LAST SERMONS IN EDITED WITH A PREFACE BY E. F. RUSSELL, M.A. (S. ALBAN'S, HOLBORN) FOURTH EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO MCMXVI THE preservation and publication of these Sermons of Father Stanton's is due entirely to the discernment and the initiative of Sir William Robertson Nicoll. In common with a large number of persons who stand outside the Church of England, Sir William was greatly attracted by the preacher and his preaching. He recognised and appreciated the fine quality of his speech, its transparent sincerity, its perfect naturalness, its spirituality, and, above all, the glowing personal love for the Lord Jesus Christ, which streamed through all he said. More or less, we all of us thought thus of our friend's work, but Sir William was wiser than we, in his conviction that the preacher's words, even apart from the preacher himself, had an inherent vitality of their own, and would, if they were preserved, be found to retain something of their original force and fragrance. To some of us it seemed as if the influence of the spoken words was so inseparably, so inextricably bound in with the energy and the charm of the speaker's remarkable presence and personality-face, voice, grace of manner -that to divide his words from him would be like the dividing of body and soul; it would leave the separated words motionless, pale, and dead. I own I feared this when at first it was proposed to print them, but I have come to see that Sir William's instinct was more sound than mine. |