"From the throne to the tomb—wealth, splendour, flattery, all gone! The look of favour—the voice of power, no more;—the deserted palace—the wretched monarch on his funeral bier—the mourners ready—the dismal march of death prepared. Who are we, and what are we? and for what has God made us? and why are we doomed to thus frail and unquiet existence? Who does not feel all this? in whose heart does it not provoke appeal to, and dependence on, God? before whose eyes does it not bring the folly and the nothingness of all things human?"
He pauses to pay a tribute to the honesty and patriotism of William IV., and then proceeds:—
"But the world passes on, and a new order of things arises. Let us take a short view of those duties which devolve upon the young Queen, whom Providence has placed over us: what ideas she ought to form of her duties; and on what points she should endeavour to place the glories of her reign.
"First and foremost, I think the new Queen should bend her mind to the very serious consideration of educating her people. Of the importance of this I think no reasonable doubt can exist; it does not in its effects keep pace with the exaggerated expectations of its injudicious advocates; but it presents the best chance of national improvement.
"Reading and writing are mere increase of power. They may be turned, I admit, to a good or a bad purpose; but for several years of his life the child is in your hands, and you may give to that power what bias you please. Thou shalt not kill—Thou shalt not steal—Thou shalt not bear false witness:—by how many fables, by how much poetry, by how many beautiful aids of imagination, may not the fine morality of the Sacred Scriptures be engraven on the minds of the young? I believe the arm of the assassin may be often stayed by the lessons of his early life. When I see the village school, and the tattered scholars, and the aged master or mistress teaching the mechanical art of reading or writing, and thinking that they are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged instructor is protecting life, insuring property, fencing the altar, guarding the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine powers of man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of Creation.
"There are, I am sorry to say, many countries in Europe which have taken the lead of England in the great business of education, and it is a thoroughly commendable and legitimate object of ambition in a Sovereign to overtake them. The names, too, of malefactors, and the nature of their crimes, are subjected to the Sovereign;—how is it possible that a Sovereign, with the fine feelings of youth, and with all the gentleness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether the human being whom she dooms to death, or at least does not rescue from death, has been properly warned in early youth of the horrors of that crime, for which his life is forfeited—'Did he ever receive any education at all?—did a father and a mother watch over him?—was he brought to places of worship?—was the Word of God explained to him?—was the Book of Knowledge opened to him?—Or am I, the fountain of mercy, the nursing-mother of my people, to send a forsaken wretch from the streets to the scaffold, and to punish by unprincipled cruelty the evils of unprincipled neglect?'"
From zeal for education, we go on to love of Peace.—
"A second great object, which I hope will be impressed upon the mind of this Royal Lady, is a rooted horror of war—an earnest and passionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace. The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace—all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance, of nations—are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war—every principle of Christian charity trampled upon—human labour destroyed—human industry extinguished—you see the son, and the husband, and the brother, dying miserably in distant lands—you see the waste of human affections—you see the breaking of human hearts—you hear the shrieks of widows and children after the battle—and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would say to that Royal child, Worship God by loving peace—it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment—I can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the unknown—widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind—pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families—pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young Queen—pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each other's blood; this is your extended humanity—and this the great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, 'I have made few orphans in my reign—I have made few widows—my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry. This has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre. In this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and my Judge.'"
True to his lifelong conviction, the preacher urges the sacredness of religious freedom.—
"I hope the Queen will love the National Church, and protect it; but it must be impressed upon her mind that every sect of Christians have as perfect a right to the free exercise of their worship as the Church itself—that there must be no invasion of the privileges of the other sects, and no contemptuous disrespect of their feelings—that the Altar is the very ark and citadel of Freedom.