Saint James's Church, Chicago And Its Rector: A Study of a Metropolitan Pastor By James O'Donnell Bennett (Reprinted, with additions by the writer, from the Chicago Record-Herald, of January 12, 1914, and now published by a member of St. James's Church for distribution in the Parish). I9H LAWRENCE J. GUTTER Collection of Chicagoona THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO The University Library Saint James's Church, Chicago And Its Rector: A Study of a Metropolitan Pastor By James O'Donnell Bennett (Reprinted, with additions by the writer, from the Chicago Record-Herald, of January 12, 1914, and now published by a member of St. James's Church for distribution in the Parish). 1914 NOTE. It is to be hoped that the proprietors of the "Chi- cago Record-Herald" or some enterprising publisher will collect in book form the remarkable series of arti- cles contributed tins year by Mr. James O'Donnell Bennett to the Monday edition of the "Chicago Record- Herald" on the Preachers of Chicago. If for no other reason, these articles should be preserved for their historical and literary worth. Mr. Bennett has summed up and expressed clearly and interestingly the characteristics and work of the men who are guiding and developing the religious life of Chicago. No more valuable contribution has been made to the history of a city which now ranks with the greatest cities of the world, and is conspicuous for the multitude and the magnitude of the problems with which society is in these days confronted. Particularly fortunate has Mr. Bennett been in his notes on the rector of St. James's Church. As a mem- ber of that parish, I feel that he has depicted one of the ablest of the men ivho have had pastoral care in this city, a great preacher withal, as well as a broad and richly endowed scholar, and a master among men. No man in the American Episcopal Church has had a more brilliant and useful career than this beloved and revered priest. He has stood through a long ministry for the best traditions of the Church of which he is an obedient son. Sane in judgment, generous in his ap- 3 preciation of men who cannot think as he thinks, com- prehensive and thorough in his knowledge of the history and doctrines of the Christian Church, with a loving recognition of the honest opinions and good works of people of other religious bodies, Dr. Stone has won the confidence and affection not only of his own parishioners, but also of the clergy and laymen of many denominations. Men who know him look to him as one whose life and utterances are most helpful in furthering the efforts towards Christian unity. Because of my admiration for him, to whom so many earnest souls are looking for spiritual help, and looking not in vain, I have reprinted with Mr. Ben- nett's permission the article concerning Dr. Stone which appeared in the "Chicago Record-Herald" of January 12th, 1914; and I trust that the many friends of Dr. Stone, both within and outside of St. James's Church, will accept with kind consideration this tribute to one who is indeed deserving of all that Mr. Bennett has so eloquently and discriminatingly written. After the people have gone their ways from service, I sometimes find a contemplative pleasure in wander- ing over the venerable churches which have so pro- foundly and so tenderly uttered the spiritual aspiration of the community from the days of its feeble begin- nings to its spacious and victorious present. These eloquent structures are almost the sole monuments of our remote past, and they are few. Fire and commerce have with equal ruthlessness swept away the relics of the town. The taverns, the playhouses, the historic halls and most of the mansions of an older time have vanished, and little remains to carry the eye of the antiquary in a fond backward glance. That worthy impulse of the heart to muse upon the achievements of those who have done their work and gone to their rest is perhaps nowhere else in our bor- ders so fully and so profitably gratified as at St. James 's Church, the home of a parish that has existed for eighty years. Here remembered are the builders of the city, the forefathers, the neighbours ; and I love to wander along the quiet aisles to survey the tokens in bronze and marble of the piety of the dead and the love and veneration of the living. Their soft radiance, their dignified permanence, their lines of commemora- tion at once terse and stately, infuse the mind with a pensive humility and impart to it a salutary steadiness, and reverie becomes no idle occupation. BLOSSOMING IN THE DUST. There is a gracious and heartening democracy in the noble array of tablets and commemorative windows. On the left of the chancel a great bishop is remembered, while a few feet distant there is a rich memorial to that August Berg concerning whom the bronze records the fact that he was for six and twenty years a member of the choir, and that he was " faithful and beloved". Like his service, the memory he leaves is sweet. He gave as an artist and a Christian to his faith, and I think I shall remember him longer than I shall remem- ber the bishop whose name lives in secular history at least principally because he was an implacable hunter of heretics. On another wall the trustful piety and neighbourli- ness of a woman are set forth for a remembrance and a message, a woman, says the tablet, " whose constant gift of her broad sympathy, brave cheer, untiring en- ergy and wise administration was devoted to the better- ment of the community in which she lived and to the helpful service of every life within the reach of her beneficent influence". Such lives are not forgotten. They live in more than words, and the words themselves live irrespec- tive of the name that is honoured, conveying a