Father Stanton's Last Sermons in S. Alban's, Holborn

Of course those who never heard Father Stanton preach will be at a loss to discover in this record an explanation of the enthusiastic love which drew hundreds of men, some of them from great distance, to his feet whenever he was announced to preach. Yet even they will not be insensible to the latent fervour of his words, and to the dramatic power of vivid presentation, which did so much to make his hearers see and feel the reality, the solidity, the use and urgency of spiritual things. Those who are happy enough to have heard him will, as they read, find themselves transported to the memorable hours on Sundays or to the even more memorable Monday evenings in Advent and Lent, when, in the stillness of the lofty, dimly lighted Church of S. Alban, his voice was to them "as a very lovely song," teaching them, as no other voice ever taught them, the meaning, the beauty, the consoling and renewing power of "the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God."

To prevent mistake and disappointment it should be told at the outset that the Sermons printed here were not written out by Father Stanton, either for his own use, or for publication. They are simply a report—a verbatim report-by an accomplished shorthand writer, Miss C. Ross, whom Sir William, more prescient than we, commissioned on many occasions to take down what was said. And, further, this report never had the advantage of the preacher's supervision and correction. Sir William has been good enough to consult me on the choice of the Sermons to be published, and has entrusted to me the responsibility of the quite unimportant editing which is all that can, with safety, be attempted.

His wish is-and with this wish I

am in the heartiest agreement-that, in fairness, the selection should exhibit not part but the whole of the preacher's mind on the great truths of religion; not his evangelicalism only, but also his uncompromising, outspoken conviction that the Catholic faith, and Catholic practice, represent through time the substance of the saving Gospel which he was sent to proclaim.

The Editor's part has amounted to little more than the mending, here and there, of a word, and, in a very few cases, of a sentence. Everything else has been left just as it came from the reporter's hands. So the Sermons stand in print word for word just as they were spoken, without interference and with no attempt to suppress repetitions, or to clear away the frequent colloquialisms, the familiarities of speech, such as a man is wont to use when, at his ease among his friends, he talks of the things he has most at heart and most longs to share with them.

Some who heard Father Stanton went away with the impression that his utterances were the easy, spontaneous fluencies of his natural eloquence, and cost him nothing. This is a great mistake. I have before me six quarto volumes in his handwriting, written, not in the hurried straggling script that made so many of his letters a puzzle to his correspondents, but with the deliberation and the care with which a doctor writes a prescription, anxious that his directions should be plain, beyond all possibility of perilous mistake. The volumes are dated from 1894 onwards, and they contain on every page a more or less elaborated outline of one sermon: in all, over a thousand sermons. Apart from the intrinsic value of these outlines, they remain as evidence that the gifted speaker, who had been

preaching regularly for thirty years, continued to the end to bestow equal trouble upon every sermon that he preached, preparing it as thoughtfully, and writing down his thoughts as carefully as if he held his long experience of no account. He was not a great reader, but he thought much, and brooded much over what he read or heard. Amongst the preachers for whom he had the greatest admiration, Phillips Brooks stood first, but he found more help in Spurgeon, whom he loved, and-towards the end-in Dr. Parker, whose powers as an expositor he placed very high. Ideas and phrases, possibly even chains of ideas, borrowed from these and other sources, are no doubt to be found throughout this volume. Had he himself prepared his sermons for publication he would have made the fullest and most frank acknowledgment of his debts. He was often urged to publish, but always refused on the ground that as he told us humorously on one Monday night-if he printed his sermons he would not be able to preach them again; and people would find out how much he owed to others.

The Sermons in this volume were preached in the Church of S. Alban, Holborn, and are described in the title as his last, not because they were preached in sequence immediately before his death, but because they belong to the last few years of his half-century of service, and represent his latest mind.

St. Alban's, Holborn.

E. F. RUSSELL.