The After-glow of a Great Reign

The After-glow of a Great Reign,
by A. F.

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F. Winnington Ingram
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Title: The After-glow of a Great Reign Four Addresses Delivered in St.
Paul's Cathedral
Author: A. F. Winnington Ingram

Release Date: January 23, 2007 [eBook #20430]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
AFTER-GLOW OF A GREAT REIGN***
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THE AFTERGLOW OF A GREAT REIGN
Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral
by the
RIGHT REV. A. F. WINNINGTON INGRAM, D.D. Bishop Suffragan
of Stepney, and Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral

London Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. 3, Paternoster Buildings, E C
1901.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. HER TRUTHFULNESS II. HER MORAL COURAGE III. THE
RAINBOW ROUND ABOUT THE THRONE IV. THE LAW OF
KINDNESS

The After-glow of a Great Reign.
I.
HER TRUTHFULNESS.
"Behold, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts."--Psalm li. 6.
We stand to-day like men who have just watched a great sunset. On
some beautiful summer evening we must all of us have watched a
sunset, and we know how, first of all, we see the great orb slowly
decline towards the horizon; then comes the sense of coming loss; then
it sets amid a blaze of glory, and then it is buried, buried for ever so far
as that day is concerned, to reappear as the leader of a new dawn. In

exactly the same way have we for years been watching with loving
interest the declining years of our Queen, years that declined so slowly
towards the horizon that we almost persuaded ourselves we should
have her with us for ever. Then came, but a few weeks ago, a sudden
sense of coming loss, then her sun set in a blaze of glory, and yesterday
she was buried, buried from our sight, to reappear, as we believe, as a
bright particular star in another world. We do not grudge her her rest.
Few words can express more beautifully the thoughts of thousands than
these words just put into my hand--
"Leave her in peace, her time is fully come, Her empire's crown All day
she bore, nor asked to lay it down, Now God has called her home.
Let sights and sounds of earth be all forgot, Her cares and tears She
hath endured thro' her allotted years, Now they can touch her not.
From that fierce light which beats upon a throne Now has she passed
Into God's stillness, cool and deep and vast, Let Heaven for earth atone.
All gifts but one He gave, but kept the best Till now in store; Now He
doth add to all He gave before His perfect gift of rest." [1]
But, just as in the sunset a beautiful and tender after-glow remains long
after the sun has set, so we are gathered to-day in the tender after-glow.
And I propose that we should try and gather up one by one--to learn
ourselves and to tell our children, and the generations yet unborn, as
some explanation of the marvellous influence which she
exercised--some of the qualities of the Queen whom we have lost.
And let us first fix our minds upon something which at first sight seems
so simple, but yet seems to have struck every generation of statesmen
as a thing almost supernatural--and that is her marvellous truthfulness.
Said a great statesman, "She is the most perfectly truthful being I have
ever met." "Perfect sincerity" is the description of another. Now what
that must have meant to England, for generation after generation of
statesmen to have had at the centre of the empire a truthful person, a
person who never used intrigue, who never was plotting or planning, or
working behind the backs of those who were responsible to advise

her--to have had someone perfectly sincere to deal with in the great
things of state--that is something which must be left for the historian
who chronicles the Victorian era thoroughly to paint. No, my friends,
our task now is far simpler: it is to ask what is the secret of this
marvellous truthfulness, can we obtain it ourselves, and does God
demand it?
Let us take the last question first, and we take it first because it is the
question directly answered in our text. The answer is given by someone
who understood human nature, by someone who had sinned, had been
forgiven, had been roused out of the conventionalities of life by a