Part 3

We will just look at one or two. If, as we walk up the nave, we keep to our right hand, we come, on the north side, to a recumbent statue of bronze, and we are almost certain to find one or two people standing looking at it, and perhaps someone has laid a tiny bunch of flowers against the slab on which the figure rests. For this is the monument erected to General Gordon, and there is no man who has died in recent years whose memory is held more in honour by the people of England. For he died in the attempt to save women and children from deadly peril; and these poor people were not English--they had not even white skins--but were Soudanese, who lived in far-away Khartoum. I expect that most of you have read the life of this great man, but for the sake of those who have not, I will tell you a little about him. To begin with, he was what we call ‘unique’--that is, there is no one else who is quite like him, and no one can read the story of his life without thinking of two words, ‘Hero’ and ‘Saint.’

Somehow he reminds us of a strong climber, who spends his days toiling up a great mountain, and always getting higher and higher, and nearer and nearer Heaven, while most of us are content to remain down in the valley, where life is not so hard, but where the air is less pure, and the roads are dusty.

And just as we read in the old stories about heroes having one possession that kept them strong, such as a magic sword, or shield, or helmet, so we can clearly see one thing in General Gordon’s life that made him what he was--something that enabled him to be brave, and chivalrous, and modest; to care absolutely nothing about praise, or blame, or reward, or even money (the thing that so many people care so much about)--and that one thing was absolute faith in God and in God’s Providence.

Most of us live our lives as something that belongs to ourselves; and we make our own plans, and choose our own careers, and we think twice before we do this or that, trying to see what the consequences of our act will be.

To General Gordon life was simply a time that was given to him to do God’s will--and he was certain that whatever came to him was God’s will--so it was all the same to him whether the days brought joy or sorrow, praise or blame, riches or poverty, life or death.

He was a good soldier of the Queen--for Queen Victoria was living then--but he was also a good soldier of Jesus Christ; perhaps one of the best that has ever enlisted in that great army, for he took his orders, and carried them out to the best of his power, never questioning, never grumbling, quite certain, whatever the consequences turned out to be, that everything was right.

And it was this great faith that made him go, promptly and fearlessly, into danger that other men might have shrunk from, and with reason. He is sometimes called ‘Chinese Gordon,’ because once, when there was a rebellion in China, the Emperor asked for a British officer to help to quell it, and Gordon was sent. The rebels had entrenched themselves in forts, and Gordon used to lead bands of soldiers to storm these forts, carrying only a little cane in his hand, with which he pointed out to the men what he wanted them to do. And the Chinese were so amazed that they thought that the little cane was enchanted, and they called it his ‘magic wand,’ and believed that it protected him from all harm.

After the rebellion was quelled he came home, and was stationed at Gravesend, where he was employed in constructing forts. He might have been puffed up by the reputation that he had earned in China, and have become proud and self-conscious; but instead of that, he lived very quietly, visiting infirmaries and ragged schools in his leisure time. And he so interested himself in the poor boys whom he found in the streets that he would take them into his own house, and keep them there until he found an opportunity to send them to sea, and thus give them a fresh start in life.

Now comes the story of the Soudan. If you look at a map of Africa, you will see, south of Egypt, a tract of country bearing that name. I have not time to tell you how it came to be under British protection, but it did, and the natives, who had been very badly treated before, settled down to live quietly and peacefully under British rule.

Then a man arose, called the Mahdi, who gathered together thousands of Arabs and raided the Soudan, vanquishing the Egyptian troops who tried to fight against them. The Mahdi became very powerful, and it was felt that it would take too many of our soldiers to hold the country against him, so the British Government determined to give it up. But we could not leave all the poor Soudanese people to be massacred by the Arabs, so it was determined to try to get them safely out of the country into Egypt, and Gordon was sent out from England to do this. He was accompanied by a friend of his, Colonel Stewart, and they went to Khartoum, which, if you look at the map, you will see is the Capital of the Soudan, and stands on the banks of the Nile, surrounded by deserts.

They succeeded in sending 2,500 people away in safety; then the Mahdi and his followers hemmed them in. Colonel Stewart tried to escape up the Nile, and summon help from Egypt, but his boat was wrecked, and he was murdered. And then Gordon was left alone, the only Englishman in Khartoum.

