THE PROPHET AND THE PRINCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17576, 18 March 1919, Page 6

THE PROPHET AND THE PRINCE.

Here is a striking passage from Mr Harold Begbie's account of the giving service in the Albert Hall last Saturday, arranged by the Nonconformist Churches and attended by the King and Queen:

"On the platform, a pace or two advanced from the towering phalanz of black-coated people behind him, with his face to a congregation of 80CO men and women, the circlet of light in the high roof twinkling on his white face and his beard of snow, stood an old bowed figure in a black robe and a hood of dull crimson, praying. "At one moment this octogenarian looked like Homer, then like Darwin, then like Ulysses, and then like a nameless patriarch of Israel on whose bent shoulders pressed the burden of the ages of the world. • .''

" Immediately confronting him, down below in the arena, knelt a young soldier in khaki, booted and spurred, the light in the roof glinting on his scarlet tabs and his gold lace, a boy with fair hair, a frceh complexion, and round eyes not yet weary of delight in the world. His head was bowed, and his hands were ' folded. But once he raised his head and looked with those wandering eyes of hia at the old man standing above him, as if he saw in that figure something greater and more he could find in the words of the prayer. "In this manner John Clifford, Kβformer, and Edward, Prince of Wales, confronted each other. They met in prayer to the Eternal Righteousness. " The old man symbolised all the herculean labour by which England won her glorious freedom; the young Prince symbolieed the joy which England inherits from that toil. The .one was like a weary and broken ploughman; the other like a sheaf of corn, the fruit of his husbandry. Ot the one was an ancient prophet still quivering with the divine fire which sum-, moned his nation tb battle; the other a young knight who obeyed that summons and has now returned with victory and a clean sword to receive the prophet's bless- " One saw in this twain the past of the nation and its future. "The old, white-bearded.man, his strong voice, quavering with age, but beautiful with deep emotion, prayed that his day' might be a day of rededication to Freedom, and Jnstice, and Humanity, and Brotherhood—a day of rededication to the service of our nation, and the Coirimonm*. an <* to the service of mankind. That was the note of the whole service— tlumksgivmg for victorv, but thanksgiving with loyalty to our national ideal of righteousness. What a great trompetJike phrase—'National Righteousness T