loving message to posterity, while the name of some financier who commanded the marts a few short years ago is already but a name. The austere prelate, the benevolent merchant, the sweet singer, the pioneer Dorcas, the faithful warden here speak again a various message. Some tell of great power rightly used, and some of the common 6 round of tasks lovingly performed. The charm of the simple neighbour lines s of a day when the town was not so vast reasserts itself. The heart is warmed by the record, and a gentle spirit of emulation is stirred. These kind and diligent ones seem still to be here, and bronze and marble take on the warm hues of life. Death wears the raiment of remembered benefactions, and is no longer desolate. Upon some of the stones, wreaths of Christmas greens have been placed the message of resurrection imposed upon the record of death and from the tower descends, as we move along the shadowy aisles, the music of chimes, wafting to memory on the harmonies of a plaintive hymn the name of a departed benefactor of the parish: Comes, at times, a voice of days departed, On the dying breath of evening borne, Sinks, then, the traveler, faint and weary hearted, "Long is the way" (it whispers) "and forlorn." Comes, at last, a voice of thrilling gladness, Borne on the breezes of the rising day, Saying, ' i The Lord shall make an end of sadness ; ' ' Saying, "The Lord shall wipe all tears away." Such churches are tremulous with personality, and vocal with most intimate spiritual experiences. Past that ponderous font, at which their children were bap- tized, the dead have been borne, and before that chancel rail, whither came the men and women of their families to be wed, they have lain for a little space. Here the apostolic hand has blessed the budding generation. Here the purest joys of human experience have received 7 benediction, and here the heart has cried out in its deep- est grief. So much rejoicing, so much sorrow, so much consecration endow these places with a peculiar love- liness and confer upon them a sanctity which no formal office of dedication can bestow. TEEASUEES UNDEE GROUND Moving thus in meditation along, I passed a massive structure of marble erected to soldiers from this parish and carved with the words : "In Honor of Those Who Fought: In Memory of Those Who Fell," and came at last to a narrow flight of steps that led beneath the north transept of the church. Descending, I viewed the splendours, minute but rich and solemn, of the Chapel of St. Andrew, which literally enshrines the spot whereon the Brotherhood of St. Andrew was founded, thirty years ago, by James L. Houghteling and the twelve men of his Bible Class who met here for study and prayer. To-day the order numbers fifteen thou- sand men, and has chapters throughout this country, and in Canada, Scotland and Australia. The Chapel of the Founders is worthy of that far-flung line. There is no other architectural gem in Chicago comparable with it. * * * DECENTLY AND IN OEDEE. St. James's looks like a church, and not like either a lecture hall or the common room of a social settle- ment. Nor has it encumbered its ancient dignity with the intricate splendours that distinguish the ritualistic 8 movement. It is churchly without being oppressively ecclesiastical. And that is why it has not lost its old- fashioned air of neighbourliness. It has the finished look that goes with solid permanency, and that only solid permanency can impart to an institution. This not easily defined quality it communicates to the be- holder, and surrendering to its simple stateliness he feels that decorum, peace and beauty here abide. There is a calmness about it all, and he goes forth not only soothed but fortified. It is the benison of peace. Something of all this you see in the eyes of the line of eleven former rectors who ministered in St. James 's during its first sixty years, and whose portraits hang amid parchments and the cartoons of Raphael in the sacristy. Wherever it has been housed these eighty years, St. James's parish has always been thus churchly. It was the first Protestant Episcopal church to develop the vested choir idea in the Middle West. From its tower first floated to the ear of the town the entrancing music of bells chiming in the strains of a familiar hymn as the shadows descended upon the weary city, and to the present time that touching farewell to the day com- memorates the name of an early worthy of the com- munity, James Carter. St. James's was the first Episcopal church in Chi- cago. Founded as a mission in the autumn of 1834, and aided by a grant of $200 from the Episcopal Mission- ary Society in New York, it became self-supporting at the end of a year. Then it built its first edifice, and that edifice immediately was the pride of the town. For it was built of bricks, and such a token of permanency in the new prairie capital meant no light thing to our forefathers, who were accustomed to seeing rows of shanties swept away by fire in a night. The bricks, which probably came as ballast in the ships from De- troit, meant something spiritually, too. Surveying the firm new edifice, the whimsical fathers said, * i The Lord is with us, and apparently He 's come to stay. ' ' For many years St. James's was popularly known as "the Brick Church," and part of that time it was the only brick building in Chicago. The second edifice was stone. It was built in 1861 and was destroyed in the great fire of 1871, the sole feature of it spared being the massive monument "In Honor of Those Who Fought : In Memory of Those Who Fell. ' ' A great expanse of wall dropped across it when the fire was raging, but intervening between it and the sculpture were mighty beams which sustained the wall, and formed a kind of cavern in