STANLEY 453 chapter house of the abbey, one of them a gift from the queen, Avere a tribute to his memory from friends of every class in England and America. The influence of Dean Stanley was no doubt largely due to hi marvellous social gifts. His affectionate nature, his quick and ready sympathy, his keen interest in almost every field of know- ledge, his own mental resources, drawn from incessant reading and enriched by travel, observation, and conversation, his familiarity with the persons, places, events, and scenes of history, his tenacious yet discriminating memory, his vivacity and humour, the very charm of his countenance and manner, the delicately sensitive face, " the eye now beaming with sympathy, now twinkling with humour," acted like a spell in winning friends and even in con- ciliating opponents. The courage and fearlessness with which h was always ready to uphold the cause of those whom he held to be unjustly attacked by a powerful or dominant majority was duly appreciated by his countrymen. It may probably be said that no one in the present century was so endeared to so large a circle of personal friends in all parts of the civilized world. His writings also, apart from their controversial aspect, were of a singularly attractive kind. His Life of Arnold, his Sinai and Palestine, his Lectures on tlu Jewish Church, his Memorials of Canterbury and of Westminster Abbey, would alone have made him one of the most delightful and popular of English authors. His sermons, always interesting and attractive, were at times singularly eloquent and impressive. His occasional hymns and short poems, full of grace and force, and occasionally of a profound pathos, were fully worthy of his literary position. Throughout all that he ever wrote there is an individuality and a characteristic flavour which is saved from mannerism by an inexhaustible freshness of view and a marvellous fertility of illustration. His power of painting the scenes, events, and persons of past history, "the picturesque sensibility," to use a ] ihrase applied to him by Lord Beaconsfi eld, with which he at once fastened on the main features of an historic building or a famous locality, amounted to genius ; they were as marked at the close of his life as in the earliest of his schoolboy letters. They won him readers of every class. But it would be impossible to speak even briefly of his literary position by itself. To write his life in full would be to give a sketch of English ecclesiastical history for a long generation. Though he resolutely stood aloof from all connexion with party, it is impossible not to recognize even in his least controversial writings the position which he held as, in the eyes of the greatest portion of his countrymen, the leading liberal theologian of his time in England. Throughout his writings in prose or poetry, on almost every subject which he touched, we see the impress, not only of his distinctive genius and of his extraordinary gifts, but also of his special views, aims, and aspirations. It may be well to- describe these as nearly as possible in his own words. He looked on the age in which he lived as one of mingled hope and gloom, as a period of transition, to be followed either by an " eclipse of faith " a "winter of unbelief" or by a "revival of Christianity in a wider aspect," a "catholic, comprehensive, all-embracing Christi- anity" that "might yet overcome the world." He believed, and was never tired of asserting his belief, " that the Christian church had not yet presented its final or its most perfect aspect to the world"; that "the belief of each successive age of Christendom had as a matter of fact varied enormously from the belief of its predecessor"; that "all confessions and similar documents are, if taken as final expressions of absolute truth, misleading"; that each "successive form of theology is but the approximation to the truth, not the whole truth itself"; that it was "the glory of the church to be always advancing to perfection"; and that "there still remained, behind all the controversies of the past, a higher Christianity which neither assailants nor defenders had fully exhausted." Already even in his early Sermons on the Apostolic Age, as in Sinai and Palestine, as in the volumes on the Jewish Church, "one increasing purpose" may be recognized. Everywhere we see the sustained effort to " bring the events, places, and characters of sacred history within the domain of actual observation and history," and to rescue them from " the conventional haze in which they had been veiled by a misplaced reverence." "The first duty of a modern- theologian " he held to be "to study the Bible, not for the sake of making or defending systems out of it, but for the sake of discovering what it actually contains. " " In a faithful study of that virgin mine, the yet insufficiently explored records of the Old and New Testament, lay," he held, "the best hope of the church of Christ," and another and a different estimate " of the points on which Scripture lays its most emphatic stress." To this study he looked for the best hope of such a progressive develop- ment of Christian theology as should avert the danger arising from "the apparently increasing divergence between the intelligence and the faith of our time," " and should enable the church to deal wisely with new questions which ancient theology had for the most part not even considered." On the direction which this develop- ment of theology should assume the last word had not, he knew, been spoken ; but he enforced