Sermon at St. Paul’s, London.

Manawatu Herald, 12 June 1902, Page 3

Sermon at St. Paul’s, London.

An impressive sermon was delivered. The Bishop’s quotation of Buskin's reference to the Crimean dead brought tears to the eyes of many. [The passage referred to in the message is doubtless the following, from Ruslan’s “ Modern Painters ”■: —“ I believe war is at the present productive of more good than evil. I will not argue this matter. I will appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the clearest. I know what would be told me by “those who have suffered nothing. Prom these, I can well believe, be they prudent economists or careless pleasure-seekers, the cry for peace will arise alike vociferously, whether in street or Senate. But I ask their witness to whem the war has changed the aspect of the earth and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut off like a spider’s web, whose treasure it has placed in a moment under the seals of slay. Those who can never mere see sunrise, nor watch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark earth line—who never more shall sea the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of Balaclava. Ask their witness, and see if it is not well with them and theirs; that they would have it no otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor take 'again the purple of their bloed from out of jibe eross on the breastplate of England. Ask them, and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the sound of the old Sayton war-cry, ‘ Set on.’ And this not for pride^—not because the names of their lost ones will be recorded to all time as of those who held the breach and kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the Spartans did against the East; with the like home message, 4 0, stranger, go and tell the English that we are lying here, having obeyed their words ” not for this, but because also they have felt that the spirit which has discerned them for eminence in sorrow—the helmed and sworded skeleton that rakes with its white fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into grave-heap after graveheap, washed by the everlasting surf of tears—has been to them an angel of other things than agony. They know now the strength of sacrifice, and that its flame can illumine as well as consume; they are bound by new fidelities to all that they have saved—by now love to all for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust has been delegated by those who need it no more to the cause for which they have expired; and every mouldering arm, which will never embrace the beloved ones, has bequeathed to them it| strength afld its faithfulness.”] Post.