which the memorial lay for many days. It was exhumed, practically unscathed. It stands to-day in the dim vestibule of the church. Lights ought to hang above it, for it means much, and on Decoration Day flowers should there be bestowed. Immediately after the fire, the present church was erected on the lines of the one burned down. SERVICE AT ST. JAMES'S. Like the church, service at St. James's is simple, but it does what a service ought to do. It commands and makes harmonious the distances. It is not loaded with pageantry, but it does not rattle around in its spa- cious setting. Of ritualistic solicitude for the details 10 of ceremonial and symbol there was no sign on the Sunday here chronicled, except that the choir assumed the eastward position during the singing of the Glorias. The singers, numerous and carefully trained, were heard to the best advantage in the Te Deum, and in the full-bodied strains that carried the words, "Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers/' they produced a magnificent effect. The volume was great, the feeling true and deep. The rector read the prayers forcibly, and such ca- dence as he employed was employed, apparently, not for the sake of the cadence, but for the sake of the far- carrying properties of cadence, which is precisely the reason, and not for flummery, that cadence was em- ployed in the vast cathedrals of ancient times and still is used in them to-day. He was grave, leisurely and composed, but he was expressive, and in the "Let your light so shine before men" he took what many a priest turns into routine, and made beautiful and appealing again. In serving the elements at Com- munion he whispered, and that produced an effect of hushed solemnity which nobody could gainsay. But, speaking merely as an onlooker, I think I liked better the measured sonority of the venerable Cheney of Christ Church, whom I had heard a few Sundays be- fore, for he contrived to infuse the office with equal holiness without giving it a certain shuddering awe which the whisper, rapid, ceaseless and remote, car- ried. But perhaps that is just the effect they wish the worshipper at St. James 's to feel. ll THE RECTOR OF ST. JAMES'S. Nineteen years ago this month JAMES SAMUEL STONE, Englishman and broad-churchman, came to St. James's from Philadelphia, where he had been rector of Grace Church for nine years. He was forty- three years old then, and a dwindling congregation and a debt of nearly $40,000 did not stagger him. The debt has long since been cleared away, an endowment of over $70,000 has been accumulated, and the church has grown in numbers and influence. " About two thou- sand look to us now," the rector said simply when he was asked for figures on membership. The annual budget is $23,000, and the property of the parish may be described as comprising a church, a school, and work- rooms. See it all at night when it is thrilling with lights and laughter and throbbing with activity! In some parts of the great parish house amusements of various kinds are in progress; in -other parts, classes in dressmaking and millinery are working. The rector passes from room to room. He pauses among the women intently bent over their fabrics and cutting- tables. "Doesn't take as much now to make a dress as it used to," he says gravely. Laughter greets his remark, but he is gone, perhaps to conduct a group of young men to a brief service in the chapel of St. An- drew, or to look on at children in a dance or other gymnastic exercise, or to spend ten minutes with some sympathetic soul over an old book catalogue. His vitality must be enormous remember he is sixty-two now and his interests undeniably are varied, for he will lay down the catalogue to take up with his wardens and vestrymen the business of the parish, say, the 12 problem of raising $250,000 for the endowment of St. James 's, a project on which his heart is set ; and, as in the past, he will find some way in which to carry out his purpose. SEEMON TASTING. Some persons do not catch Dr. Stone's tone. They may even think he is cold. That is because he does not gush. But he loves Samuel Johnson, and no man can bring to his fellow men sounder credentials of his hu- manity than that. They are the proof of a clear head and a good heart. The doctor can quote you Boswell on Johnson by the paragraph, and with chuckles. There is the downrightness >of Johnson in some of his apo- thegms, as when he said in one of his genial books of travel, "When an Englishman is ill-bred he has not his equal in Christendom;" or when in his New Year's sermon for 1914 he uttered these pithy sentences : "If environment and association mean so much, there is every reason why we should give the gravest thought to them. "Emotion is nearly the worst criterion of fact pos- sible, and excitement is a poor substitute for contri- tion. "Individuality, though real, is nevertheless moulded by conditions. "A man's house is no longer his castle, but his sanctuary." And this, when he went into detail on the subject of "emotional religion," was especially characteristic of the man : 13 "God has given us powers of emotion and feeling, for which we cannot be too thankful. But those powers need as much care and training as do our intellectual powers, and especially so when they touch our religious life. There is a tendency to make emotion and sensa- tion the foundation and test of that life. In every age, both Christian and heathen, large numbers in the com- munity have indulged in ecstasies and raptures, and thought themselves thereby nearer God. 