, this service,' Stanton wrote in answer to the question, 'What good in this service?' ' For afterwards, when any help is wanted, the plea, "We were at your service on New Year's Eve" is often urged.' But what it all meant he never professed to understand There was an incident, Stanton related, of the solitary worshipper, only explicable on the understanding that the New Year must come in with prayer of some sort if GOD'S blessing is to be expected: ' I was locking up the church on one occasion, and had just turned the key, when I heard steps pattering up Brooke Street. It was a lad of about twenty. "Is it all over, Father?" "Well, yes," I said, "it's past one o'clock!" "Let us go in for a minute." So I opened the door and let him in, and he remained in the dark church about five minutes; then he came out with, "It's all right, thank you, Father. 'Appy New Year." What he did, or said, or thought GOD only knows; but I always think about our people that with GOD a little goes a long way, and that He reads it right who knows all the circumstances--at least, so I comfort myself.'

'GOD knows' that was enough for Father Stanton. ' He reads it right who knows all the circumstances.'

'In the ending of the year Light and life to man appear.'

So the old carol went that we heard at St. Alban's every Christmas-time. Stanton's Watch Night Service brought light and life to many, and we can only leave it at that.

A visitor to St. Alban's on December 31, 1872, left an impression of the service which may be given here, though it has often appeared elsewhere:

'Precisely at half-past eleven Father Stanton mounted the pulpit, and requested the congregation to follow him in the first hymn, after he had sung it to them, which he did in a not very musical solo; but the chorus was very effective. It was as follows:

"Shall we meet beyond the river,
Where the surges cease to roll?
Where, in all the bright 'for ever,'
Sorrow ne'er shall press the soul?
Shall we meet? shall we meet?
Shall we meet? shall we meet?
Shall we meet beyond the river,
Where the surges cease to roll?"

'After the hymn Mr. Stanton read a single verse from Ps. xxvii.: "I should utterly have fainted, but that I believe verily to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living"--and delivered a brief address on the duty of recognising the goodness of GOD while in " the land of the living." The problem started by the preacher was: "How is it, if GOD be good, that anybody has a chance of going to hell?" In solving this problem by the answer of Free Will, this Ritualistic preacher outpreached any Wesleyan in the great metropolis. Matter, manner, and energy were of the very essence of the conventicle; and the congregation, which was essentially a poor one, literally hung upon his lips as he contrasted GOD'S goodness with man's misrepresentations of Him. Lest men should only fear GOD, he turned their attention to the story of the Incarnation--GOD at Christmas-tide, cradled at Bethlehem, the very revelation of love. "Do not say you must be damned, dear friends," he concluded; "do not harbour the black sin of despair. It is a lie. Say, 'O GOD, Thou art my GOD.' If a fellow only hates sin because he thinks it will pitchfork him into hell, that is not repentance. Love GOD as perfect goodness; then you will see all with a new light. Then you will be truly penitent, as frosts melt and flowers spring up when the sun shines."

'A long, silent prayer ensued as the church chimes rang in the New Year, followed by an extempore prayer by the minister, after which, "Guide us, O Thou Great Jehovah," was sung. At the last verse, "Come, LORD JESUS, take Thy waiting people home," Mr. Stanton desired us all to "sing out loud," and I can answer for it that every man, woman, and child followed his injunction. He then concluded his address. "Go either to church or chapel. I know many reasons why you may not like church. But, at all events, put yourselves on the side of GOD. Be on the side of the good, good GOD." '

So the service ended, and every New Year's Eve a similar service was conducted, and a similar sermon preached--for Stanton never minded repeating himself--and St. Alban's was always crowded.

It was a very different congregation--from this Watch Night gathering--the Sunday morning congregation at St. Alban's. But it was the same message for all that Stanton had to deliver, for GOD had made of one blood all nations of men. If the poor and illiterate came on New Year's Eve, persons of substance and of fine intelligence were at St. Alban's on Sunday mornings at eleven o'clock, and all were sinners, with hearts that needed comforting. 'It is a great bond between all of us,' Stanton pointed out in one of his sermons, 'that we are fellow-sinners. Whether we are Church of England, Nonconformist, or Roman Catholic, we are all fellow-sinners.'

And to be a sinner was to know the need of salvation. Only the Pharisee, self-justified, could provoke the scorn of CHRIST, and of His servant Arthur Stanton. And Pharisees, when they went to church, always went in sight of men on Sunday mornings.

The Pharisees were like the barren fig-tree, Stanton said, they only produced leaves: 'they offer prayer without praying; they sing hymns without giving praise; they have opinions without faith. You may hold all the opinions in Christendom, and yet never lay hold of eternal life.'

Knowledge of theology was not e