THE RECOVERY OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1122, 2 March 1872, Page 2

THE RECOVERY OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

No day of public thanksgiving has been more universally observed in Melbourne than that set apart to celebrate the restoration to health of the Prince of Wales. ' It was a day of solemn thanksgiving 1 , and as such it was evidently regarded, by the majority of the citizens. The day was observed as Christmas Day or Good. Friday, rather than as Easter ~M6nday\6r Boxing Day. In almost everyplace of worship in the city and suburbs, thanksgiving services, were held and sermons preached, and reports of these sermons occupy pages of the Melbourne papers. That delivered by the Rev, P. Menaies, of the Scots Qhurch, Collins-street, is reported at greatest length, and is remarkable for beauty of thought and language. There was, said the preacher,' alluding to the Prince's illness, a religious lesson offered in this event, first, to the Prince, second, to the circles of scientific men ; third, to the whole British nation. THE IBSSON TO THE PRINCE. We be unfaithful to God and refrain from saying that the first person to whom a solemn lesson is conveyed by the public sorrow is the Prince himself. He is the Queen's son. He is the heir of a noble name. He will, if it please God, govern hereafter one of the greatest nations of the earth. He will have a wisdom and experience ready to advise him such as scarcely another heir of royalty could summon to his right hand. Yet withal he is a man. And the lessons of a sad experience are not beneath the notice even, of a coronet. How much i» there in the affluence and freedom placed at the disposal* 'of any scion of royalty to banish those more solemn thoughts which so high a destiny naturally awakes? Surrounded by amiable courtiers, who have' no interest but to please, and whose highest merit will be the discovery of some new pleasure ; excluded by the watchful jealousy of constitutional law from any important interference in 'the affairs of State ; assured on every side that no one expects him to embarrass himself with intellectual exertion, or to be more than a dignified representative of the country's honor, the adult heir of a modern throne must be possessed, of a far higher than the average moral fortitude if he can preserve, amid so many temptations, a healthy interest in those great public movements and tendencies with which the happiness of mankind ia so. intimately associated; In such a position it requires positive heroism to be able to realise that such a thing as royalty can die. Thp days pass smoothly along.

Agreeable occupations rise almost unbidden. If danger threatens, others provide against it. If new legislation ia required, others are called into counsel. Yet all the while, the searching eye of the public curiosity is reading the idlest thought and actions of this so strangelysituated nobility with all the sternness which naturally attends upon the judgment of one who is a nations exemplar. Here is the expectant of an indefinitely brilliant future suddenly confronted with the possibility of early death. Royalty cannot save him. His princely reason wanders into delirium. His forehead, destined to feel the weight of an Imperial crown, is hot with the fierce febrile draught that is exhausting vitality. All the glories of English history cannot purchase him an hour's sleep. All the honors which the lifting up of his hand could bestow, cannot reduce to stillness the noisy breathing of complete prostration. It is more than enough to humble the highest dignitaries of the earth before the sovereign might of the Almighty and Eternal King ! At first the lesson might well have been — "After such a warning be ready at any moment to die ; be not a stranger to the thoughts of the end that awaits all ; overshadow the blazonry of earthly pomp and regal ceremonial with the salutary remembrance that death pours contempt upon princes, and that in the grave small and great rest together and the servant is free from his master. This is a lesson never wholly to be neglected by any, for death, like the beautiful wild beast lying in ambush, leaps upon the great majority unawares. Yet one might well prefer interpreting God's message to his Royal Highness out of this personal affliction as, " Prepare now to five. Let this sudden glimpse of the shadow of death recall the solemnity of life, and rise henceforth with the magnanimity of a Prince, and the faith of a Christian, to the full height of these momentous responsibilities !" We dare to cherish the ardent expectation that the son of so admirable a mother and so good a father, will reveal, after this dire experience, qualities of a type so noble that England could not desire better in her future ruler, and that the unkindly voice Lpf t those who are ever ready to forget a rartaoe's goodness and to exaggerate his failing, will be put to silence by a life of conspicuous and yet humble-minded excellence exhibited on the very steps of the throne. THE tBSSON TO THE NATION. The whole aggregate of the British empire has something to learn from the sorrow whose joyful issue we are this day celebrating in our prayers and praises. We are taught, I think, first of all not to beoverhasty in the interpretation of our feelings as towards those in high rank, especially towards the representatives of Royalty. A tale, a whisper, an insinua-

tion an evil rumor, travels round the empire accumulating fictitious aggrava-. 3it goes. We spring to premature and unjust judgments both, it may be, as toifae sWitself, and as to the nature of our own feelings towards the subject of it. We fret and fume because we have supposed (ourselves- to have made the discovery that they who rule us are not perfect Why did we cherish such unreasonable expecLion? Is the blood of Royalty as in God's sight immaculato Does the curse of sin enter into every human tissue but tho organisation of princes i we listen to restless firebrands who in the convulsions of socioty have nothing to lose, and may have something to win, and when they assure us with loud and loose and profligate bombast, that the days of monarchy are numbered, we look round |and fear that there may be something in it. But death makes a snatchJatthe'Royal widow's first-born, and he escapes after a terrific struggle into the land of tho living once again. And then we begin to discover that there was no estrangement in us. We are satisfied to be ruled in that happy old way under which our nation rose to glory, and we ought to be ashamed of tho cruel impatienco which, in its ungoverned expressions, may have bitterly wounded the feelings of those whom God has already sorely - chastened. And we have further to learu that we hold all our earthly gifts, stir laws, our liberties, our constitutional blessings, our statesmen, our princes, and our noblest rulers by that tenure, and by that alone, which God allows. The basis of prosperity is not to be found in institutions which may wax old, or in individuals whose life may be laid low ; but in the principles of an incorruptible integrity, in obedience to the whole revealed will of God, in patient waiting for the leadings of Providence in tho high and holy Christian faith that ■when we truat God and do the right, no real evil can eve* befall ms. High, things aro tottering n:>iv, ancient strongholds are being dismantled, great names are ever and anon passing away ; no human arm can be at the holm for ever ; but whatever new conditions of socioty arise, and whatever noble spirits drop from among us into the eternal silences, if wo wait on the Lord wo shall preserve a perpetual youth, onr sun shall not go down, nor our moon withdraw itself. For the Lord shall be our everlasting light, and our" God our glory. Amen"