'Oh, I feel it ! ' they say. It matters not to them that periods of intense excitement and fervid enthusiasm are followed by lamentable reactions : oftentimes by periods of weak- ened morals, dead unbelief, and icy indifference. It is so in the individual as well as in the community. Highly hysterical conditions, however pleasurable at the mo- ment, cannot be maintained. There is nothing of that sort in the penitent at the foot of the Cross, or in the contemplation of the Redeemer of men, or in the humble and devout worship of God. " Because you 'feel it' doe's not make it so. It is not our feelings that must be captured, but our judgment that must be convinced. ' ' And this on environment, as to the words heralding an old text, was emphatically Johnsonian : "This is a saying most people recognize, and none can prove wrong, 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' " And this, on the formation of character, for pithi- ness : ' ' The upbuilding that is -silent is all the safer. ' ' His sentences have cadence, too, when it is his de- sire to give them that quality, and in the New Year's sermon an echo of the musical prose of his books of 14 travel floated to the ear when he made his grave, medi- tative farewell to the vanished year, commenting on the fact that the Church did not mark the coming of an- other year with a feast: "It would almost 'seem as if the intention had been to let the old year slip by and tell its own story as it passes a fleeting sound, a sigh, a murmur. The tale is indeed told, but it is not done with. We pass the time mark, but we remain ourselves. Character and destiny are not ordinarily changed in the midnight tick between the old year and the new." TO THE CHRISTIAN AT THE NEW YEAE. The preacher had taken his text from one of the grandest of the Psalms: "We bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told," and he began with contemplative words on the passing of the old year. "There is a sense of satisfaction," he said "when the last day of the old year comes and the first day of the new year approaches. We are weary, and a possible chance of a fresh start brightens us up. The chapter is closed, and it has not been all that we had hoped it would be. We are eager for the morning of the new year which may hold a fairer record for us. "But curiously enough, of all our holidays New Year's Bay is the most artificial. A few centuries since it fell in March. With the Hebrews it came in Sep- tember. The Church has provided no service for it, and no celebration marks its arrival. Falling between Christmas and Epiphany, it is by them overshadowed. J ' As to the spiritual significance of the day to the in- 15 dividual, lie made it clear that he thought it more appro- priately dedicated to heart-searching retrospect than to the easy and jubilant contemplation of a new pros- pect. The days that had vanished had dropped into the abyss of time, but they had left much behind. i i The story of the old year," he said, "does leave its im- press. We may not like what it has been, but it has helped to make us what we are." That was intensely characteristic of him, and it led him up to the essential matter of his discourse. Not with impetuous resolutions, not witih impulses, not with emotional disturbance was a Christian to face the New Year, nor by those means nor in that mood could he attain the perfecting of his faith and the deepening of his knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. Your re- ligion must be your study. Soberly, firmly, the preacher drove that thought home, saying: "It is sometimes said, that in the future Christ will be more widely and deeply loved, and that the theology of Christ will pass out of mind. But if you love, you are bound sooner or later to ask the reason for that love. I trust a man: why 1 Because I believe in him; but my belief must rest on some knowledge I have of him. So in religion : a man must enquire. If he have a mind at all, he will necessarily delve into theology or the science of religion. We may not become teachers of others, but we must be satisfied in ourselves. Emo- tion is nearly the worst criterion of fact possible. A man may imagine himself in the best of health, when he has within him a deadly disease. He must examine himself and judge according to the evidences. The mind as well as the heart must exert itself." 16 And, solid religious instruction and not luxurious emotionalism being the vital matter, lie said, "For such instruction I do not believe that any system approaches in efficiency the service of the Church herself. No one can use the Book of Common Prayer consistently and persistently without finding himself in an environment and undergoing a discipline that can only make for a highly developed and comprehensive Christianity every Sunday presenting some distinct fact in the life of our Lord or in practical Christianity, and the suc- cession of Collects, Epistles, Gospels, and Lessons bringing before us in the course of the year the whole round of Christian truth. " In his noble sonnet, "The Liturgy," Wordsworth said the same thing: "The way before us lies Distinct with signs through which in set career, As through a zodiac, moves the ritual year Of England's Church; stupendous mysteries! Which whoso travels in her bosom eyes, As he approaches them, with solemn cheer. " "But," warned the preacher, "these blessings and these privileges are not self-operative. Church-going is a habit easily got out of and hard to get into again. Going to church once in a while is of little use. You have got to grow into it. ' ' # * # DRIVING HOME THE LESSON. He glanced over the not very large congregation, for it was a stormy Sunday morning, and it had fol- lowed hard upon the tasks and the gayeties of Christ- 17 mas holidays, and he minded him of parishioners who only a few days before had given him eager assurances of their resolutions to be faithful in attendance at di- vine service during the coming