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Title: The After-glow of a Great Reign Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral

Author: A. F. Winnington Ingram

Release Date: January 23, 2007 [eBook #20430]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AFTER-GLOW OF A GREAT REIGN***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE AFTERGLOW OF A GREAT REIGN

Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral

by the

RIGHT REV. A. F. WINNINGTON INGRAM, D.D. Bishop Suffragan of Stepney, and Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral

London Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. 3, Paternoster Buildings, E C 1901.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. HER TRUTHFULNESS II. HER MORAL COURAGE III. THE RAINBOW ROUND ABOUT THE THRONE IV. THE LAW OF KINDNESS

The After-glow of a Great Reign.

I.

HER TRUTHFULNESS.

"Behold, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts."—Psalm li. 6.

We stand to-day like men who have just watched a great sunset. On some beautiful summer evening we must all of us have watched a sunset, and we know how, first of all, we see the great orb slowly decline towards the horizon; then comes the sense of coming loss; then it sets amid a blaze of glory, and then it is buried, buried for ever so far as that day is concerned, to reappear as the leader of a new dawn. In exactly the same way have we for years been watching with loving interest the declining years of our Queen, years that declined so slowly towards the horizon that we almost persuaded ourselves we should have her with us for ever. Then came, but a few weeks ago, a sudden sense of coming loss, then her sun set in a blaze of glory, and yesterday she was buried, buried from our sight, to reappear, as we believe, as a bright particular star in another world. We do not grudge her her rest. Few words can express more beautifully the thoughts of thousands than these words just put into my hand—

  "Leave her in peace, her time is fully come,
    Her empire's crown
    All day she bore, nor asked to lay it down,
  Now God has called her home.

  Let sights and sounds of earth be all forgot,
    Her cares and tears
    She hath endured thro' her allotted years,
  Now they can touch her not.

  From that fierce light which beats upon a throne
    Now has she passed
    Into God's stillness, cool and deep and vast,
  Let Heaven for earth atone.

  All gifts but one He gave, but kept the best
    Till now in store;
    Now He doth add to all He gave before
  His perfect gift of rest." [1]

But, just as in the sunset a beautiful and tender after-glow remains long after the sun has set, so we are gathered to-day in the tender after-glow. And I propose that we should try and gather up one by one—to learn ourselves and to tell our children, and the generations yet unborn, as some explanation of the marvellous influence which she exercised—some of the qualities of the Queen whom we have lost.

And let us first fix our minds upon something which at first sight seems so simple, but yet seems to have struck every generation of statesmen as a thing almost supernatural—and that is her marvellous truthfulness. Said a great statesman, "She is the most perfectly truthful being I have ever met." "Perfect sincerity" is the description of another. Now what that must have meant to England, for generation after generation of statesmen to have had at the centre of the empire a truthful person, a person who never used intrigue, who never was plotting or planning, or working behind the backs of those who were responsible to advise her—to have had someone perfectly sincere to deal with in the great things of state—that is something which must be left for the historian who chronicles the Victorian era thoroughly to paint. No, my friends, our task now is far simpler: it is to ask what is the secret of this marvellous truthfulness, can we obtain it ourselves, and does God demand it?

Let us take the last question first, and we take it first because it is the question directly answered in our text. The answer is given by someone who understood human nature, by someone who had sinned, had been forgiven, had been roused out of the conventionalities of life by a great experience, who had looked out of the door of his being and had seen God. And he tells us, as the result of his experience, and as the basis of his repentance, these words "Behold, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts." It is one thing to say words which, understood in a certain sense, are true, it is one thing to avoid direct breaches in our action of the law of honour, but it is another thing to be in ourselves absolutely sincere, to look up into the eyes of God, as a truthful child looks up into the eyes of its mother, to possess our own hearts like a flawless gem, with nothing to hide, nothing to keep back, and nothing to be ashamed of—that is to have truth in the inward parts, and that is what God demands. It is what He found in Christ, one of the things which made Him say time after time, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased"; He found ever reflecting back His Face as He looked down upon Him a perfectly sincere Person, true through and through. That was the secret of His marvellous influence, that was why little children came and crept under the ample folds of His love, that was why young men came and told Him their secrets, that was why everybody, except the bad, felt at home with Him, that was why women were at their best with Him, that was why Herod the worldly found he could not flatter Him, and Pilate the coward found Him devoid of fear; it was because right through, not only in His words and actions, but in His being He not only had, but He was, Truth in the inward parts. And it is because our Queen, with her simple and beautiful faith in her Saviour, caught from childhood this attribute of her Lord, because she worked it out into her character, made it the foundation of everything she did—it is for that reason she was able to keep the Court pure, and the heart of the country true, to get rid of flattery, meanness and intrigue, and to chase away the sycophant and the traitor.

Is it not a lesson which the country needs, is there any nobler monument that we could build to her than this—to incorporate into the character of the nation the first and great characteristic of her own character, and to try and plant in society, in trade, and in Christian work, truth in the inward parts?

Take, first, society. It is a cheap sneer, which speaks perpetually of the hollowness of so-called society, as if rich people could not make and did not make as honest friendships as the poor and middle class; but, at the same time, few would deny how much of what would be such a