DURING the past month, the messenger of death has suddenly entered our high palaces. Shortly before midnight, on Friday, the sixth of May, His Majesty King Edward VII. was called to pass from time to eternity. His death was quite unexpected by the vast majority of his subjects. The news of his serious illness was only known to the general public on the morning of the day on which he died. Many did not learn the tidings till the afternoon; while it is certain that a number of people in the remote country districts heard no report until they received on the day following the sad news of his death. His Majesty died of bronchitis and heart failure. He was born on the 9th November, 1841, and was thus in the 69th year of his age. His accession to the throne took place on the 22nd January, 1901, and so his reign lasted for only a little more than nine years.
The death of King Edward has, naturally and justly, evoked universal mourning throughout the Empire. The deepest sympathy is felt for Queen Alexandra and the Royal Family in their great bereavement. While we cannot join in the unqualified praise bestowed by many on the memory of the deceased monarch, we cordially recognise those valuable gifts which he possessed for the discharge of his exalted office. He knew his place as a king and sustained it with dignity, and yet took the deepest personal interest in the welfare of all his subjects, even the humblest—a feature in which he resembled his late revered mother, Queen Victoria. He was not of a haughty spirit, but was affable and condescending to his inferiors, and sympathetic with the common people. It is recognised on all hands that in his capacity as a constitutional monarch he displayed much tact and skill in his dealings with men and affairs. He is also widely credited with having done great service as a man of peace in his relations with the courts of other countries. He was a peacemaker among the nations. Peace may sometimes be bought at too dear a price, but war is always a dreadful and undesirable way out of difficulties—and if the late king was in any degree the means, under the Most High, of averting this terrible calamity from us as a people, and of maintaining friendly relations between “the great powers,” we owe him a deep and lasting debt. If he had been a man of a contentious spirit, there might have been results, in the present unsettled state of the nations, too awful for us to contemplate. He did his work well in the civil sphere, and his memory in this respect deserves much esteem. Where King Edward came short, we regret to say, was in the important matters of personal religion and elevated moral example, where too many kings in all ages have come woefully short. The Scriptural standard of a king is that he must be just, “ruling in the fear of God” (2 Sam. xxiii. 3). Kings and judges are commanded to “serve God with fear,” and to “rejoice with trembling.” (Psalm ii. 10, 11). Our late Sovereign was too fond of the racecourse, the theatre, and such like places, where the fear of God is conspicuous by its absence. He would have left a better example to his subjects if he had eschewed the ways and pleasures of a world, lying in wickedness. He was also by no means strict in his observance of the Lord’s Day. He partook, indeed, of the general looseness that prevails in England and elsewhere on the subject of Sabbath observance. Sincere Protestants felt that he paid too much deference to the Roman Catholic Church and its services. Not that we believe he was an admirer of Romanism—we are glad to have confirmation from Mr. Walter Walsh that he was far from that—but he allowed his ideas of peace and courtesy to carry him too far—so far on occasion as to do what was tantamount to a violation of his obligations as a Protestant king. But need we wonder at this, when his political advisers gave him no hindrance, but every encouragement to act in this direction, perhaps more than he would have done if left wholly to his own choice? We have no special pleasure at this moment in recounting these defects; but the interests of truth at all times need to be maintained, and something requires to be said to bring to a right proportion the indiscriminate and flattering eulogy that is presently flooding the press in all quarters.
The sudden demise of King Edward is a loud call to all his people—high and low, rich and poor—to consider their latter end, and to prepare to meet their God. Death, like time and tide, will wait for no man, be he prince or peasant. When the hour is come, the most exalted as well as the meanest of the sons of men, willing or unwilling, must depart hence, and render their account to the righteous Judge. All the remedial appliances that wealth can procure and skill can employ are utterly unavailing to prevent the solemn crisis. “It is appointed unto men once to die.” What is still more solemn is, “after this, the judgment”; and nothing but the new birth and vital union to the Lord Jesus Christ will give any person, whatever his or her social rank, the adequate preparation for a place at the right hand on that great day of the Lord.