464: DEAN STANLEY. 



On the ecclesiastical life of the time the work of Dean Stanley has 

 had great influence. There was not a more loyal sou of the Church 

 of England tlian he, but no man in England saw her dangers more. 

 More than once it seemed as if his was the power which saved her 

 from some step which would have lost for her the reverence of thought- 

 ful men. His last work, the " Christian Institutions," is an assertion 

 of the place of common-sense and historical induction in religious 

 thought which is most valuable. In 18G6, when Convocation under- 

 took to pass gratuitous condemnation on Bishop Colenso, Stanley's 

 manly protest was the strongest voice of rebnke to the persecuting 

 spirit. His whole life was a perpetual enlargement and enlightenment 

 to his Church, and he has probably helped as much as any Churchman 

 of his generation to clear the ground for the great progress which the 

 Church of England is to make and the great work which she is to do 

 in the next hundred years. 



It is easy to see the limitations of such a life and such a work as 

 his. He was supremely human. It was men, and not things, that 

 interested him in the world. Hence he paid little heed to the wonder- 

 ful discoveries of natui'al science which have illustrated our age, and 

 probably had little knowledge of them. And yet he reached a true 

 relation with them through his interest in the men who made them 

 and through his eagerness to complete his historic picture with the 

 image of the scientific man. His funeral sermons on the deaths of 

 Sir John Herschel and of Sir Charles Lyell are full of delight in the 

 higher aspects of natural science. He was a beautiful instance of the 

 way in which the historical genius makes all knowledges and arts its 

 tributaries. 



It was more than a happy chance that so devout and humane a 

 nature should have found its home in Westminster Abbey. "While 

 he was Dean he himself felt so deeply that he made all men who came 

 there feel what a great representative value belonged to the historic 

 church where God had been worshipped for eight hundred years and 

 where so many of the greatest Englishmen were buried. His broad 

 treatment of the Abbey did much to keep the religion of England 

 broad and free. 



The personal charm of Dean Stanley was felt by all who came into 

 his presence. It consisted of perfect simplicity and self-forgetfnlness, 

 ready sympathy with all who cared for truth, eager curiosity, and an 

 imagination which never failed and which drew out the poetry ot 

 every situation. His home in early days at Oxford, and of late in 

 Westminster, was the resort of the most earnest and cultivated men 



