BAPTIST CHURCH

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLI, Issue 20326, 27 January 1936, Page 5

BAPTIST CHURCH

The Rev. J. Russell Grave took as his text I John, chapter 2, verse 17, at the Baptist Church last night, when a memorial service was held. He referred to the many demonstrations of sympathy and affection for the Royal Family which Buckingham Palace had witnessed in recent years. In 1928, when the King was ill, crowds thronged to the Palace, and again on the occasion of the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Londoners thronged to Buckingham Palace. The crowd shouted itself hoarse when the King, appearing with the Royal Family, lifted little Margaret Rose on to the balustrade outside the Palace window, and protecting her with his arm, gave her a glimpse of the sea of faces stretching beneath her from the Palace gates to the dim distance. It was to the Palace the people went night after night during the Silver Jubilee celebrations. Again last Monday night, as the gravity of the King’s last illness became generally known, a crowd in the precincts of the Palace represented the Empire’s anxiety for its sovereign. With the appearance of each bulletin, the news it bore quickly spread, and now they were met that ngiht under the shadow of a grave national loss. For 25 years the Throne of the Empire had been occupied by a man who had proved himself to be a great King, constitutional, human, with great tenderness and sympathy. Through peace and war, hope and fear, prosperity and depression, he had drawn the Empire together through the strength and charm of his personality. He would be remembered as the father of his people, and for his tireless work, for the welfare of his subjects. At the time of his jubilee, it was said that he would be known as “George the Good.” As a man he did justly, loved mercy and walked humbly with his God. The attitude of the people in the hour of his passing must be that of intense sympathy and earnest prayer. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”