year. Where were they? With an indescribable dryness, indescribable because it so delicately shaded reproof into a ruefully amused understanding of the ways of fallible man, he remarked: ' ' Kesolutions so lightly broken were better not made.' 7 It was a sobering thought and brought a man up standing, as so many of Dr. Stone's brief but senten- tious utterances do. "But there is a work of religious instruction," he continued, " which is peculiarly but not exclusively the work of the Church, and that is the instruction of chil- dren. I wish that I had the mothers of Chicago before me that I might tell them of the sin of entrusting the religious education of their children to other people. Nobody will ever love your child as you do, and the final responsibility for the child rests with you. ' ' A manuscript was before the preacher as he spoke, but his hearers were not conscious of it. It did not come between him and them, and its usefulness seemed to lie in the fact that it enabled him to pass easily and lucidly, without break or confusion, from topic to topic. Thoughts on the mother's part in the spiritual training of her child led him to observations on environment, and environment prompted reflections on the home as the most vital factor in environment. "Isolate your- self as much as you will, harden your conservatism as much as you will, you are nevertheless touched, in- fluenced, and moulded by environment. And because 18 it means so much it demands the gravest considera- tion. ... I would have you think of the home, therefore, from a higher point of view than is usually taken regarding the house not merely as a lodging place, but as a home, and let the story of the New Year concern itself with making it better, cleaner, holier, purer a fit place for the dwelling of the King. ' ' As he drew to a close the preacher again touched in musing retrospect upon the mistakes and evasions of the vanished year, and, though he spoke gently enough, he put a period to musing with one of the stern and searching questions characteristic of his instruction. It was this: "Would you like to have the record read out!" There was no menace in the tone, but it was a ques- tion to stagger a man. Thus had he set before the people in orderly and intimate array certain fundamentals of life and con- duct, and thus had he closed. THE MAN AND THE PEEACHER. In fine, this sermon was like the man, expressive of his deep love of order and decorum in its tribute to "the ritual year of England's Church," and touched here and there with poetic feeling. Not a showy ser- mon, but the sermon of a wise, forcible man who seemed to feel that there was a great deal that was fallible but forgivable in human nature, and a great deal of bun- combe in emotional surge a sermon of instruction and good counsel. As to matter and manner, I should think this preacher would wear well. Indeed, he has worn 19 well at St. James's for nineteen years. Dogged has been the word with him, and he has had to drive, but he has not exhausted the people. He would butter no parsnips for the parish palate, but the parish has come to like his honest, upbuilding fare. No man however rich and no interest however strong has been able, in the old English phrase, to "tune the pulpit " during this rectorship. This article records him as he stood in his pulpit on the first day of his twentieth year at St. James's the hood of his doctor's degree laying a touch of scarlet on Iris white robes, his gestures clean-cut and moderate, a forefinger occasionally lifted in admonitory emphasis and a smile of friendliness lighting up his sad counte- nance when he drifted into an intimate impromptu. Then his voice became very gentle, and he would ad- dress the people as "Beloved" as if they were in truth dear to him very dear, but perplexing. All he said was kindly but explicit no nonsense about it. To sum him up in two words you might say, a pastor and a gentleman. ONE IDEAL OF A METROPOLITAN RECTOR, I do not know that Dr. Stone would inspire men in the sense of inflaming their hearts, for I have never worked with him or under him, but I am sure that he would and does guide them. He is a leader more than an exhorter, and he is more intent upon finding the way than upon finding words and rallying cries. He is a planner. What he accomplishes he accomplishes not by drum-beating but by taking counsel with the people. 20 A method, not a disturbance, is Ms ideal of safe means to fruitful ends, and at St. James's that method has borne rich fruit. The heavy debt long has been only a memory, but, it should be added, that memory is not allowed to lapse from men's minds. Why? For the most important of reasons: Because it infuses new effort with caution; because it is sobering. It is part of the method. Past perplexities and trials overcome are thus a source of permanent profit. Some pastors are for the campaign and the mighty heave; this pastor draws his inspiration not from the turbulent rhetoric of soldiers, but from the sober visions, at once practical and far-seeing, of a farmer who turns a furrow carefully, plants 4 ee P> an d expects in God's own time to reap a plenteous harvest. He once said to the writer: "In so far as I can say it without arrogance, and in so far as it is humanly pos- sible, I want to leave all here on a basis so substantial that it will not break down under changing conditions which will confront the parish from without after my work is done. Conditions will change, so near are we to the heart of the city. We must work now with an eye to being useful under all conditions. Commerce some day is going to surround us, but we must not let it engulf us. We shall still have our work to do. That is why we must have an endowment, but not an endow- ment to