With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back Part 19

With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back Part 19

At the close of a simple military funeral in this same cemetery, the orderly in charge came to me and said, "I never felt so much over any case. This grave means four orphans left to the care of an invalid mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for his family when he got back: but _this_ is the end of it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed.

It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the less terrible on that account; and if half the truth were known and realised concerning the horrors and heartbreak caused by war, all Christendom would clamour for its speedy superseding by honest Courts of Arbitration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_

Wesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.]

[Sidenote: _The death of the Queen._]

I was still in Pretoria when tidings arrived concerning the illness and death of the Queen; and was present in that same Kirk Square when King Edward VII. was proclaimed "Overlord of the Transvaal." In connection with the former event a memorial service, at which the military were largely represented, was held in Wesley Church on Sunday, January 27th. The Rev. Geo. Weavind, as well as Rev. H. W.

Goodwin, took part in the proceedings, and I was privileged to deliver the following address which may serve to ill.u.s.trate, once for all, the type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:--

"I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."

--Ps. x.x.xv. 14 (R.V.).

As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite exactness our common att.i.tude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.

I. _It is the death of the representative_ MOTHER _of our race and age that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us._ For any record of such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history.

She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of statesmanship will she be longest and most lovingly remembered. Put it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own person she honoured family life and kept it pure, when for generations such pureness had seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most popular portraits represent her as the centre of a group of her own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren--a chain of living royalties reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in Israel before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by potent blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The Queen retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last she lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore even imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than that by which the new King conveyed to the Lord Mayor of London, tidings of the great Queen's death:--

"My beloved Mother pa.s.sed peacefully away, at 6.30, _surrounded by her children and grandchildren_."

In the midst of her children she lived; and all fittingly in the midst of her children she died!

As her most signal virtues were of the domestic type, so also her acutest sorrows were domestic. A father's strongly tender love, or wisely-watchful care, she never knew. In one sad year there was taken from her her long-widowed mother, and her almost idolized husband, Albert the Good.

"Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was redeeming human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it; ... thro' all the tract of years, Wearing the white flower of a blameless life."

Concerning that great sorrow, the Queen was wont in homely phrase to say that it made so large a hole in her heart, all other sorrows dropped lightly through. Nevertheless of other sorrows too she was called to bear no common share. As you are all well aware, two of the daughters of our widowed Queen have themselves long been widows. Two of her sons perished in their ripening prime. Her favourite daughter, the Princess Alice, and her favourite grandson, the heir-presumptive to her throne, drooped beside her like flowers untimely touched by frost; and within the last few weeks we ourselves have seen yet another of her grandsons laid beneath the sod in this very city of Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we call to mind that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in the service of his queen--and ours; and perchance the Queen herself rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people, whom recent events have made so desolate.

Reverentially we may venture to say that in all afflictions she was afflicted, and thus endeared herself to those she ruled as no other monarch ever did. Because she was Queen of Sorrows she became also Queen of Hearts.

That of which we have just spoken was indeed her last sore bereavement; and now that to her who shed such countless tears there has come the end of all grief, we have therewith witnessed the full and final prevailings of her Laureate's familiar prayer:--

"May all love His love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee; The love of all thy sons encompa.s.s thee, The love of all thy daughters cherish thee, The love of all thy people comfort thee: _Till G.o.d's love set thee at his side again_."

The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a n.o.bler bridal day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!

II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle of her own household. _She was emphatically the mother of her people_--a people mult.i.tudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and church of every cla.s.s and creed, men render thanks for one "who wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their G.o.d that

"A thousand claims to reverence closed In her, as mother, wife, and queen."

Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating hurricane in the West, called forth from her an instant telegram of queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every effort for the betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest. The east end of London, only less well than the west, was known to her. From Windsor to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that with her own hand she might distribute flowers among her wounded soldiers, and with her own lips speak to them words of solace. At that same inclement season she crossed the Irish Channel to show her vulnerable face once more among her Irish people, and I should not marvel if for such a queen some would even dare to die!

It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!

III. _Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely due to the unexampled length of her reign._

That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three elder sons all died childless, and that her own father died within a few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly a special gift of G.o.d to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity upon us. But through G.o.d's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to cease at once to work and live.

So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser, the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.

Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a dastardly a.s.sa.s.sin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield and exceeding great reward deigned to compa.s.s our Queen with songs of deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and that she may long reign over us is a pet.i.tion that in special measure has prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!

