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THE PATRIOTIC FUND

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to be, 'Faint, yet pursuing.' What a great prayer is that 'Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm.' I fear1 there is not much hope of my dear wife being able to stay out to help me through the synod, as her two youngest are in so weak and anxious a state of health. It is a sore trial, and it seems to cut up a part of one's plans by the roots, but in these things I suppose 'patience must have her perfect work.'... I hope dear V.2 is having much success in his vocation of seeking to break down that stronghold of sin which in my smaller degree I am also wrestling with in tough embrace. Dear Mr. Gordon took the pledge at Candahar one evening when we were advocating the temperance cause. . . . I am glad dear M. and yourself have the prospect of a short change at least this summer. What a joy it would be to share the holiday with you, but I hope for two or three years more to get on without requiring a furlough.

The aisle was associated in the bishop's appeal with Gordon, and the chancel with the fallen officers. In writing to his son Basil on October 8, about the soldiers' joy that the war was practically over, he said :—

'I have been attacked in the leading paper here for connecting the cathedral with slaughter and battle-fields, but to this I have replied that the soldier represents very much the spirit of selfsacrifice and loyal homage to duty, and that these excellences ought not to be thought lightly of, but rather immortalized.'

But whilst providing for the future, the bishop did not suffer his sense of personal bereavement or zeal for his great project for his diocese to render him unmindful of the soldiers' present needs. Rather his sympathies were quickened by his own calamity, and he spoke out nobly in moving the first resolution at a meeting gathered to support a Patriotic Fund.

'The expression Patriotic Fund,' he said, 'is most happily chosen. There was a time when patriotism was restricted to the feeling which bound Englishmen together, now it implies the bond which unites the English race and nation with the people of this great country in common interests, sympathies, and hopes. So it was

1 This apprehension, it may be remembered, was not realized.

2 His youngest brother, at that time largely engaged as a temperance lecturer.

with the Roman citizenship and empire. There was a time when it was limited to those who dwelt within the city walls or its near neighbourhood; it grew and expanded till, by a decree of Caracalla, the citizenship came to be as wide as the empire. We may compare with this the deepening and strengthening of the conviction. that we were one nation and one empire from the time our gracious Queen assumed the title of Empress at Delhi, proclaiming herself as head, under God, of an empire whose members were as citizens of one country. Our country, England and India united in one, has lost some of her noblest and bravest sons, native and European. Our empire mourns, and is clad in weeds of sorrow for a great and sore bereavement. Out of the love we bear our country we weep with her, and we would not weep with unpractical sorrow, with "crocodile" tears: as an African once said to a meeting expressing great enthusiasm of sorrow-"how many pounds do you weep?"... They have rendered us the best service, at the price of the most costly and precious thing they could offer, "All that a man hath will he give for his life." It is little we can do at the best to requite such incalculably costly services. Let us do at least what we can for the disabled, the widows and orphans of the fallen. Which of us could have closed his purse-strings or stint his offerings... if we could have looked on at that marvellous display of fidelity, chivalry, and gallantry which was seen at Maiwand, in the way in which the 66th regiment, and the noble Galbraith, their colonel, held out for hours against overwhelming odds amid showers of bullets and shell, defending their colours, till the hundred that stood about their captain became eleven before they would retreat on Candahar? Who could close his purse-strings that has looked on the wan, worn, emaciated countenances, as it has been my lot to do, of sufferers in hospital, weakened perhaps in the very prime of vigorous manhood, maimed and mutilated, and so stripped of the main support of themselves and those nearest and dearest to them? We cannot requite them by standing in a shower of shell and shot as they did; but as a great writer says, just as forces in nature are transmuted, so their courage can, in some small measure, be transformed in us, and take the shape of contributing unsparingly that which it is hard and costly for us to spare out of the means we possess.'

He concluded with his favourite story of the Roman centurion with eight children, who volunteered for service, and whose claim that his children should receive support was recognized as merely just by the great iron empire.

This meeting took place in the autumn. Meantime General Roberts' magnificent march had culminated in the crowning fight at Candahar upon September 1. Ayub had

THE PENJDEH INCIDENT

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fled to Herat, and, though the evacuation of the country after Abdul Rahman had been established as Ameer by British bayonets was not completed till the spring, by November 13 a fine army of 10,000 men was assembled at Lahore, and there reviewed by Lord Ripon, the new Viceroy, who had come to India in the summer.

This strikingly fulfilled the forecast of the military leaders. At a banquet in Cabul before his march began, Sir F. Roberts had said :

'Sir Donald Stewart is willing to guarantee-and, were it not an indecorous thing for an officer so high in rank, would even bet-that we shall reach India again viâ Candahar by November next.'

The bishop wrote to his sister, Mrs. Gregg, from Dera Ismail Khan, whither he had come from Jhang by tonga, driving 110 miles in eleven hours and a half, including half an hour's stoppage to mend a broken wheel:

'I have just come down here on a visitation after taking such part as I was bound to take in the Viceroy's public ceremonial. He came to welcome the troops on their return from Cabul, so I had no opportunity of talking with him, except for about two minutes. The assemblage of native chiefs was large and picturesque: your dear girls would have greatly wondered at the pomp and pageantry and the bespangled dresses in which they came to be presented. was almost beside herself with the enchantment

and fascination of the scene.'

