TO THE inexpressible grief of countless friends and followers, the promise of Mr Stanton's recovery from his long illness has not been fulfilled, and he passed away last week ( Features, 22 March). It was hoped and believed that, in the coming Whitsuntide, that voice which, for half a century had preached the simple Gospel of Christ in St Alban's Church would once again be heard proclaiming the old saving truth, but God's will was otherwise. That a man of his exceptional gifts and powers should have been suffered to remain for fifty years an assistant-curate, honoured only on what was to be his death-bed with a merely titular prebend, is a fact which does dishonour to the Church of England. A priest who attaches no particular value to his orders save as the gate to preferment, and even openly rejects certain of the cardinal doctrines of the Catholic Faith, is not debarred from the dignified offices that the Church has at its disposal; rather, in some instances, his disbelief seems to be a positive recommendation. One, on the other hand, who, like Mr Stanton, carries into action the precepts of an old-fashioned Gospel, if he exceeds by a hair's-breadth in one direction the limit from which others may, without censure or the slightest disquali-fication, decline as much as they will in the opposite direction, is compelled to linger in the cold shade of official disfavour. Mr Stanton, however, cared nothing for preferment. Even that which was offered him at last he respectfully declined. What he cared for in life was his work among the poor and those who needed spiritual ministrations. And now, little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on in the grave where the faithful have laid him. His memory will endure in the hearts of men and women and children whose lives he helped to cheer, to uplift and to ennoble.