The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-06 00:00:00

DEAN STANLEY ON THE LATE
CANON KINGSLEY.

On Sunday afternoon the Dean of Westminster
preached at the Abbey, "In Memory of Charles
Kingsley, 1\1.A., Canon of Chester," to a congregation
which filled every available part of the building. If
anything was wanted to testify to the keen appreciation
in which the Canon was held by the public, the scene
at the Abbey on Sunday was sufficient, for the place
was never more crowded. Hundreds of persons were
turned away from the doors,and many stood in cramped
positions during the whole of the service, but were
amply rewarded by hearing a most impressive discourse.
Before the sermon the well-known hymn, beginning—
" The saints on earth and those above
But one communion make,"

was sung.
Dean Stanley took for his text the words, "Watch
ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong,"
Ist Epistle to the Corinthians, c. xvi., V. 13. After
some preliminary observations, he said that in that
multiplied shadow of sorrow and death which had for
the last few months or weeks enlarged their borders
throughout the land, one brilliant light, which shone in
their dim atmosphere, had been suddenly extinguished,
and it could not be allowed to pass away without ask-
ing what they had gained by its presence amongst them,
and what they had lost by its disappearance. Others
had spoken, and would longer speak, on both sides of
the Atlantic, of the literary fame of the gifted poet,
whose dust might well have been mingled with the dust
of his brother poets within these walls • others would
speak of the close connection which bound the pastor to
his flock, the friend to his friend, the father to the chil-
dren, and the husband to the wife. In the romantic
home, which was for ever identified with his name, and
the site where he rested, and beneath the yews which
he planted with his own hands the giant fir trees that
flung their protecting arms above, might well now be
dwelt upon : but that which alone was fitted to urge
from the pulpit was the moral and religious significance
of the career by which, as it were, a rare plant had
grown, which no art could produce, but of which the
peculiar fragrance still lingered among those who
might have come within its reach. To the vast con-
gregation that halt hung upon his lips in this church,
to the wide world which had looked eagerly for his
words, which would come no more from him, to
loving friends who mourned over the sudden
extinction of a heart of fire, the sudden relaxa-
tion of the grasp of a hand of iron Dean Stanley
said be would recall some of these higher claims which,
amidst manifold imperfections, acknowledged by none
more freely than by Kingsley himself, had placed him
unquestionably amongst the conspicuous teachers of
his time, giving his voice the power of reaching hearts
which other preachers and teachers had appealed to in
vain. It did seem to him that there were three lessons
of Canon Kingsley's character which might be summed
up in the three of the Apostolic farewell which had
been chosen for his text— Watch ye, stand fast in
the faith, quit you like men, be strong." " Watch "
—that is to say, be awake, be wakeful; have your
eyes open—the eyes of your senses—the eyes of
your mind, the eyes of your conscience. Such,
surely, was the wakefulnes, the vigilance of
him who was as a waker amongst drowsy sleepers,
as a watchful sentinel in advance of a slumber-
ing host. The divinity of human character, the
tragedy of human life, were always as to him an ever-
opening, unfolding book; but even more than to the
glories and the wonders of men he was awake to the
beauties and the marvels of nature. That contrast
the old story of "Eyes and no Eyes" was the con-
trast between him and common people. His eagle eye
seemed to observe every shadow and form of the animal
and vegetable life. That listening ear seemed almost to
catch the growing of the grass and the opening of the
shell. Nature was to him a true companion, speaking
with a thousand voices. Nature was to him also a voice
of God the voice of the Eternal and Invisible, as it
could only be to those who studied it. This to him was
no idle dreamer's pleasure; it was a wakefulness not
only to the force and beauty of the outward world, but
to the cause of its mysterious operations, to the expan-
sion given by its patient students and explorers; and
never, or hardly evee, did he join in the presumptuous
condemnation of science or scientific men. They were
fellow workers with him, and he with them. Children
gathering shells on the sea shore, fishermen by chalky
streams, huntsmen on the bright days of autumn and
winter, watchers of the growth of plants, watchers of
streams and shifting soils—he feared not to teach the
lessons of holy and innocent enjoyment which
awakened in him the constant praise of the Eternal
Cause. After referring to Canon Kingsley's well-
known poem to the East wind, Dean Stanley went on
to say that if there was any one with whom the
precept, "Quit you like men, be strong," was asso-
ciated even to exaggeration, it was with him who had
gone. No one was more chivalrously respectful
towards women, or more tender to the weak and suf-
fering. Of all his songs, of all his utterances, that
which would live the longest in the mouths of men was
that which was not of the fierce spirit of the old
"sea-kings," but of the wailing and weeping cry of
simple pathos :
"Oh, Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee."
Canon Kingsley was a thorough Englishman, and was
always of the working and toiling class. Oh! artisans
and working men of London, the Dean went on to
say; and you, the rising youth of England; you
know how he desired, with a passionate desire, that
you should have pure air, pure water, habitable
dwellings, so that you should be able, as far as pos-
sible, to be elevated and refined, and lead the life of
citizens and of Englishmen; and you may therefore
praise him the more when he told you from the
pulpit, and would still tell you from the grave, how he
strove to make your homes and your lives full of
purity and light, and taught that vice, idleness, mean-
ness, and dishonesty were base, contemptible, and
miserable. It was for this he pleaded with a special
force. As he lay the other day, cold in death,
like a stone effigy of an ancient warrior, the fever
of life gone, but the strength of immortality left,
resting as if after the toils of a hundred battles, this
seemed to be but himself idealised. From those mute
lips seemed to come once more the loving words which
he spoke ten years ago, before one who honoured him
with an_unswerving faithfulness, even to the end—
when he spoke in defence of chivalry at the chapel at
Windsor Castle. Speaking of his professional or pas-
toral functions, the Dean of Westminster went on to
say that Canon Kingsley was what he was, not by
virtue of his office, but by virtue of what God had
made him in himself. He was, they might almost say,
a layman in the disguise and sometimes hardly even in
the disguise of a clergyman. Fishing with the fisher-
men, hunting with the huntsmen, he held his own in