Britain prays for long and happy reign

HOW threadbare is language to interpret the deepest feeling. How meagre are words to convey the desolation, the emptiness of heart which we all feel now that we have lost our King.

He is dead, and so suddenly that we will go numbed about our business. Life, for a time, seems a dreariness and a misery, for ours is no conventional grief. The sorrow of the nation is open and sincere.

In the past 15 years Throne and people had seen so much, suffered so much, gone through so much together that King George VI had found a close place in his country’s affections. Shakespeare wrote that ‘ the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’, but no comets marked the end of our beloved King. Cosmic displays and blazing firmaments would have been foreign to his habit.

A very human King

HE WAS the least ostentatious of men and the most human of monarchs. His delight was to move among his people, sharing their uncomplicated pleasures. His private inclination lay in his family and his home. Yet, unassuming and modest though he was, the late King will be numbered among the most memorable of our Sovereigns, for he possessed that which, in this realm, is rightly prized above all else.

He was a man of character, and it is well for us that it was so. The King’s character was a rock to which the British people have clung, steadfast and united, in times of grave turmoil.

Duty was his star. Had he swerved from it the nation would have been split at the time of the Abdication and would thereby have been weakened for the awful trial of World War II.

For this alone, as well as for many other things in which he was our guide and exemplar, we owe the late King more than we perhaps realise. History will assess at their real worth his staunchness and goodness.

God Save The Queen

TODAY our thoughts are with his Queen, who shared his life and burdens, and who is firmly established in all our hearts. To her, to Queen Mary and to the whole Royal Family the country offers its loyal heartfelt sympathy. We turn now to the young Queen Elizabeth, winging home from the tour so tragically interrupted, who succeeds her father in the high and mighty office from which death has removed him.

To her and to her consort, Prince Philip, the British peoples offer their humble duty.

Out of the sorrows of the present we pray that the future will provide a long, prosperous, happy and peaceful reign. God Save The Queen.