The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-07-02
TALMAGE's SERMON.
Victoria, the Christian Empress of
a Christian People.
Her Most Conspicuous Service to Humanity
the Example OF Her Daily Life-Ths
Political Competency of
Women.

POLITICAL competency OF
Women.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage delivered
the following Victorian jubilee dis
course at the Beatrice (Neb.) Chau-
tauqua, basing it upon the text;
What wilt thou, Queen EstherP-Esther, ", g.
This question, which was asked of a
queen thousands of years ago, all civil
lied nations are this day asking of
Queen Victoria; What wilt thou have
of honor, of reward, or reverence, or
service, of national and international
reclamation? What wilt thou, the
queen of the nineteenth century," The
seven miles of procession through the
streets of London day after tomorrow
will be a small part of the congratula-
tory procession whose multitudiOus
tramp will encircle the earth. The
cele curative anthems that will sound up
from Westminster Abbey and St. PauFs
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 5 o'clock
of the morning of 1897, when the arch
bishop OF Canterbury addressed the
embarrs ssed and weeping and almost
affrighted girl of is years with the
startling words, Your Majesty" until
this sixtieth anniversary of her
enforcement the prayer of all
good people on all sides of
the seas, whether that prayer be Of
fered by the 800, 900, 600 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 have been told
over and over again what has occurred
in the Victorian era. The mightiest
thing she has done has been almost
ignored, while she has been honOred by
having her name attached to individ-
uals and events for whom and for which
she had no responsibility. We have
put before us the names of potent and
grandly useful men and women who
have lived during her reign, but do
not suppose that she at all helped
Thomas Carlyle in twisting his in
volved and mighty satires, or helped
Disraeh in issuance of his epigram-
matte wit, or helped Cardinal Newman
in his crossing over from religion to re-
hgion, or helped to inspire the en-
chanted sentiments of George Eliot
and Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Brown
ing, or helped to invent any of George
CruikShanlI's healthful cartoons, or
helped George Grey in founding a
British South African empire, or kim
died the patriotic fervor with which
John Bright stirred the masses, or had
anything to do with the invention of
VIZ bNANE AOHO VI opAAs VI bAAC
building up of the science of bacteriol-
ogy, or the directing of the Roentgen
rays which have revolutionized sur
gerry, or helped in the inventions for
facilitating printing and railroading
and ocean voyaging. One is not to be
credited or discredited for the virtue or
the vice, the brilliance or the stupidi-
ty, of his or her contemporaries.
While Queen Victoria has been the
friend of all art, all literature, all sci
ence, all invention, all reform, her
reign will be most remembered for all
time and all eternity as the reign of
Christianity. Beginning with that
scene at five o'clock in the moaning, in
Kensington 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
church, but on all occa-
sions, she has directly or indirectly de-
clared: Il believe in God the Father
maker of Heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ His only begotten
Son." l declare it, fearless of any con-
that the mightiest cham
pion of Christianity to-day is the
throne of England. The queens book,
go much criticised at the time of its
some saying it was not
done, and some saying
that the private affairs of
ought not so to have
been exposed, was nevertheless
book of vast usefulness from the fact
that it showed that God was acknowl-
edged in all her life and that Crock of
Ages" was not an unusual song in
Windsor Castle. Was her son, the
prince of Wales, down with an illness
that baffled the greatest doctors of En-
gland? Then she proclaimed day of
prayer to Almighty God, and in an
swer to the prayers of the whole civil
lied world the prince got well. Was
Sebastopol to be taken and the thou
sands of bereaved homes of soldiers to
be comforted, she called her nation to
its 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 that no throne since the
throne of David and the throne of
Hezekiah and the throne of Esther has
been in such constant touch with the
throne of Heaven as the throne of Vic
toria. From what know of her habits,