It is very sad, and yet it is grand, to read how that lonely soldier defended the city, for almost a year, with no one to help him except natives, and with a howling mob of Arabs outside the walls. He lived in what was called the ‘Palace,’ and day after day he used to go up to the roof, and look in vain down the river, and all over the desert, for the help which he expected would be sent from England, and which never came.

It did not come in time, at least, for it was too late in being sent; and when, at last, after much danger, a relieving force did reach the city, it was only to find that it had fallen into the hands of the Arabs two days before, and that its brave defender, along with the rest of the inhabitants, had been killed.

Can you imagine the thrill of horror and regret that swept over England when the news came home? It was felt to be such a terrible thing that one of our countrymen should have been sent out to attempt such a dangerous and difficult task, and then left alone for months fighting against such overpowering odds, and that, when at last help was sent, we should have to confess that it was sent ‘too late.’

And yet, to General Gordon, facing death alone in that far-off Soudanese town, it was not terrible; it was simply a bit of God’s will. Listen to the words that he wrote just ten days before the end came, when he knew quite well that if succour did not come speedily, it need not come at all.

After writing ‘Good-bye’ to all his friends, he adds, ‘I am quite happy, thank God; and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty.’

These are not the words of a man who sees death coming, and is afraid; they are the words of one who was ‘quite happy,’ because he had done his life-work as well as he could, and was content to go home to God, no matter if the way thither were very rough and very lonely.

His body was never found; probably it was hacked in pieces by the Mahdi’s wild followers; and yet he had a ‘funeral.’

For although Englishmen may be slow to act, they act surely; and fourteen long years after Gordon’s death, the Soudan was retaken, and after the great Battle of Omdurman, Lord Kitchener, with his victorious army, entered Khartoum one peaceful Sunday morning, and what do you think was the first thing that he did?

He took his troops, British and Egyptian, into the open space in front of the ruined Palace where Gordon had fallen, and formed them into three sides of a square, while he and his generals stood in the centre.

And then, after the British and Egyptian flags had been run up to the roof of the Palace, and a Royal Salute had been fired, a little group of clergymen stepped forward. They represented all parts of the Church, for soldiers of all creeds wished to take part in Gordon’s ‘funeral.’ Then, while solemn minute-guns were fired, a Presbyterian minister read the seventeenth Psalm, which tells how God’s people, whenever or however they die, will behold His ‘Face in righteousness,’ and how they will be ‘satisfied’ when they ‘awake in His likeness.’

Then an English clergyman said the Lord’s Prayer, and an old Roman Catholic Priest, with snow-white hair, said a memorial prayer for Gordon and those who had fallen with him. Then the Scottish pipers wailed out a dirge, and the dark Egyptian band played Gordon’s favourite hymn, ‘Abide with Me.’ After that the soldiers were dismissed from their ranks, and were at liberty to wander up and down, and everybody, down to the youngest bugler, had a glad feeling in his heart, that, although they did not know the exact spot where General Gordon’s bones were resting, they had done their best, after fourteen years, to give him Christian burial.

There are many more memorials here of men about whom we could tell the most interesting stories, had we only the time. Here is a monument to Sir John Moore, who was killed at Corunna; and who, as doubtless you have learned at school, was ‘buried darkly at dead of night,’ before the defeated English army took to their boats.

And here is one to Sir John Howard, the great prison reformer. See, he carries a key in his hand, to show us how he unlocked the prison doors, and brought help and comfort to the wretched inmates, far more hopeless and neglected in his day than they are in ours.

And here is a representation of a Bishop blessing little black children. That is Bishop Heber, first Bishop of Calcutta, who wrote a great many hymns, some of which I am sure you know--‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,’ ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains,’ and ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning.’

Here is a beautiful memorial--a bronze angel stooping to lift the figure of a wounded yet crowned warrior. Let us read the inscription under it, for it tells of forty-three thousand men, sons of the Empire, who flocked from our Colonies--from Australia, India, Ceylon, New Zealand, and South Africa--to help us to fight against the Boers, and who ‘Gave their Lives for the Motherland.’

Near by is a great window, representing our Lord healing the sick, which was placed there as a thanksgiving for the recovery of our King from a very dangerous illness when he was Prince of Wales.

