Westminster, but a shorter instance occurs in the preface to the Lectures on the Eastern Church, which I quote as an example of his style of his love of the concrete and actual, and as a proof of what I said just now as to the influence his surroundings had over his mind.

"In these studies (i.

e. studies of Ecclesiastical History) I trust that we shall find that Alfred the Great,' our first Founder,' did well to plant his seat of learning beside the venerable shrine of St. Fridesewide. We shall be the better able to comprehend Duns Scotus and the schoolmen as we stand in the ancient quadrangle of Merton, or listen to the dim traditions of Brasenose. Medieval theology and practice will stand out clearly in the quaint customs of Queen's, and the romantic origin of All Souls. The founders of Exeter, and of New College, will give us a true likeness of mediæval prelates-architects, warriors, statesmen and bishops all in one. Wycliffe will assume a more distinct shape and form to those who trace his local habitation as master of Balliol. Erasmus will not soon die out of our recollection when we remember the little College of Corpus, which he hoped would be to Great Britain what the Mausoleum was to Caria, and what the Pyramids were to Egypt. The unfinished splendour of Christ Church is the enduring monument of the magnificence and of the fall of Wolsey. The Reformation will not be unaptly represented to us on the day when the quadrangles were knee deep in the torn leaves of the scholastic divines, or when Ridley and Latimer suffered for their faith beside the gateway of Bocardo. Its successive retirements and advances have left their traces in the Foundation of Wadham, Trinity, and Jesus. From St. John's began the counter reformation of Laud. Magdalen and University are the two memorials of resistence and subservience to James II. From Lincoln and Pembroke sprang the great religious movement of Wesley, and Whitfield and Oriel will not allow us to forget that we too have witnessed a like movement in our own day of various forms and various results, already become historical, which will at least help us to appreciate such events in former times, and to

remember that we too are parts of the Ecclesiastical History of our country."

About every historian one has to ask a preliminary question :What is his standpoint? What does he write history to prove? Does he, like Gibbon, write a majestic history to "sap a solemn creed with solemn sneer"; or, like Buckle, to prove that we are the necessary products of our climate, food or soil. Stanley's stand point is the unity of human life in its sacred and secular aspects, and therefore of human history. To use Matthew Arnold's words "He saw life steadily and saw it whole." The germ of this was the theory of Church and State derived from Arnold, but the development of it was congenial to Stanley's mind, always more apt to discover agreements than differences. This teaching of the unity of history from the Ecclesiastical side "grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength." Compare the cautious statement of the principle in the introduction to his Eastern Church, written in 1857, with the preface to his Christian Institutions, written in 1880, where he says:

"It has been the tendency of the lower and more vulgar forms of religious life to separate the secular and the sacred. It will always be the tendency of the loftier forms of religious thought to bring them together."

The work in which this tendency is seen most is the work on which I think his reputation must ultimately rest-his Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. In this society we can of course only look at it from the historical point of view, and must ignore all other considerations. But from the strictly historical stand point I would submit that it is a much more important work than would at first sight appear. If people in general are ever to be imbued with the true historical spirit they must be taught to some extent at least to consult original authorities. Without this reading history so called, is like hearing the speeches of advocates, and not hearing the evidence. As Macaulay puts the case on English history Southey "appears for the Church of England," Lingard "for the Church of Rome." But the original documents