insure permanency merely but stability. The latter is more important than the former. An endow- ment that means only permanency has within it the peril of lethargy. Suppose our annual parish budget is $23,000. An endowment that yielded more than, say, $12,000 or $15,000 a year would not be good for the 21 parish. If the people could not or would not make up by their contributions the difference between the as- sured income and the expenditure, it would mean that their church-life had sunk to deplorable inefficiency. ' ' Even as the debt has vanished during the Stone rec- torship, and even as the parish equipment speaking of its working plant of choir room, Sunday School hall and Parish House generally has expanded until now St. James's Church properties overlook three streets in the heart of a sedate residential district, even so will the endowment fund be accumulated. When that is brought to pass nobody will realize that a big thing has been done because nobody will be conscious of a strain. Just this way, not in swift, racking years, but in slow, cautious decades, the buildings of the parish grew to stately completion. To-day all is in order at St. James's. There is no bareness and there is no clutter. The evidences on the one hand of emptiness and on the other of precision would delight the conscientious head of a government bureau. Everybody has a place for his work, from the curate to the choirboys, and everybody's place is re- spected. With the rector on a weekday this writer passed through long halls and up and down stairways from the sanctuary to the choir room. The doctor un- locked the door, and, as he swung it wide, said, "Few but the choir ever enter here. They are very particu- lar, and they do not like anything to be touched. ' ' He fairly tiptoed about the place, and seemed rather re- lieved when he had got out of it. This side-light on the man was illuminating as well as diverting. Loving system himself, he respects the other fellow's system. 22 Using his helpers he also considers them, and so avoids exhausting them. Consideration is the secret, and if it is as much an attribute of manners as of piety it cer- tainly is essentially Christian. This tense, firm, man- aging man has it. Even in a fifteen-minute conversa- tion with him you feel that he is considering you, but not patronizing you. There is a big difference. * * * THE PRIEST AS MAN OF LETTERS. His passion for system distinguishes the ordering of even his literary loves. One of those loves is works of travel and topography. With him that means a good deal more than a shelf full of Bayard Taylor and Landor; it means seven hundred volumes of books of travel collected on the basis of a system which makes them representative of the standard literature of the subject from Herodotus to Tom Hood's "Up the Rhine." Of importance equal to the collection itself are the digests of the works it contains. Here Dr. Stone throws the whole accumulation of lore open to the student by means of an epitome and survey of each work. These digests, written out in his own hand, if printed in crown octavo would make ten or twelve printed volumes of four hundred pages each. It is a genuine loss to the cause of antiquarianism that these notes have never been published, or at least deposited in a public library. For so much toil can system make time in the life of a busy pastor. And more. For the doctor's published writings include the early 23 and unpretentious sketches of the English countryside entitled "The Heart of Merrie England " (1887), "Over the Hills to Broadway" (1894), and "Woods and Dales of Derbyshire" (1894). He has also written "From Frankfort to Munich" (1894) ; and of theolog- ical books, "Readings in Church History" (1889) "Three Hours' Service for Good Friday" (1903), and three volumes of New Testament studies entitled ' ' The Prayer Before the Passion" (1911), "The Passion of Christ" (1912), and "The Glory After the Passion" (1913). And yet this parish priest, who unites in himself the tense executive and the patient scholar, has vision. Perhaps in that attribute lies his secret. He has made method and system work for him to the realization of his visions. In the passage beginning "There history lives," in "Woods and Dales of Derbyshire," he com- pacted a thousand years of English political, religious, and literary history into three pages. Those lines com- prised merely allusions, of course, but they were allu- sions that allured, and every sentence glowed. Thus, "Resplendent are the scenes of the vast drama now a purple tragedy, and now a dazzling triumph," and so on in swift but unhurried pageantry of stately words. The same sedate vivacity distinguishes many a pas- sage in his exegetical writings. Toward the end of "The Glory After the Passion," he is talking of the necessity of pious concentration, as well as of abstrac- tion, in the study of sacred themes if the facts and the philosophy of the world 's religious experiences are to lay hold of the mind of modern readers as he be- lieves they ought to lay hold. "Such things," he says, 24 1 l need more thought than most people have to give. Even the study of sacred literature, though at this time engaging more than ever the earnest thought and work of scholars, has fallen off; so much so, that congrega- tions are fast losing the meaning of allusions and illus- trations used in the pulpit, and Bible Classes are de- generating into societies for district visiting and pleas- ant evenings. This is in sympathy with the spirit of the age: action, not thought; physical enterprise, and not spiritual culture/' ''It is not," he goes on to say, "the hardness of the doctrines that stands in the way, but the trouble it takes to think of them. People are not interested in