Chapter 34

SERMON XXXIV. NATIONAL SORROWS AND NATIONAL LESSONS

On the illness or the Prince of Wales.

Chapel Royal, St James's, December 17th, 1871.

2 Sam. xix. 14. "He bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man."

No circumstances can be more different, thank God, than those under which the heart of the men of Judah was bowed when their king commander appealed to them, and those which have, in the last few days, bowed the heart of this nation as the heart of one man. But the feeling called out in each case was the same--Loyalty, spontaneous, contagious, some would say unreasoning: but it may be all the deeper and nobler, because for once it did not wait to reason, but was content to be human, and to feel.

If those men who have been so heartily loyal of late--respectable, business-like, manful persons, of a race in nowise given to sentimental excitement--had been asked the cause of the intense feeling which they have shown during the last few days, they would probably, most of them, find some difficulty in giving it. Many would talk frankly of their dread lest business should be interfered with; and no shame to them, if they live by business. Others would speak of possible political complications; and certainly no blame to them for dreading such. But they would most of them speak, as frankly, of a deeper and less selfish emotion. They would speak, not eloquently it may be, but earnestly, of sympathy with a mother and a wife; of sympathy with youth and health fighting untimely with disease and death--they would plead their common humanity, and not be ashamed to have yielded to that touch of nature, which makes the whole world kin. And that would be altogether to their honour. Honourably and gracefully has that sympathy showed itself in these realms of late. It has proved that in spite of all our covetousness, all our luxury, all our frivolity, we are not cynics yet, nor likely, thanks be to Almighty God, to become cynics; that however encrusted and cankered with the cares and riches of this world, and bringing, alas, very little fruit to perfection, the old British oak is sound at the root--still human, still humane.

But there is, I believe, another and an almost deeper reason for the strong emotion which has possessed these men; one most intimately bound up with our national life, national unity, national history; one which they can hardly express to themselves; one which some of them are half ashamed to express, because they cannot render a reason for it; but which is still there, deeply rooted in their souls; one of those old hereditary instincts by which the histories of whole nations, whole races, are guided, often half-unconsciously, and almost in spite of themselves; and that is Loyalty, pure and simple Loyalty--the attachment to some royal race, whom they conceived to be set over them by God. An attachment, mark it well, founded not on their own