Look up to the Dome. Do you see the paintings there? They are so far above us that we can hardly see them properly; but if we were nearer we should see that they are scenes from the life of St. Paul. They were painted by an artist called Sir John Thornhill, and he almost lost his life when he was painting them. Indeed, he would have done so had it not been for the promptitude of a friend of his. A great scaffold had been erected for him to stand on while he was painting, and it makes us almost giddy to think of the height that it must have been from the floor. One day he was up there, working busily, and, luckily, a friend was with him; for he stepped back to see the effect of his work, and went so near the edge of the scaffold that another step would have taken him over, to be dashed to pieces on the floor below.

His friend saw his danger, and, seizing a wet paint-brush, flung it at the painting. The artist rushed forward to intercept the brush, and so his life was saved.

Now let us enter the choir, and look at this wonderful carving on the stalls. This was done by a famous wood-carver, named Grinling Gibbons, whose story is as well worth knowing as that of Sir Christopher Wren. He was partly English and partly Dutch, and was born in Rotterdam. He was very fond of carving, and he used to copy all the things that he saw growing outside--fruits, and flowers, and sprays of leaves, and berries--and he became a very clever carver indeed.

He came to England, and made up his mind to work hard at his art, and, in order to have time and quietness to do so, he hired a tiny house at Deptford, and went and lived there. After he had been there some time, he determined to do a really great piece of work.

He was very fond of a wonderful picture of the Crucifixion, which had been painted by a Venetian artist named Tintoretto, and he made up his mind that he would copy this in wood, and frame it in a wreath of carved fruits and flowers.

It was a very ambitious thing to do, but he succeeded beautifully, although it took him a long while, and cost him a great deal of time and work.

Now it chanced that near his little cottage there was a great mansion called Sayes Court, in which lived a very wise, rich, and cultured man named John Evelyn. We know all about him, because he did what perhaps some of you do:--he kept a diary, which has been preserved, and which we can read to-day.

And, luckily for Grinling Gibbons, John Evelyn got to know him, and was a very good friend to him. If we read Evelyn’s ‘Diary,’ we learn how it came about.

He tells us how one day he was walking, ‘by mere accident,’ in a field near Sayes Court, when he noticed a ‘poore solitary thatched house.’ He thought he would like to see who lived there, and he went and knocked, but the door was shut, so he looked in at the window.

And he saw the young artist working at his beautiful piece of carving, which was almost finished. Evelyn was so astonished at finding such a skilful craftsman living so humbly that he asked him if he might come in and speak to him.

Gibbons opened the door quite civilly, and Evelyn tells us that when he saw the work close at hand he was quite amazed at its beauty and delicacy. He asked the young carver why he lived in such a lonely spot, and Gibbons told him that he wanted to have time ‘to work hard at his profession without interruption.’

Then Evelyn, who was always ready to do a kind action and to help people, volunteered to introduce him to some ‘great man,’ who might, perhaps, buy the piece of carving, and asked the sum for which Gibbons would sell it.

The craftsman replied modestly that ‘he was but a beginner, but he thought that the carving was worth a hundred pounds.’

Mr. Evelyn thought that it was quite worth a hundred pounds too, and so the very next time that he went to Court he told King Charles about it, and asked him if he might invite the young artist to bring the piece of work to Whitehall when it was finished, in order that the King might see it.

King Charles said ‘Yes,’ and kind-hearted John Evelyn was delighted, for he felt certain that as soon as the King saw it he would buy it. But, alas! his expectations were dashed to the ground by a French ‘peddling woman,’ who sold ‘petticoats and fauns and baubles out of France’ to the Queen and the ladies of her Court. And this was how it happened.

When the piece of carving was brought to the Palace, the King admired it very much, and would have bought it, but he thought that he would ask his wife first how she liked it. So he gave orders that it was to be carried into the Queen’s apartments, so that she could see it. She also admired it, and was anxious that the King should buy it; but an old Frenchwoman chanced to be in the room--the ‘peddling woman,’ as Evelyn calls her--who was in the habit of bringing over gloves, and fans, and things of that sort, from France, and selling them to the Court ladies. When she heard the price that Charles proposed to give for the carving, she was afraid that the Queen would run short of money, and so would not be able to buy so many things from her as she usually did.