IV. _The Queen's whole reign was frankly based on the fear of G.o.d_; and to find such in English history I fear we shall have to travel back a full thousand years to the days of Alfred the Great, who was also Alfred the Good, and whose favourite saying was

"Come what may come, G.o.d's will be welcome!"

When Victoria was still a girl of fifteen she was solemnly confirmed in the Chapel Royal, and in her case that impressive service manifestly meant--what alas, it does not always imply--a life henceforth wholly given to G.o.d.

At two o'clock in the morning of June 21st, 1837, she was roused from her slumbers in old Kensington Palace, and hastily flinging a shawl over her nightdress, she presently stood in the presence of the Lord Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to learn from their lips that her royal uncle had given up the ghost, and that she, a trembling maid of just eighteen, was Queen. Thereupon, so we are told, her eyes filled with tears, her lips quivered, and turning to the Archbishop she said, "Pray for me!" So that instant all three lowly bowed imploring heaven's help. The Queen began her reign upon her knees.

Her first act of conscious royalty was thus to render heartfelt homage to "The Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence came it to pa.s.s

"Her court was pure, her life sincere."

Her favourite recreations were consequently not those provided by the ballroom, the card-table, the racecourse, or even the theatre. Music, the simple charms of country life, and, manifold ministries of mercy, were the pastimes that became her best; and she never appeared in the eyes of her people more truly royal than when seen sitting by the bedside of a Highland cottager, reading to the sick out of G.o.d's own Gospel the wonderful words of life.

We are here at liberty to use a scriptural phrase and to add that she "married in the Lord." Royal etiquette required that the Queen should herself select the lover destined to share the pleasures and responsibilities of her high position, and her choice fell not on one renowned for gaiety, for wealth or wit, but on one in whom she recognised the double gift of abounding good sense and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For a choice so supremely wise, and for a marriage so supremely happy, all thoughtful Englishmen still render thanks to G.o.d.

Her piety was as broad as it was deep and practical. The head of the Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only; but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her warm appreciation of the work done for G.o.d and man by "The people called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerance in things pertaining to G.o.dliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that all creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. For that reason among others the Queen required that historic service should be held in the open air, on the steps, it is true, of our stateliest cathedral; but none the less under G.o.d's own arching sky, which makes the whole earth a temple. We owe not a little of our religious liberty to the personal influence and example of our much lamented Queen; and we, therefore, show ourselves worthy to have been her subjects, only when we shun utterly all indifference concerning things divine, yet give no place to bigotry; when we seek out not the worst, but the best, in every man, and honestly strive to make the best of that best.

V. _With the new century we suddenly find ourselves subjects of a new Sovereign_, and with equal sincerity, if not with equal fervour, we say, "G.o.d save the King." May his reign also like that of his predecessor bring blessing to many lands! We crave not for him, and seek not in him, unexampled greatness. We desire chiefly that he may "love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with his G.o.d." His rich legacy of newly-created loyalty he will thus a.s.suredly retain and augment.

It is commonly said that this new century, like the last, has begun with a notable lack of notable men, but, nevertheless, never yet have we been left without trusty leaders in the hour of national necessity; and as it has been so will it be!

"We thank Thee, Lord, when Thou hast need, The man aye ripens for the deed!"

Yet the new century clamours importunately, not so much for great men, as for good men. All greatness perishes that is not broad based on G.o.dliness. The best gift for this new era that G.o.d Himself can bestow upon our people, is the grace of deep-toned repentance, an impa.s.sioned love of righteousness, a never flinching resolve to walk in newness of life; for then will the brightness of even the Victorian era be splendidly outshone, and heaven itself will hasten to make all things new. We who believe in Christ have learned to say:--

"Oh Thou bleeding Lamb The true morality is love of Thee!"

Along that same path of love divine lies also the truest patriotism and the speediest perfecting of our national life. I pray you, therefore, let the G.o.d of your late Queen be yet more completely your G.o.d; her Saviour your Saviour; and make this Memorial Service doubly memorable by bowing this moment at His feet,

"In full and glad surrender."

[Sidenote: _The King's Coronation._]

On Sat.u.r.day, March 22nd, 1902, Schalk Burger, late State-Secretary Reitz, and General Lucas Meyer are reported to have appeared in Pretoria, presumably with a view to the submission of those they represent to the sovereign authority of our new King, whose approaching Coronation, Pretoria, even while I write, is preparing to celebrate with unexampled splendour. It is intended to break all previous festival records, and some of the Guards may only too probably still be there to share therein. But that is quite another story, and must find for itself quite another historian. Meanwhile--

"*G.o.d send His people peace!*"