By the time of his synod in December, the bishop was able to, speak of a 'lull in the operations which is hardly yet a great calm.' Indeed, though the early Afghan wars affected him most closely, there was hardly a great calm all through the time of his episcopate. His military province was profoundly stirred and affected by the wars in Egypt and the Soudan. In 1885 there was a serious alarm of war with Russia, in connexion with the Penjdeh incident, and there was almost always fighting on the frontier. When war seemed imminent in April, 1885, the bishop wrote to the editor of the Lahore Church Gazette, putting forth a sketch form of humiliation and prayer, and saying:

'I beg leave to mention two or three thoughts that have been helpful to me the last two days.

(1) One of these is the remarkably providential fact that just when war seems imminent, and so serious a burden of responsibility, peril, and possible suffering is laid on our soldiers, one commanding, stately figure', should have been made prominent before the sight of armies everywhere, but emphatically of the British army, as the type and model, the ideal of what the soldier may be in his true greatness and goodness. May we not believe that it will be an incalculable blessing to thousands to have such an image of noblest Christian chivalry and devotion presented to them for study and imitation, and to know for certain from his own witness and that of countless others, that the star of his manly, knightly, godly life, fetched its chief radiance and radiating power from this, that, like St. Paul, he found his losses all gains, because he had won Christ? Living, to Him he lived: dying, to Him he died.

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The second is the hopefulness inspired by the thought that in no country in the world, probably, could the news of an outbreak of war have caused such an upspringing from so many faithful hearts of prayer devout, humble, and penitent,-prayer, not so much for success and victory to our arms, but with an undercurrent of longing desire that, by whatsoever events, God may be glorified, and the coming kingdom of the Prince of Peace advanced.

The third is the joy and thankfulness I should have from learning that the annexed sketch of a form of prayer, homage, and humiliation for public worship (or private where the other is impossible) might bring many more worshippers to the daily services of our church, than are usually found there: that it might be the occasion of a fresh start in the direction of wiping off what is a real blot to our Christianity, and a stumbling-block to our Moslem fellowsubjects, as well as a grievous dishonour to Him who is greater than the temple- I mean the almost utter emptiness and nakedness of our churches during the hours of week-day service. Our fresh confirmees, and the heads of Christian womanhood in our English society, might earn a well-deserved place among our fellow-workers for the Kingdom of God, who are a comfort to us, and in the proposed "Company of the Ministry of Jesus," if they would take the lead in a movement toward daily services, which my brethren, the chaplains, would meet, I doubt not, by fuller forms of prayers, and short thoughtful expositions (where asked for), or readings from eminent divines. The calm, restful, devout spirit, breathed in the sanctuary of God, would be more befitting, more helpful and uplifting to the soul, than the circle of agitated and excited listeners.

1 Charles Gordon.

THE CAMP AT RAWUL PINDI

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to the latest telegrams and rumours of Russian advance, with whose sad forebodings and real home-anxieties we must, all the same, deeply sympathize.'

His description of the great camp gathered at Rawul Pindi, in connexion with this war-scare, is worthy to be quoted :

'March 27, 1885. It is a strange scene in which one finds oneself here in the midst of a camp of 20,000 troops, a much larger force than that at Candahar in 1880, with all the pomp and paraphernalia of great military preparations on the one hand, and barbaric eastern splendour on the other. It is the seriousness of all the circumstances and the prevailing conviction there is that a war of vast dimensions is imminent, which makes it a time of much solemnity, and seems to hold a kind of awe and hushed suspense over men's minds, and restrains all that excitement and rejoicing which usually distinguishes such scenes, more especially now that a popular Viceroy' is being welcomed, and so many meetings of old friends from all parts of the Punjab, and beyond, are taking place, and every kind of rich uniform and gaudy colouring of native costume diversify the scene. Even when the Viceroy alighted on his arrival to-day, enthusiasm was much subdued, and there was a shadow brooding over men's countenances, it seemed to me, which betokened misgivings and uneasy apprehension. The future, however, is in God's hands, and it is just possible the worst may be averted, but to-day's tidings are the worst yet received, and officers are being sent off in hot haste to Quettah and the Pishin valley beyond it to see, I suppose, what defences that frontier admits of. That we are extremely unprepared all admit, but the gathering of an army of 60,000 under General Stewart is proposed, and we hear from home of the calling out of the militia and reserves, so that you will be almost in the midst of as much warlike preparations as we are. The Viceroy is greeted warmly, but silently, and if a man could rally and attach to himself hearts, I think he would. He received me most pleasantly and kindly to-day, but after all "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain." I confess the alliance with the great Mohammedan power is not to me a very hopeful outlook for the future. Colonel Abbadie of the 9th Lancers said to me to-day, "Well, but we are a Mohammedan power already." I hope we shall be kept calm and in good spirits, waiting on Him who has befriended us so marvellously often in terrible straits, and that we shall not be ashamed of confessing Him. I had four divisions of the English forces to provide chaplains for, and

1 Lord Dufferin.

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