So Dean Stanley came that afternoon, and remained talking with my mother for about half-an-hour, and then set himself to understand my own position.  He finally told me that conduct was far more important than theory, and that he regarded all as “Christians” who recognised and tried to follow the moral law.  On the question of the absolute Deity of Jesus he laid but little stress; Jesus was, “in a special sense”, the “Son of God”, but it was folly to jangle about words with only human meanings when dealing with the mysteries of divine existence, and above all it was folly to make such words into dividing lines between earnest souls.  The one important matter was the recognition of “duty to God and man”, and all who were one in that recognition might rightfully join in an act of worship, the essence of which was not acceptance of dogma, but love of God and self-sacrifice for man.  “The Holy Communion”, he said, in his soft tones, “was never meant to divide from each other hearts that are searching after the one true God; it was meant by its founder as a symbol of unity, not of strife”.

On the following day he came again, and celebrated the “Holy Communion” by the bedside of my dear mother.  Well was I repaid for the struggle it had cost me to ask so great a kindness from a stranger, when I saw the comfort that gentle noble heart had given to my mother.  He soothed away all her anxiety about my heresy with tactful wisdom, bidding her have no fear of differences of opinion where the heart was set on truth.  “Remember”, she told me he had said to her, “remember that our God is the God of truth, and that therefore the honest search for truth can never be displeasing in his eyes”.

Once again after that he came, and after his visit to my mother we had another long talk.  I ventured to ask him, the conversation having turned that way, how, with views so broad as his own, he found it possible to remain in communion with the Church of England.  “I think”, he said gently, “that I am of more service to true religion by remaining in the Church and striving to widen its boundaries from within, than if I left it and worked from without”.  And he went on to explain how, as Dean of Westminster, he was in a rarely independent position, and could make the Abbey of a wider national service than would otherwise be possible.  In all he said on this his love for and his pride in the glorious Abbey were manifest, and it was easy to see that old historical associations, love of music, of painting, and of stately architecture, were the bonds that held him bound to the “old historic Church of England”.  His emotions, not his intellect, kept him Churchman, and he shrunk with the over-sensitiveness of the cultured scholar from the idea of allowing the old traditions, to be handled roughly by inartistic hands.  Naturally of a refined and delicate nature, he had been rendered yet more sensitive by the training of the college and the court; the exquisite courtesy of his manners