the duty " of placing in the back- ground whatever was accidental, temporary, or secondary, and of bringing into due prominence what was primary and essential." In the former group Stanley would, without doubt or hesitation, have placed all questions connected with Episcopal or Presbyterian orders, or that deal only with the outward forms or ceremonies of religion, or with the authorship or age of the books of the Old Testament. Even to the question of miraculous and external evidence he would have been inclined to assign a secondary place, as well as to the most elaborate statements of Christian doctrine. The foremost and highest place, that of the "essential and supernatural " elements of religion, he would have reserved for its moral and spiritual truths, "its chief evidence and chief essence," " the truths to be drawn from the teaching and from the life of Christ," in whose character he did not hesitate to recognize "the greatest of all miracles." On a large development of Christian teaching in this direction he based all his hopes alike of the pro- gress of the world and of the restitution to Christian theology "as something greater and vaster than the theology of each particular church or age," "as comprehending all the wholesome elements of thought at work in the world " of " its natural ascend- ency over the minds of educated men." With such views it was not to be wondered at that, from first to last, he never lost an opportunity of supporting a policy of width, toleration, and comprehension in the Church of England. The view which he took in his earliest directly controversial work, his Essay on Uie Gorham Judgment (1850), as regards both the protec- tion offered by the law to the clergy against " the inquisition of arbitrary prelates and of tumultuous synods," and "on the designedly mixed and comprehensive character of the English formularies and English Church," has already been fully indicated. The same spirit and the same aims guided his line of conduct in other controversies, such as in that on the Essays and Reviews, on the ritualistic movement, on the question of subscription, on the successive attacks made on men so wholly different from each other as Prof. Maurice, whose influence on the mind of his gene- ration has yet to be fully estimated, and Bishop Colenso, and in his vain but earnest advocacy of the optional instead of the com- pulsory use of the Athanasian Creed. So again he was always eager to insist on the essential points of union between various denominations of Christians, however apparently divided or estranged ; and to recognize the special services conferred on the world, not only by the Eastern, the Roman, the Lutheran, and the Reformed Churches, not only by the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, but also by the Baptist and Congregational Churches of England and America, and by the community of Quakers. And, while in this respect he was keen almost to excess to note points of agreement, so in the very latest volume which he published one of his main aims was " to look the facts of history in the face" and to point out "the almost universal departure from primitive usage," "the transformation both of letter and spirit through which the greatest Christian ordinances had already passed," and "to fix the eye steadily on the germs of truth that were common to the different forms which the ordinances wore, the moral and spiritual realities for the sake of which alone (if Christianity be the universal religion) such forms exist." He was throughout his life an unflinching advocate of the connexion between church and state. By this he understood (l)i "the recognition and support on the part of the state of the religious expression of the faith of the community," and (2) "that this religions expression of the faith of the community on the most sacred and most vital of all its interests should be controlled and guided by the whole community through the supremacy of law." In the supremacy of the crown, i.e., of law, " over all causes and all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil," so far from finding "galling chains" or "ignominious bondage," he welcomed it not only as being "the most powerful and intelligent organ of the whole com- munity," but on two other grounds. First, he considered that supremacy more likely "to be truly wise and truly just and there- fore truly Christian than the headship either of a bishop or of a synod of any clerical or sectional body, and, secondly, "as the best security for that gradual growth of religious forms and religious opinions, and for that free expression of individual belief, which is indispensable to any healthy development of religious life and religious truth." At the same time he was in favour of making the creed of the church as wide as possible, "not narrower than that which is even now the test of its membership, the Apostles' Creed," and of throwing down all barriers which could be wisely dispensed with to admission to its ministry. As an immediate step he even advocated as "an unmixed good" "the admission under due restrictions of our nonconforming brethren of England, and our Presbyterian brethren of the Scottish Church, to preach in Anglican pulpits. To the last hour of his life he looked wrtl dismay to the prospect of a combined assault by a triple alliance of the representatives " of the Puritans, of Voltaire, and of Laud on "that rare combination which with all its shortcomings exhibits one of the noblest works which God's providence, through a long
