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Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 6917, 28 January 1901, Page 3

■- ■ . ..l "... ii "■■' Sorrowfully the great and universal loss the British Nation had sustained in the removal to higher spheres of the great and good Victoria. We ought, however, to mingle more than a glint of sunshine ; with our clouds of grief. To us and to the world she was one of God's greatest and best gifts. Many i years she had served well her people, | and now with sweet mellowness of ago I and grace she had been removed from | the highest throne that earth could offer I to a throne in higher spheres. _ Of her i- noble qualities, her splendid gifts, her [beautiful acts, her fidelity to God and t powerful influence for good, wo might • speak, so as to learn how.great had been our loss, and how worthy of imitation she was by her subjects. Her life had been|charactised by constant loyalty to God. She loved the King Divine and so Jght to obey, Ha, " I will be good," meant Godliness. That could ' be# observed in her persona! faith in God and His Son Jesus Christ. It was manifested in her acts of devotion which reached the height of real communion ; she used prayer as a relief, her appreciation and perception of its true spirit being beautiful; her love for the Bible, of which she was not ashamed, was great- By it her life was moulded, and in it she found fuel for heart devotion. She was enabled under the most trying circumstances to bow to the will of God and ever ready to trace every blessing up to him. We might add another discriptive name to the many fiven, and call her in apure sense " The 'attern Saint," She honored God, and God honored her, for few Monarch's had His watchful care as she.

In the evening the discourse was based upou Acts xin, 36. After showing that this passage was as appropriate to her as it was to " The man after God's own heart." He said, that by the will of God she had severed her generation according to the will of God. As Queen of the greatest realm she had never failed in her duties to the State, in all she had acted as far as possible according to what she believed to be the will of God. She had used the influence of' her great personality and august position for home, for social purity; for more, than sixty-two years the loftiest example of domestic and public virtue had heen conspicious on the Throne; for the improvement of the social conditions of her people, and for the spread of religion and religious liberty. Her deeds of philanthropy had been many and marked. In the truest sense she, by the will of God, served her generation and then by that same will fell on sleep; she not bemg for God took her.