of English history are numerous, and, to the great majority of people inaccessible, and no general discipline in history can be hoped for from their study. There is however one history of which the chief original sources in a translation are open to every human being who can read English. That history is biblical history, of which more than half our English Bible consists. To teach any large number of our countrymen as Dean Stanley has done to scan these sources with new eyes and fresh interest is a service which we in this society may very appropriately recognise. For if the truth must be told there is no book which the average British Philistine knows so little (i.e. knows accurately or correctly) as his Bible. The reasons for this are not far to seek. With many it has been a lesson book, and what Byron says of Horace is applicable to it too. In after life it is read in scraps and pieces until all sense of continuity and relation is lost. Hence it happened that when a political orator who often adorns his vigorous English with an appropriate scriptural allusion, spoke of the "Cave of Adullam" no inconsiderable number of intelligent and well read persons had recourse to their classical Dictionaries to find out what the allusion meant. Stanley himself says (Jewish Church, Sect. XI.) "The battle of Beth-horon or Gibeon, is one of the most important in the history of the world, and yet so profound has been the indifference first of the religious world, and then (through their example or influence) of the common world, to the historical study of the Hebrew annals, that the very name of this great battle is far less known to most of us than that of Marathon or Cannæ." The great merit of the Dean's history is, that for a large and increasing number of persons he has brought the Hebrew annals out of the dim distance in which conventionality and ignorance have long placed them into the region of actual life. Like another Old Mortality he has taken the moss out of the inscriptions and enabled us to read them in their original freshness. In this work he had two great advantages. First, the critical part of the work had been done to his hand by the labours of Ewald, Kuenen and other continental scholars. Secondly, he had himself

visited the scenes of the history and made them as real to himself as the Cloisters of Canterbury, and the Abbey of Westminster.

If any of you think that there is no merit in the history because the Dean so largely availed himself of the results of deeper learning than his own, read Ewald's History of Israel, (now accessible in an English translation) and then turn to Stanley and see with what a light and sure touch he gives out the results of the original author, free and disembarrased of his superfluity of detail, and not unfrequent extravagance of theory His (may we say English) common sense preserves him from the "vigour and rigour" of extreme critical theories, and always keeps on the solid ground of real life. If we analyse the processes by which this result is obtained we shall find, I think, two chief elements. There is, first, a remarkable perception of the permanent element in all history-our common humanity. Wherever this was to be found Stanley was sure to detect it and bring it out into prominence. The peculiarity of his mind to dwell on likenesses rather than differences here found abundant exercise. In every historical character however removed by race, or time, or creed, or purpose, he always found some element of similarity on which he could fasten and by which he could bring it within the sphere of his own and the reader's interest. A remarkable tour de force of this kind. occurs in his Essay on Keble, (Macmillan, February, 1879,) which proves that Keble " was not a sacred but in the best sense of the word a secular poet." That which attracted Stanley in the Christian Year, was, "that the Biblical scenery is treated graphi cally, as real scenery, and Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry; the wall of partition between things secular and sacred is broken down." Keble himself would most likely have felt eulogy of this kind to be the worst kind of censure; but it is very characteristic of Stanley to seize on this kind of similarity, and dwell upon it to the exclusion of the numerous other points of difference between them.

Secondly and closely connected with this intense perception of the common human element which makes the unity of history is

the remarkable felicity of his historical parallel and illustrations. To illustrate the Biblical history by allusions to other history which will explain but not degrade, is a matter requiring the nicest and most delicate handling; and, in nothing is the literary art of the Dean shewn more clearly than in this. There is a passage in the first volume of the "Jewish Church," Lect. XIII., which is so admirable an example of what I mean, that with it I may fitly conclude my remarks.

"I know not where we shall find a better guide to conduct us, with a judgment at once just and tender, through the medieval portion of Christian ecclesiastical history, than the sacred record of the corresponding period of the history of the judges. The knowledge of each period reacts npon our knowledge of the other. The difficulties of each mutually explain the other. We cannot be in a better position for defending medieval Christianity against the indiscriminate attacks of one-sided Puritanical writers, than by pointing to its counterpart in the Sacred record. We cannot wish for a better proof of the general truth and fidelity of this part of the Biblical narrative than by observing its exact accordance with the manners and feelings of Christendom under analagous circumstances. We need only claim for the doubtful acts of Jephthah and of Jael the same verdict that philosophical historians have pronounced on the like actions of Popes and Crusaders-a judg ment to be measured not by our age, but by theirs, not by the light of full Christian civilisation, but by the licence of a time when "every man did what was right in his own eyes," and when the maxim of them of old time still prevailed over every other consideration." Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." We need only claim for the Middle Ages the same favourable hearing which religious men of all persuasions are willing to extend to the judges of Israel. The difficulty which uneducated or half educated classes of men find in rightly judging or even rightly conceiving, of a state of morals and religion. different from their own, is one of the main obstacles to a general diffusion of comprehensive and tolerant views of past history.