them, at least to the extent they were some genera- tions since. They will not dismiss them as undeserving of credence, even though they belong to the supernat- ural ; for if religion be admitted as a quality or factor in human life, the supernatural is inseparable from it. Indeed, its purpose is to bring that life which is above nature into relationship with the life which is accord- ing to nature. In other words, it would make the unknown knowable, and reveal the nature and the kingdom of God. The Descent into Hades and the Ascension into Heaven are not therefore always passed over for the reason that they are strange in ordinary experience and in physical phenomena; but because they appear to have no bearing whatever upon the mat- ters which affect our present life. There is nothing in them sufficient to draw one 's attention from the dis- coveries which are going on in nature, or from the furtherance of political or commercial undertakings. They belong to a world in which man is not immediately 25 interested. Even from the ethical point of view, no improvement seems to follow from faith in the events of Christ's after-life. They may be true, but they are negligible: and such things have no place in a world engrossed in problems belonging to its own existence, and engaged more absorbingly than ever in adjusting its ills and correcting its errors. Thus it happens, that Christian folk solemnly and in the presence of God declare their belief in these Articles of the Creed, often- times without any intelligent or anxious thought as to the meaning of the words they utter. " A VISTA OF THE CENTURIES. Then his mind dwells musingly upon the mighty changes of two thousand years, and his pen epitomizes them. From the abundant stores of his reading, his travels, and his meditations he draws his allusions and makes his pictures. The result is almost a panorama. "Neglect, however, is not the only difficulty. Time builds up a more formidable barrier. It is so long since these things happened. Nearly two thousand years have gone by, and Calvary has become an insig- nificant point in a rapidly darkening past. Nor is it the lapse of ordinary years. Changes of tremendous mag- nitude have taken place which make the events of Christ's life still farther off than simply these many years. We sometimes speak of the separation which the Reformation created between the times which pre- ceded it and the times which followed it ; but that sepa- ration is narrow compared with the gulf that the French Revolution and the Victorian Age have made 26 between the present century and the seventeenth, and is next to nothing to the distance from earlier ages effected by the invention of printing, and by the down- fall of the Eoman Empire. It is all so far away, in time and conditions : that morning when Pontius Pilate condemned Christ to death, and that night in which the Lord of life went down into the underworld. So much has happened since. The Jerusalem that Christ saw perished within a few years of His crucifixion; the hill of the tragedy and the site of the grave are unknown; only the rough conformation of the country remains. . . . More has gone than buildings. Lan- guage, modes of thought, manners, conceptions of life, ideas of religion, political and social institutions, rites and ceremonies, have passed away, and only the skill and industry of the antiquary and the historian can bring back their shadows. . . . The mind is apt to consider an event of years so distant as rather curious than serious, much as the traveller wandering through the excavated streets of Pompeii pictures pleasantly to himself the scenes that once were common there, hears the songs of slave-girls and the cries of vendors of goods, recalls the magistrates and merchants in the forum, the priests in the temple-courts, the acrobats and players in the theatre, the gossips at the fountains, the worshippers before the street-shrines, and the houses in which the walls were covered with the bright colours and graceful designs of the artists, and the gar- den, enclosed by stately colonnades, was lively with the songs of birds, the splashings of water, the strains of stringed instruments, and the play of children. As he allows imagination freedom, for him the city lives 27 again. It becomes as it was before the dust and ashes fell from the mountain of fire. But the dream of Pom- peii is only a dream, though the neighbourhood be one of exquisite loveliness, and the uncovered buildings tell a story unlike all other stories ; and what the people did there, or who they were, matters little to the traveller when he gets back to his toil or pleasure. He has had a vision of a world in which he has no part. ' ' But there is peril, he adds, in this luxurious pic- torial musing when it is indulged in by the Christian considering the remote chronicles of his faith, and so he warns the imaginative religionist: "There is beauty in the dream; but the reading of the story is as when one wakes out of sleep. Once the personages depicted were real, and the deeds they did were deeds that the people of their day had no doubt of; but now, instead of history we see romance, and, in place of fact, allegory. And yet fancies of this kind obstruct truth, and rise from an indolence, which may be delightful, but is also deadly. There was a night in which Jesus of Nazareth passed into the realm of Hades, and a morning in which He rose again from the dead. These acts may not be set aside as insig- nificant because they happened in times and under con- ditions far distant from our own. Much less may they be ignored, because at present life is so occupied with other things. The time and thought they demand for their consideration afford some evidence of their im- portance. A