After walking up the aisle on the arm of the Prince of Wales, with the Princess on the other side, Her Majesty took her place in the special pew with the chief members of the Royal family on either side. After a brief special service of thanksgiving the Archbishop of Canterbury preached the sermon for the occasion in words of tact and eloquence from which one quotation may be made: "Just as in one of our own homes when death threatens, the whole history of the loved object we fear to lose comes back in the hours of waiting, so England was stirred by a hundred touching memories when danger threatened the Royal house. And God doubtless thus touched our hearts to deepen our loyalty and make us better prize the thousand good things secured in a well-ordered State by love to the head of the State." At the conclusion of the sermon a Thanksgiving Hymn was sung and the benediction given. The following was the concluding verse:
"Bless, Father, him thou gavest
Back to the loyal land,
O Saviour, him Thou savest,
Still cover with Thine Hand:
O Spirit, the Defender,
Be his to guard and guide,
Now in life's midday splendor
On to the eventide."
The Royal party then proceeded in due state to their carriages and the procession returned through the streets of the city to Buckingham Palace over the Holborn Viaduct, along Holborn and Oxford street to the Marble Arch, via Hyde Park to Piccadilly, and thence down Constitution Hill. Enthusiastic cheering was heard all along the route and decorations were seen everywhere in the greatest abundance. In the evening London was brilliant with light. The dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Mansion House, and the two large triumphal arches were particularly bright and beautiful in their varied colours and illuminations. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress entertained the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the Provincial Mayors to a banquet at the Mansion House and, all over the United Kingdom, celebrations of a popular or religious character, holiday gatherings, crowded meetings and illuminations, marked the day and the pleasure of the people. Addresses poured in by hundreds and rejoicings were not confined to the Island portion of the Empire. An incident of this celebration was the collection of a Thanksgiving Fund for the completion of St. Paul's Cathedral. To it the Queen gave £1000 and the Prince of Wales £500. Another feature of the event was the splendid behaviour of the millions of people who lined the seven-mile route of the procession and paid loyal tribute to their Queen and to the son who was heir to all the traditions of his race and the greatness of the Royal name. On February 29th Her Majesty wrote to Mr. Gladstone a message intended for the nation:
"The Queen is anxious, as on a previous occasion, to express publicly her own personal very deep sense of the reception she and her dear children met with on Tuesday, February the 27th, from millions of her subjects on her way to and from St. Paul's. Words are too weak for the Queen to say how very deeply touched and gratified she has been by the immense enthusiasm and affection exhibited towards her dear son and herself, from the highest down to the lowest, on the long progress through the Capital, and she would earnestly wish to convey her warmest and most heartfelt thanks to the whole nation for this great demonstration of loyalty. The Queen, as well as her son and dear daughter-in-law, felt that the whole nation joined with them in thanking God for sparing the beloved Prince of Wales's life."
Perhaps the most beautiful and effective presentations of popular feeling and hopes in connection with this now historic sickness of the Heir Apparent were the sermons preached by Dean Stanley. No one has ever been closer in friendship and in personal knowledge to the Prince of Wales than had this eloquent and saintly ecclesiastic. No one has been more admired and respected in the Church of England in modern days than he; nor has any of its clergy possessed a wider view or more generous heart. Speaking in Westminster Abbey on December 10th, 1871, when the nation was awaiting in deep anxiety the issue of a struggle which seemed to be almost fatally and surely decided, he embodied the popular feeling in beautiful and appropriate words: "On a day like this when there is one topic in every household, one question on every lip, it is impossible to stand in this place and not endeavour to give some expression to that of which every heart is full. We all press, as it were, round one darkened chamber, we all feel that with the mourning family, mother, wife, brothers, sisters, who are there assembled, we are indeed one. The thrill of their fears or hopes passes through and through the differences of rank and station; we feel that, while they represent the whole people they also represent and are that which each family and each member of each family, is separately. In the fierce battle between life and death, for the issues of which we are all looking with such eager expectation, we see the likeness of what will befall every individual soul amongst us; and the reflection which this struggle, with all its manifold uncertainties suggests, concerns us all alike."
The sermon which followed was a skillful presentation of thoughts suggested by the text, "To live is Christ and to die is gain." It concluded with an earnest hope that the Royal life which might so greatly influence the national destinies might still be preserved—"a life which, if duly appreciated and fitly used, contains within it special opportunities for good such as no other existence in this great community possesses; a life which may, if worthily employed, stimulate all that is noble and beneficent and discourage all that is low and base and frivolous." In these and other words he concluded a sermon which could not but have had its influence in after days upon the life and character of the Prince who so greatly respected and regarded the preacher. A week later the cloud had lifted from Sandringham and the life which had been so much prayed for in so many lands was slowly passing into the region of safety and strength. It gave the opportunity to Dean Stanley to speak again at the historic Abbey in a strain of instruction and to draw a national moral from the events of the past few months. He referred to the spontaneous outburst of every class and every party which had, to his mind, proved the permanent supremacy of the British Crown in a Christian State. "There are nations and there have been times in which the devotion to the reigning family has been a thing separate and apart from the love of country. There have been times and places when the love of country has existed with no loyal feeling to the reigning family. Let us thank God that in England it is not so. Loyalty with us is the personal, romantic side of patriotism. Patriotism with us is the Christian, philosophic side of loyalty. Long may the two flourish together, each supporting and sustaining the other."
On the Sunday following the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's—March 3rd—the Dean preached for the last time upon this subject in Westminster Abbey. After stirring references to the wonderful scene of national enthusiasm lately witnessed and to the gathering in St. Paul's Cathedral of representatives of every creed and religious division in Great Britain (except those of one exclusive body) to offer thanksgivings in "the venerable forms of the National Church" he expressed his belief that the demonstration as a whole was "the response in every English heart to the sense of union—too subtle for analysis yet true and simple as the primitive instincts of our race—which binds the people of England to their Monarchy and the Monarchy to the people." He dealt with the functions and character of that institution in most striking words. "No other existing throne in Europe reaches back to the same antiquity, none other combines with such an undivided charm the associations of the past with the interests of the present. It is the one name and place which, being beyond the reach of personal ambition, beyond the need of private gain, has the inestimable chance of guiding, moulding, elevating the tastes, the customs, the morals of the whole community. It is the one name and place which, being raised high above all party struggles, all local jealousies, over all classes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, is the supreme controlling spring which binds together in their widest meaning all the forces of the State and all the forces of the Church. It is the one institution which by very nature of its existence unites the abstract idea of country and of duty with the personal endearments of family life, of domestic love, of individual character."
It was the greatness of this national possession—one which had steadied national progress and promoted peace in the midst of tumults and freedom in the midst of disorder—which had, Dean Stanley thought, helped to make the people pray that its destined heir should be worthy of his noble inheritance. And then the speaker pointedly and clearly pictured the increased and increasing responsibilities of the Prince of Wales upon whom, henceforth, "as by a new consecration and confirmation, devolves the glorious task of devoting to his country's service that life which is in a special sense no longer his but ours, for which his country's prayers, his country's thanksgivings, have been so earnestly offered." The sermon concluded with a description of these great responsibilities; an appeal to the Prince to begin life afresh and to take the lead in all that was true and holy, just and good; a warning that "of him to whom much has been given, much shall be required;" a picture of a Christian England fighting evil in every form and in every place and growing greater in all the elements of higher national and individual life.