The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1897-06-26

tramp will encircle the earth. The
celebrative anthems that will sound
up from Westminster Abbey and st.
Paul's cathedral in London will be less
than the vibration of one harp string
as compared with the doXologies which
this hour roll up from all nations in
praise to God for the beautiful life and
the glorious reign of this oldest queen
amid many centuries. From five
o'clock of the morning of 1887, when
the archbishop of Canterbury addressed
the embarrassed and weeping and
almost affrighted girl of Is years
with the startling words: your
majesty" until this Goth anniver-
sary of her enthronement the
prayer of all good people on all sides of
the seas, whether that prayer be Of
fered by the SOC, 000, 900 of her subjects
or the larger number of millions who
are not her subjects, whether that
PRAYER be solemnized in church, or
rolled from great orchestras, or poured
forth by military bands from forts and
battlements and in front of triumph
ant armies all around the world, has
been and is now, God save the QueenP'
Amid the innumerable columns that
have been printed in eulogy of this
queen at the approaching anniversary
columns which, put together, would
/ be literally miles long-it seems to me
that the chief cause of congratulation
to her and of praise to God has not yet
been properly emphasized, and in
many cases the chief keynote has not
been struck at all. We nave been told
over and over again what has occurred
in the Victoria era. The mightiest
thing she has lone has been almost ig-
nored, while she has been honored by
having her name attached to ndivid-
uals and events for whom and for
which she had no responsibility.
We have put before us the
names of potent and grandly use
full men and women who have
lived during her reign, but L do not
suppose that she at all helped Thomas
Carlyle in twisting his involved and
mighty ~satires, or helped Disraeli in is
suance of his -epigrammatic wit, or
helped Cardinal Newman in his cross
ing over from religion to religion, or
helped to inspire the enchanted senti-
ments of George Eliot and Harriet
Martineau and Mrs. Browning, or
helped to invent any of George Cruik-
shank's healthful cartoons, or helped
George Grey in founding a British
cOubn AIrlcdh cLuplTO, VI hluuIcu Lhc
patriotic fervor with which John
Bright stirred the masses, or had any
thing to do with the invention of the
telephone or photograph, or the build
ing up of the science of bacteriology,
or the directing of the Roentgen rays
which have revolutionized or
helped in the inventions for facilitat-
ing printing and railroading and ocean
unuoninn Ona 1c mot IN no aradifnd or
discredited for the virtue or the vice,
the brilliancy or the stupidity, of his
or her contemporaries.
While Queen Victoria has been the
friend of all art, and literature, all
science, all invention, all reform, her
reign will be most remembered for all
time and all eternity as the reign of
Christianity. Beginning with the
scene at five o'clock in the morning, in
K~ensington palace, where she asked
the Archbishop of Canterbury to pray
for her, and they knelt down, implor-
ing divine guidance. until this hour,
not only in the sublime liturgy of her
established church, but on all occa-
sions, she has directly or Indirectly de-
clared, II believe in God the Father
Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten
Son" / declare it, fearless of contra
diction, that the mightiest champion
of Christianity to-day is the throne of
England. The queens book, so much
criticised at the time OF its appearance,
some saying it was not skillfully done,
and some saying that the private af-
fairs of a household ought not SO to have
been exposed, was nevertheless a book
of vast usefulness from the fact hat it
showed that God was acknowledged in
all her life and that Rock of Ages"
was not an unusual song in Windsor
castle. Was her son, the prince IF
Wales, down with an illness that baf-
fed the greatest doctors of England?
Then h proclaimed a day of prayer
to Almighty God, and in answer to the
prayers of the whole civilized world
the prince got well. Was Sebastopol
to be taken and the thousands of be-
reaved homes of soldiers to be COM
forted, she called her nation to it's
knees, and the prayer was answered.
See her walking through the hospitals
like an angel of mercy! Was there
ever an explosion of fire damp in the
mines of Sheffield or Wales and her
telegram was not the first to arrive
with help and Christian sympathy Is
President Garfield dying at Long
Branch, and is not the cable under the
sea, reaching to Balmoral castle, kept
busy in announcing the symptoms OF
the sufferer?
L believe hat no throne since the
throne of David and the throne of
Hesekiah and the throne of Esther has
been in such constant touch with the
throne of Heaven as the throne of Vic
toria. From what l know of her hab-
its, she reads the Bible more than she
does Shakespeare. n admires the
hymns of Horatio Bonar more than she
does Byron's 'Corsair." h has not
knowingly admitted into her presence
n corrupt man or d~issolnte m To
very distinguished novelists and very
celebrated prima donnas she has de-
clined reception because they were i'm
moral All the coming centuries of time
canno revoke the advantages OF having
had go years of Christian ~womanhood
enthroned in the palaces of England.
Compare her court surroundings with
what were the court surroundings in
the time of Henry VIII, or what
were the court surroundings in
the time of Napoleon, in the
times of Louis XVI, in the times
of men and women whose names may
not be mentioned in decent society.
Alas! for the revelries, and the worse
than Belshazzar feasts, and the more
than Herodian dances, and the scenes
from which the veil must not be lifted.
You need, however, in order to appre-
ciate the purity and y%irtuous splendor
of Victories reign, to contrast it some
what with the gehennas and the pam
demoniums of many OF the throne
rooms of the past and some OF the
throne rooms of the present. I call
the roll of the queens of the earth, not
that | would have them come up or
come back, but that / may make them
the background of a picture in which
] can better present the present septu-
agenarian, SO 500 to be an octogena-
rian, now on the throne of England,
l---a-.l.-