It is impossible, I think, to read the Epistles of the New Testament with any degree of attention, and not to see how anxious the writers are that the Christianity which they preach should not be regarded as a revolutionary and explosive force, upsetting and destroying existing institutions, social and political; how concerned they are that their converts should give no offence (beyond what was involved in the fact of their religion) to the heathen neighbours among whom they lived; that they should ‘Walk in wisdom toward them that are without[949],’ and have their ‘conversation honest among the Gentiles[950]’; how careful they are to say no word which should disturb the existing relations of slaves and masters, of wives and husbands, of subjects and sovereigns; even though the sovereign, the husband, the master might be heathen, and the slave, the wife, the subject might be Christian. If there must be a breach, let it come from the heathen member of the bond. The rule for the Christian was: ‘let him not depart[951].’

And, in thus writing, the Apostles were but following out the teaching and example of our Lord Himself. When He compares the kingdom of Heaven to leaven[952], He means, I suppose, that the working of His doctrine was to be, as a rule, gradual and assimilative, not sudden and explosive.

And He Himself always refused to assume the part of a political agitator, or even of a social reformer, which His followers sometimes wished to thrust upon Him. ‘He withdrew Himself,’ when the multitudes threatened to ‘take Him by force, to make Him a king[953]’; He would not be ‘a judge or a divider’ in matters of inheritance[954]. All social and political problems He left men to work out for themselves with the powers which God has given them, under the guidance and control of God’s ordinary providence; and to apply for themselves to the solution of these problems the principles of His teaching, under the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit. And this refusal to interfere with the normal development of human society emphasises all the more, as has been remarked[955]. His uncompromising vindication of the law of marriage, as the one social institution the sanctity of which is above all human laws: ‘God made them male and female[956].’

He would not agitate against the tribute[957]; though the refusal probably cost Him the popularity which had manifested itself so noisily in the triumphal entry. And, in His trial before Pilate, He distinctly recognised the Roman provincial government of Judaea, heathen and foreign though it was, as being divinely ordered: ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above[958].’

When the publicists of the middle ages, with Dante at their head, laid stress on the birth and death of Christ under the Roman Empire as giving a divine authority to that Empire, and to the mediaeval Empire which claimed to be its successor[959], they were but carrying to somewhat fanciful extremes an argument based upon undoubted facts.

And so St. Paul, in the passage which I have taken for my text, claims no less than a divine sanction for the civil power: ‘The powers that be are ordained of God.… Render therefore to all their dues.’ And the magnitude of the claim is enhanced, if we remember that this was written, not under any of the better Roman emperors; not under Trajan, whose virtues so touched the heart of the Middle Ages, that they represented his soul as transferred to Paradise through the intercession of St. Gregory, the apostle of the English[960]; not under a philosophic saint like Marcus Aurelius; but, probably, under the vain and vicious Nero.

If then such was the claim on the duty of subjects then, how much greater the claim on us, who, for more than sixty years, have lived under one of the very best of Christian sovereigns.

We can most of us remember the kind of thought and speech which was prevalent not so many years ago. It was a common impression then that the part to be played by the institution of Royalty in the future history of the world was a very slight one. The growth of popular power, the spread of education, and other causes, would reduce it to be nothing more than the veil, and a very transparent veil, of a Democracy.

The history of the last quarter of a century has signally falsified this forecast; and the present state of Europe gives it an emphatic contradiction. At the present moment the question of war or peace, that is for thousands, if not millions, the question of life or death, hangs upon the fiat of some four or five men.

Nor is the view of the insignificance of Royalty borne out by the history of England as a whole.

The story of English Royalty reaches back some fourteen hundred years. In 519, according to the traditional account, Certic and Cynric assumed the kingship of the West Saxons; and the reflexion of the compiler of the Saxon Chronicle, writing probably under Alfred, that ‘the royal house of the West Saxons has ruled ever since that day,’ has, with the exception of the Norman period, remained almost literally true down to the present time. For it was Wessex which grew into England; and the first idea of union, loosely and imperfectly realised under Egbert, was gradually wrought out in many years of suffering. Alfred saved England from the Danes, though at a tremendous sacrifice, and holds in real history the place which romance assigns to Arthur; a Christian king,

who rolls back the tide of heathen conquest from his native land. We call him, and we call him rightly, ‘Alfred the Great.’ But in days nearer his own he was known as ‘England’s Darling.’ Will not the historian of the future see a certain sad appropriateness in the fact that the Queen should have died in the year which is to celebrate the millenary of the death of this, the greatest of her ancestors, the one whom she so much resembled in her unswerving loyalty to duty, her constant labour for the good of her people, her unfaltering allegiance to truth? ‘The most thoughtful provider for the widow, the defenceless, the orphan, and the poor, … most beloved by his people,’ says Florence of Alfred. Asser calls him ‘Alfred the truth-teller’; and we all remember how the great tribune of the people, as he was sometimes called, declared that the Queen was the most truthful person he had ever known.