So, when the King left the room, she began to criticize the carving, and to find fault with it, and the foolish Queen believed that what she said was true, and when the King came back, she persuaded him not to buy it. So poor Grinling had to carry it back to his little cottage at Deptford, and he afterwards sold it to a nobleman for eighty pounds.

But, although his first attempt at helping Grinling Gibbons had not succeeded very well, kind Mr. Evelyn did not give it up. He happened to know Sir Christopher Wren, and as Sir Christopher was busy at that time over the building of the new Cathedral, he went and saw him, and told him about his protégé, and asked him if he could not give him something to do.

And Sir Christopher, who was looking about for someone to carve the woodwork of the stalls, went down and saw Gibbons’ work, and was so pleased with it that he engaged him at once to come and help him. And of course, when Gibbons did this, he soon became famous, and had no more trouble in obtaining orders.

Now perhaps you may feel inclined to ask if all the monuments in St. Paul’s Cathedral are erected to the memory of men who died far away in other lands. It looks like it, does it not? for we have seen Gordon’s monument, who died at Khartoum; and Moore’s, who died in Spain; and Bishop Heber’s, who died in India; and that of the Colonial soldiers, who died in South Africa; and if we go on looking, we shall find very many more, to the memory of soldiers and sailors who fought our battles, and guarded our shores, but whose bones are resting in foreign lands, or, mayhap, under the rolling waves of the sea.

But if we go down to the crypt, we shall find that there are some graves there. Two of them I am sure that you would like to look at for a moment, because they are the graves of two men whose memory will be kept green as long as the English nation lasts. One of them was her greatest soldier, and the other her greatest sailor. I need not tell you their names, need I?--Arthur, Duke of Wellington--‘The Iron Duke,’ as men called him--and Horatio, Lord Nelson, who died at Trafalgar, on board the _Victory_.

There are two monuments erected to them, upstairs, in the great church. That to Wellington is enormous, and stands just across the aisle from General Gordon’s. Nelson’s monument is on the other side of the Cathedral, just at the corner of the south transept, and is more interesting to look at than that of Wellington, for it represents the famous Admiral standing with one sleeve empty--for, as you remember, his right arm was shot away at the Battle of Teneriffe--while underneath are carved the names of his greatest sea-fights, Copenhagen, Nile, and Trafalgar. Lower still is the British Lion, emblem of the land he fought for, and the figure of Britannia, pointing out the great sailor to two little middies, and telling them to follow in his steps.

But when, in 1805, Nelson died on board his battleship, the English people felt that it was not enough that a monument should be put up to his memory in the Citizen Church of their Capital. They wanted his body to rest amongst them; so it was brought home, and, amid general lamentation, was buried in this still and silent crypt.

Forty-seven years passed; and once more the whole nation was mourning, for the Duke of Wellington was dead. He had not died in action, as did Nelson, but had fought his fights, and won his victories, and conquered Napoleon, and had lived to come home, and enter Parliament, and serve his country as a politician as well as a soldier.

And when the question arose as to where he should be buried, it was felt to be fitting that he--‘The Greatest Soldier,’ as Tennyson calls him--should be brought and laid beside ‘The Greatest Sailor,’ and that the

‘Sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for,’ Should ‘Echo round his bones for evermore.’

Do you know how his body was brought through the streets of London? Look at this enormous funeral car standing under this dark arch, and you will see. It looks so strange and fantastic that at first sight you hardly know what it is meant for; but you must remember that it was not made out of ordinary wood, like carts and waggons. It was made out of iron--out of old cannon which had done their part in the great soldier’s victories. Look at the names of these victories, twenty-four of them, engraved upon the body of the car.

You can think what a solemn procession it must have been, as the mighty soldier and prudent statesman was borne upon it, through more than a million silent onlookers, to his last long rest in St. Paul’s.

Here is another grave that we must look at ere we leave the Crypt. ‘It cannot be an important one,’ you say, ‘for there is no monument over it, only an inscription.’

Ah yes, but read the inscription--‘Lector, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice.’[A] That tells us at once whose grave it is. It is Christopher Wren’s. And, as we do his bidding, and look around and above us, and as we ascend the stairs once more, and enter the magnificent Cathedral and walk down the nave to the great west door, we feel that no smaller monument could have been erected to the man whose marvellous skill planned it all.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] ‘Reader, if thou requirest a monument, look around.’

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.