life which has done so much for humanity and for religion." He had sympathy, too, with the foreigner, whether it be American, Frenchman, or Armenian. Then how exquisite was his care for the children, for who of us who has ever listened to him talking to the children on Innocents' Day will forget his loving, simple, persuasive utterances. His catholicity is remarkable.

(2) As to enterprises of progress. When the schoolmasters and mistresses of our elementary schools met last year for conference in London, no one showed a warmer interest, or gave them a heartier greeting than the Dean, who gathered them early in the morning to hold a special service, and to hear one of his characteristic addresses, stimulating them to the nobler ambitions of their toilsome life-work. Science found in him, either in his Deanery or in the Abbey, all the help that he could render, and that from his office as well as from his culture, was by no means inconsiderable. (3) And as to Christian communions. Who that has read his history of the "Eastern Church" does not discern his love for that most Catholic of ancient Churches? Who of us, as Nonconformists, does not remember how he threw open the nave of the Abbey-all that he could do-for the preaching of Max Muller, Dr. Stoughton, Dr. Moffat, and Dr. Caird. He rejoiced to call us, though some of us could not follow his meaning in the phrase, "the nonconforming members of the Church of England." His catholicity is gloriously notorious, and it is to be explained largely by the fact that he laid hold of truth from its historic side. For revel only in dogmas and philosophies, and you must soon come to separation; but pass along the paths of history, and trace the

struggles through which good men have passed, and so come to have fellowship with some of those, about whom, too often in ignorance, the orthodox have said harsh things, and learn how Christ has been laying hold of men of all classes, of all conditions, and ways of thinking, and your hearts must be enlarged; you will come to feel that those who are bravely groping in darkness for the true light are your brethren; that though they do not see Christ, Christ sees them; that though they do no apprehend Christ, they are apprehended of Him. Then, as a further explanation of his Catholicity, there was his peculiarly loving nature.

As

one of the leaders of a denomination which is not usually noted for wide views, said to me of him yesterday, and said well, "He was one of those men who are almost Christians by nature, and for whom grace has very little to do." His loving nature, and his devout piety, as well as his sympathetic clinging to history, combine to explain how it was he was so unsectarian as to class and race and church, for the loving man, the devout man, the historically wise man, must always be the catholic man.

III. The connection in our thoughts between the Dean and the Abbey illustrates his diligent and untiring activity. In that Abbey there has been of late years, not simply frequent service-service twice a day-but service rendered with an intelligent devoutness and a spiritual tenderness that is not always found in cathedrals. These services have seemed to many to redeem the giant fabric from being a dull, sepulchral structure, and to have made it pulse and glow with life. In these daily services there was not only, perhaps, the aid to the practical piety of the Dean, and to many

who gathered there, but there was also a symbol of his own ceaseless activity, for was he not one of those who "serve God day and night in His temple ?" His office might have been a post of ease and self-indulgence. The snug Deanery is often conferred as a reward for past services, rather than as an opportunity for increased usefulness; it was not so with Arthur Stanley: he made it throb with life and pulse with perpetual activities. A small attenuated man: those who measure everything by bulk were accustomed to call him the "little Dean." But there was in him an industrious activity, and an unwearying energy which may well shame some who are stalwart and robust. How many sided his activities were, his biography, when it comes. to be written, may be able to tell. This sermon cannot. He was here, there, and everywhere. His wise words in his address to the University of which he had been chosen Rector, or at the inauguration of our own University College, will easily illustrate one sphere of his work; while often, as indeed at the last, he spoke words of homely kindness to the poor people who were gathered to receive from him the prizes for their bright window gardens in the great Babylon of dirt and gloom. He was at the bidding of almost any enterprise, and yet ever supremely consecrated to his ministry. Indeed, when this day fortnight, he had, from illness, to leave the pulpit twice, he returned again, and yet again, to finish his allotted duty. Nor, though we forbear enumerating his many toils, must we forget that the Committee for the revision of the New Testament, which has lately completed its labours, found in him a ready, diligent, and unwearied helper.

IV. The connection in our thoughts between the

Dean and the Abbey illustrates his loving and devout piety. For it has been said of him again and again by those who knew him best, that he had very deep religious feeling, and a very sincere love of God. He regarded the Abbey as Hooker tells us the Founder himself regarded it, when he said he hoped he was planting a ladder upon which the angels of God might be seen ascending and descending from the courts of heaven for many generations. "For," said he, "what are all inspirations but the descending of the angels of God; and what are the aspirations of the people in prayer and praise but the ascending of the angels." And Dean Stanley felt that the Abbey was the shrine of worship; that gave the opportunity for the outpouring of the love to man, and of the devotion to God that together constitute true worship. Because of the first of these convictions, while he was perpetually the champion of unpopular truths, and the leader of forlorn hopes, he never made a personal enemy. He was continually the mediator between men of different orders of thoughts: the peacemaker he wanted to be, if he might, between the communions of the Church of Christ. One rejoices to feel about such men as he, that religion has made them what they are; that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ has in them new evidences of its spirituality and its life.

Of his care for God, and his deep religious feelings and personal experiences, we know but little, and it is likely that we should, for, in proportion usually to the refinement of the man, will be his silence about his own deeper life. We do not wonder that John the Beloved could say only this about his consecration to Christ: "We have seen the Messiah." That was

all he could tell; the intercourse was too hallowed, too sacred, to be spoken of. Others may speak boldly, but such men as John the Beloved can only come out from their communion with Christ, and say by their lives, "We have seen the Messiah." When the Dean wa taken away from us, he was in the midst of preaching a course of sermons on the Beatitudes; and, as those who know him intimately have said, his life was a beautiful commentary on those Beatitudes-for he was distinguished by mercifulness, by humility of spirit, by the earnest and passionate desire to be a peacemaker, by the purity of heart that shall see God. And certainly it was a commentary on the beatitude of malediction, for all men did not speak well of him. Though it was uttered more seldom latterly, one can still almost hear the howl of those who called him heretic, and see the shrug of the shoulders with which men suggested he was unsound. Even last Saturday, upon his yet unburied coffin, the "Church Times" spat its scorn, even as men spat upon his Lord and Master eighteen hundred years ago.

Last Good Friday he said to the great congregation. that had gathered to hear him at the Abbey, that he wanted to preach to them once again upon a text from which he had preached to them before; the pathos of that 66 once again " produced complete silence, and he proceeded to announce the text, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." And then he recalled to them how, again and again, the dying lips of good men had breathed these words, and the dying spirits of good men had been inspired by them. That twice preached sermon seems to have been a key to his life.

Is there need to say in conclusion that there was