THE EMPRESS AND THE BUTTERFLY.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 8 October 1901, Page 4

THE EMPRESS AND THE BUTTERFLY.

Canon Toignmomh Shore, the Anglican cleric who was the late Empress Frederick’s favourite preacher, and who was with the Empress during her last moments, narrated a curious little death chamber incident during a sermon be preached at the English Church at Hamburg on August 11. As the Empress was breathing her last, a small white butterfly fluttering about * the room lighted upon her, and just as she expired flew out of the window. The preacher remarked that the butterfly in all ages of the Church has been the emblem of the Resurrection, and when he saw it in the death chamber he drew the attention of the Empress’s relatives to this. The canon, in the course of his sermon, took the opportunity to dispel the theory held in some quarters that the late Empress was more or less an Atheist. His associations with her convinced him that she was a “firm believer in the fatherhood of God, and the redeeming love of Him who died lo save us all,” and a religiously minded woman, whoso influence on her children was always of a distinctly religious character. But she was not a believer in all the dogmas of the Church, and strict Anglicans found in her toleration of .other religious beliefs a ground for a canard that she was a Freethinker.