How else can we explain that impressive scene at the grave in Cyprus shortly afterwards, when in the absence of the chaplain he stepped forward, and in the midst of his hushed and weeping comrades, touchingly performed the last offices over the dead?
All through his life it was the same. Consistent and true, but without affectation, in his relationship to God and to man, he sought to have a conscience void of offence, and to do his duty as in view of the Eternal.
THE GRAVE AT MATJESFONTEIN.
Marked by Wreath on left of the Cross.
Fearless of death, and accustomed to meet it on many occasions, he dreaded it the less that he fully realised the after-issues. It has been well said that the man who has no place for death in his philosophy has not learned to live. The lesson of life is death. For Wauchope, death had no terrors, because it had been overcome through faith in Him who has conquered death and the grave. The pathos of life was with him no forced sentiment, for he had often felt the pity for suffering and bereavement which underlies all true life. In his own family and person he had experienced the loss of loved ones, and known the grief and disappointments of a bereaved father. Such experiences broaden out sympathy and cause 'the primal duties shine aloft like stars.' In his own parish of Liberton he discharged the office of the eldership with much acceptance, visiting among the parishioners, and officiating at the communion in the parish church; leading a quiet, useful, unobtrusive life, doing good where he had opportunity. On several occasions a representative elder in the highest court of the Scottish Church, he took an active part in the work of the General Assembly. There indeed he was a prominent figure, as he would sometimes take his seat in his military uniform fresh from his duties as the officer commanding the Black Watch at the Castle. The Church of Scotland had no more true and loyal son, and in many ways he identified himself with her interests, and was always ready to testify to the value of the national recognition of religion. He was for some time vice-convener of the Church's Committee on Temperance, and had he been spared longer, his ripe judgment, his knowledge of men, and his own personal experience would doubtless have been of much service in the advancement of this important cause.
An elder of the Church
In 1895 he was chosen as one of the deputies by the Assembly to represent the Church of Scotland at the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which met in Belfast in June of that year. In introducing him to the Assembly, the Rev. Professor Todd Martin, the Moderator, paid a high tribute to his abilities as a soldier, and spoke of the courage and bravery with which he had faced the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, the greatest political general of the age. 'Colonel Wauchope,' he said, 'had won for himself the admiration and love of his most strenuous opponents. They honoured him, however, specially because he took his place from year to year as a ruling elder of the Presbyterian Church, and entered with great enthusiasm into the maintenance of their Presbyterian faith, to the advocacy of the simplicity of ritual, and to the furtherance of temperance and every other good cause that was for the salvation of the great body of the people.' Wauchope's address, which, according to the prints of the day, was 'long, eloquent, and deeply interesting,' feelingly referred at the outset to his Irish connection through his mother; and after pointing out the dangers surrounding the Protestant population of Scotland and Ireland, and the necessity for more united sympathy for each other, he concluded as follows:—'I thank you, Moderator of this vast Assembly, for the kind manner in which you have been pleased to receive me as a member of the Church of Scotland. I am proud, and I cannot say how proud, to be a member of it. It is also a matter of great thankfulness to all of us, especially to us laymen, that now in the Church of Scotland we have elders—men of great transcendent ability—who love their Church, and work loyally as Christian men for the furtherance of that great Church.'
A Christian gentleman
He had a high ideal of the Church's duty, and so far at least as in him lay he sought to take his share of that duty. In the cause of temperance he had done much among his soldiers, and in the Assembly he was ever the eloquent advocate of its claims upon the attention of the Church.