So too after the fierce suffering of the Norman Conquest, it was Henry II who knit the framework of the country together by an administrative system, under the forms of which we, to a large extent, still live; while Edward I, taking up the idea, which Simon de Montfort seemed to have lighted upon almost by accident, made popular representation the permanent basis of our constitution, on the express ground that ‘what touches all, should be approved by all.’

Once more, in the religious crisis of the sixteenth century, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, whatever their shortcomings, did much to impress upon the English Church that sane and sober character of a via media, which, in spite of extremists on either side, it has kept ever since.

We do not, at this stage of our national history, expect services quite of this kind from the Crown. And yet the services which it has rendered during the late reign have been simply immense. To take only two of the most obvious; two, on which the late Mr. Bagehot was fond of dwelling:—(1) It has been the symbol and sign of our unity, not only as a nation, but as an empire. In every quarter of the globe, millions upon millions of her subjects, who knew little or nothing of the nature of Parliaments, of the theory of constitutional government, of the responsibility of ministers, of the rise and fall of parties, looked up to the Queen as the bond of union between them, the mother and head of a vast family dispersed throughout the whole world; and this feeling had been deepened and strengthened to an extraordinary degree by the events of the last fifteen months.

(2) And closely connected with this is the second point. The experience of more than three-and-sixty years has taught us to look up to the Crown as the head of our home and family life. This has not always, indeed has not often been the case, in English, or in any other history. The feeling in our own case has owed something to the homely virtues of King George III, but almost everything to the unfailing love and sympathy of the Queen. In joy and sorrow, the humblest of her subjects might feel that they had a share in her sympathy and care. And this sympathy was not of that easy kind which stoops from painless heights to look upon the woes of others, but had been won through depths of suffering and sorrow; and the comfort which she gave to others was, in the Apostle’s words, ‘the comfort wherewith’ she herself had been ‘comforted of God[961].’

Perhaps it is these two elements which come out most strongly in the universal grief called forth by the heavy blow which has fallen upon us. We have lost our mother, the head of our vast family; and we go forth, like orphans in the night, to meet the unknown trials of a new century, without the guidance of that wisely moderating hand, without the sympathy of that feeling heart, to which we had learned to turn with a habit which had become an instinct.

‘Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; … fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.’ May we not add, what was hardly possible in the then circumstances of the Roman world, ‘love to whom love’?

‘I exhort therefore,’ says the Apostle in another place, ‘that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty[962].’ Surely we have need, at the present time, to obey this exhortation. ‘Supplications, prayers, intercessions,’ shall we not offer these for our new ruler and all his subjects? One of the earliest Christian prayers which has come down to us is a prayer for rulers in the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome[963]:—‘Do Thou, Lord, direct their counsel, according to that which is good and well-pleasing in Thy sight; that, administering in peace and gentleness, with godliness, the power which Thou hast given them, they may obtain Thy favour.’ Eighteen centuries have not made that prayer obsolete, or unnecessary. If there is much that is hopeful and encouraging in the opening of the new era, there is also not a little to cause anxiety even to the most buoyant; and problems have to be faced, which may affect not merely the well-being, but the very existence of our Church and Empire.

‘And giving of thanks.’ Shall we not render that too? Shall we not thank God that for more than three-and-sixty years He gave us such a Queen?

I dare say many of us read with absorbing interest those extracts, covering the past century, which the Times reprinted from its own columns at the end of the year. But, among all those extracts, there was nothing, I think, more interesting than to read the proclamation issued by the Queen at her accession, three-and-sixty years before, and to note how exactly her hopes and promises were fulfilled. It is one of the sternest tests which can be applied to a life of any length. To most of us, if confronted in middle or declining years with the hopes and resolutions of our youth, would they not sound more like sarcasms than like prophecies?

Lastly, let us remember, that every great life, and every great example which is lived before us, brings with it a corresponding weight of obligation and responsibility. Let us pray with St. Ignatius that it may not turn to a witness against ourselves: e???a? ??a ? e?? a?t????? a?t? ?t?s??ta?[964].