religion that needs no study or effort is worthless; and the man who refuses to take the pains and trouble to discover on what he is resting his pro- fessions and faith is dishonouring himself." The three volumes, into one of which we have looked, contain the substance of many a sermon and instruction uttered in the pulpit of St. James's, and he who would comprehend the teaching and the spirit of that pulpit during twenty fruitful years will find the whole matter set forth in these books. THE THRESHOLD PRAYER. Take James Samuel Stone out of his books and set him face to face with his people as friend, neighbour, and guide, and vision still attends him. There is nothing that so tenderly and beautifully illustrates this attribute of the man as his Prayer of the Blessing of the Threshold at the coming in of the New Year. He wrote it for use in the parish of St. James. None can fail to recognize that it has something of the dignity and much of the spirit of an ancient office of the Church. For forty years Dr. Stone has stood at midnight on the last day in the old year on the threshold of his habitation, and prayed for God's blessing on all who through the coming year should pass within his doors. When a youth the place was at the door of his dormi- tory in school or seminary. The years came and went and touched his hair with kind and venerating hands. The young seminarian became a man of large affairs, but still at that midnight hour he opened wide the door, and lifted up his heart in petition and blessing. Sometimes the storm without, sometimes the silent stars, gave him answer. Even unto his sixtieth year he takes his stand in the quaint doorway of St. James's Rectory, from the shadows float the words of the Threshold Prayer, and not infrequently a little group of parishioners gather to share a good man's solicitude and cheer. GOD, who art the Lord of Time and of Eternity, and who watchest over thy people and givest unto them the blessing of peace, Grant that all they who enter this house may come with hope in their hearts and with gracious words upon their lips; and that all they who leave this house may go in peace, and take with them feelings of kindness and good will. May we who bid them farewell remember them with gladness. Let him who comes as an en- emy, should there be such, go away as a friend; let him who comes as a friend and may there be many go away with greater love and with joy abounding. Let the thres- hold which divides the world from this house be the place of consecration between the world and this house, and the line where happiness ever begins and never ends. May this be Thy will, Father of the many man- sions, where with thee we hope eternally to dwell, for the sake of JESUS CHRIST, our Master and Redeemer. Amen. As he stands there in the silent night, a cassocked figure outlined against the dim light within his home, his head bowed, his hands raised in benediction, it is fitting that we meet his blessing with our Godspeed, and wave to the fatherly priest our brotherly fare- well. So to remember him is good. 30 C4 RftRE Studies in the Life of Jesus Christ by the Rev. James S. Stone, D. D. I. THE PREPARATION FOR THE PASSION : A Study of the Incarnation and Virgin Birth of our Lord, and of His Life from Bethlehem to Cana of Galilee. (Ready in November.) II. THE PRAYER BEFORE THE PASSION; or, Our Lord's Intercession for His People. A Study Exegetical and Practical in the 1 7th Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. "In all that Dr. Stone writes there is s strong note of sincerity ; he never pretends to explain without understanding; what he says is always interesting." Guardian (London.} III. THE PASSION OF CHRIST: A Study in the Narratives, the Circumstances, and some of the Doctrines Pertaining to the Trial and Death of our Divine Redeemer. "Every page of the work is lighted up with the consciousness of God's love for man, manifested in the Redeeming Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Stone is no iconoclast, but a builder, one who labors under a profound sense of the responsibility of his task, and who does his work with a reverence which is equalled only by his dili- gence and skill. . . . The book is not argumentative : it is devotional in a way that is likely to appeal to men who want a reason for the faith that is in them, and whose attachment to Christ, if it is to be real, must be based on something deeper than the emotions." Scottish Chronicle (Edinburgh). "Scholarly and critical, it is also devout and practical, and one lays it aside with a distinct, vivid and solemnizing picture of the whole scene, its incidents and charac- ters, with many reflections on its meanings. Against the background of the changing religious thought of our day the mighty fact of the Passion is made to stand out in a way to arrest, awaken and exalt even the most careless. It is a noble book, nobly con- ceived, rich in allusion, simple and beautiful in style." Record Herald (Chicago). IV. THE GLORY AFTER THE PASSION: A Study of the Events in the Life of our Lord from His Descent into Hell to His Enthronement in Heaven. "We can heartily recommend this book to students or to any one who wishes to strengthen the foundation of his belief in our Lord's Resurrection." C?iurch Quarterly Review (London). "It is earnestly to be hoped that the purpose of Dr. Stone to arrest the attention of the present day Church to the great facts following upon the death of our Lord will be crowned with success and that a new devotion to Him will be vouchsafed us all." Princeton Theological Review. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. Fourth Avenue and 30th Street, New York London, Bombay, and Calcutta (Can be had through any bookseller. Price $1.50 each.)