The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-19
WES1MINSTER ABBEY.

in Apparently Good Health-Gren
 Preaching in the Abbey-Canon Hens
 ley Henson and His Preaching.
 London, Nov. 27.
 Westminster Abbey as a place O
 worship never seemed quite so interest
 Ing to this writer as upon the occasion
 or his latest visit, which occurred {
 week ago last Sunday. Always before
 the chief charm of worshipping there
 was the fellowship one necessarily hat
 with the past. This temple, as every
 body knows, is practically graveyard
 The earth beneath it is crammed to re.
 pletion with the remains of departed
 greatness. Pack it as you may with
 the living, the congregation of the dead
 will always be the larger. It's monu-
 ments and tablets are an epitome of
 English history, and upon every previ-
 ous visit this had been the predominant
 thought communing with the departed
 tracing the development through long
 centuries of people who have attained
 to unrivalled empire, and coming the
 names of those who in kingship, in statecraft, in literature, and in science and art have been the builders of this empire.
 So previously, but not so upon the oc- casion of my latest visit to this world famed abbey, or, at any rate, not so much so. Memories of the past were crowded back this time by the food tide thought of what the future held. Those who had gone were supplanted in the imagination of at least one wor- shipper by those who were coming. It will be only a few months until this resting place of the great Englishmen of other centuries will enclose within it's historic walls the pick and flower of those sons and daughters of old Eng land who, for good or ill, will shape her course in the century just begun. Where sleep so many of England's sov- ereigns, another, with his lovely con- sort, will shortly be crowned. Coming events cast their shadows before, but to me that Sunday afternoon, the impend- ing coronation, far from casting shadow over Westminster Abbey, seemed to light up the dingy looking old place with an unusual radiance. All, of course, in the imagination; for as matter of fact the place, os it usually is when daylight has gone was as dismal as dungeon, the few dirt t-obstructed gas jets and the candles that flickered here and there doing scarcely more than show us how gloomy and cheer less was this scene of the coming royal festivities. Wise indeed is the porpose to close this ancient fame four months in advance of that ceremony! If clean liness be next to godliness it is high time that in Westminster Abbey the voice of the preacher gave way to the sound of the scrubbing brush. Since, too. light is so much better for all good purposes than darkness, took the lib- erty of praying, the last time I wor- shipped in this dismal old temple, that some rich American might be Providen- tially moved to do for the abbey what Pierrepont Morgan has done for St. Paul's viz, startle both the dead and the sleepy living by fitting it out with an up-to-date Illuminating plant.
 But Westminster Abbey will no doubt be bright enough when the crowning of King Edward takes place in it. No one of any consequence on this side thinks than that the coronation will take place on schedule time and that the king will be alive to play the leading part in it. There are silly ones who say that he will not, that a fatal malady will take him off in advance of that I time. Any day, in fact, you can hear the doleful opinion expressed by some | man in the street." that both the king and the newly created Prince of Wales i are marked by disease for speedy exit 1 It will not be long, say these prophets ,f evil, until there will be another child king in England and a regency. Of | ,ourse everybody is aware that even n that case the country would manage somehow to get along But the people take no stock in these fore should they when every lay they see the king and sis son and leir doing business at the old stand as vigorously and punctually as at any ime in twenty years? It is literal act, too, that the great mass of Lon toner's, when royalty is in town, can see heir goings and comings almost every lay of the week. They never went out nore than now and never with less cer- mony. There is no attempt at conceal nent. They are always on deck, and he eye of the populace can see for it. elf that, if appearances count for any hing, they are not invalids and so are easonably likely to bob up healthy and milling at the coronation Tn June. This writer only wishes that he were { s certain to be a witness of the coro- ation as King Edward is to be on hand pr his part in it. But good many c lillions of us have concluded that on I lat occasion places in Westminster | bbey which might otherwise be ours $ re likely to be pre-empted by some q ody else. All we can do, therefore, is 5 , make the best of our present oppor- d mites, and that is what the writer did d week ago Sunday. He was at least in a le place where the coronation will oc- E IF, and this fact with one other, made ? s latest visit to this grand old abbey !. le of the most impressive of large lmber The other fact of command 2 interest was the new face in the o 1lpit and the new and really extraor- U nary gospel that was preached. To T. Il the truth, it was what expected in = e sermon that drew me there, as, af- V rwards, what I heard in it held me in spell of alternating amazement and eII light driving out not merely the ~