May all love
His love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee;
The love of all thy sons encompass thee,
The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,
The love of all thy people comfort thee:
Till God's love set thee at his side again."
The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a nobler bridal day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!
II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle of her own household. She was emphatically the mother of her people—a people multitudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and church of every class and creed, men render thanks for one "who wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their God that
"A thousand claims to reverence closed
In her, as mother, wife, and queen."
Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating hurricane in the West, called forth from her an instant telegram of queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every effort for the betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest. The east end of London, only less well than the west, was known to her. From Windsor to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that with her own hand she might distribute flowers among her wounded soldiers, and with her own lips speak to them words of solace. At that same inclement season she crossed the Irish Channel to show her vulnerable face once more among her Irish people, and I should not marvel if for such a queen some would even dare to die!
It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!
III. Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely due to the unexampled length of her reign.
That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three elder sons all died childless, and that her own father died within a few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly a special gift of God to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to cease at once to work and live.
So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser, the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.
Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a dastardly assassin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield and exceeding great reward deigned to compass our Queen with songs of deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and that she may long reign over us is a petition that in special measure has prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!