But I need not have resorted to fiction for a testimony to the value and
efficacy of the text--striking and significant as that testimony is. I
need have summoned neither Daniel Defoe nor Sir Walter Scott. I could
have dispensed with both Robinson Crusoe and Mary Avenel. I could have
called a King and Queen to bear all the witness that I wanted.
King Edward the Seventh!
And Queen Alexandra!
For Robinson Crusoe's text is King Edward's text; and Mary Avenel's text
is Queen Alexandra's text. There are men and women still living who
remember those dark and dreadful days of December, 1871, when it seemed
as if the life of King Edward--then Prince of Wales--hung by a single
thread. Nobody thought of anything else; the whole world seemed to
surround that royal sickbed; the Empire was in a state of breathless
suspense. Sunday, the tenth of December, was set aside as a Day of
Solemn Intercession, and the strained intensity of the public anxiety
reflected itself in crowded but hushed congregations.
And what was going on at the inner heart of things? Early that Sunday
morning, the Princess--afterwards Queen Alexandra--opened her Bible and
was greeted with these words: '_Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me._' A little later, just
as the Vicar of Sandringham, the Rev. W. L. Onslow, was preparing to
enter his pulpit, he received a note from the Princess. 'My husband
being, thank God, somewhat better,' she wrote, 'I am coming to church. I
must leave, I fear, before the service is concluded, that I may watch by
his bedside. Can you not say a few words in prayer in the early part of
the service, that I may join with you in prayer for my husband before I
return to him?' The congregation was deeply affected when the Princess
appeared, and the rector, with trembling voice, said: 'The prayers of
the congregation are earnestly sought for His Royal Highness, the Prince
of Wales, who is now most seriously ill.' This was on December the
tenth. For the next few days the Prince hovered between life and death.
The crisis came on the fourteenth, which, ominously enough, was the
anniversary of the death of the Prince Consort. But, whilst the
superstitious shook their heads, the Princess clung desperately and
believingly to the hope that the text had brought her. And that day, in
a way that was almost dramatic, the change came. Sir William Gull, the
royal physician, had done all that the highest human skill could
suggest; he felt that the issue was now in other hands than his. He was
taking a short walk up and down the terrace, when one of the nurses came
running to him with pallid face and startled eyes. 'Oh, come, Sir
William,' she said, 'there is a change; the Prince is worse!' And, as
doctor and nurse hurried together to the sick room, she added bitterly,
'I do not believe God answers prayer! Here is all England praying that
he may recover, and he's going to die!' But Sir William Gull's first
glance at the Royal patient showed him that the change was for the
better. From that moment there was a sure hope of the Prince's recovery,
and, by Christmas Day, he was out of danger. Later on, when her
husband's restoration was complete, the Princess raised a monument to
the deliverance that she had experienced. She presented to the
Sandringham Church a brass lectern bearing this inscription: 'To the
glory of God; a thank offering for His mercy; 14th December,
1871.--Alexandra. _When_ _I was in trouble I called upon the Lord, and
He heard me._'
Nor is that quite the end of the story. Thirty years later, the Prince
ascended the throne. He was to have been crowned on June 26, 1902; but
again he was stricken down by serious illness. He recovered, however,
and the Coronation took place on the ninth of August. Those familiar
with the Coronation Service noticed a striking innovation. The words:
'_When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and He heard me_,' were
introduced into one of the prayers. 'The words,' Archdeacon Wilberforce
afterwards explained, 'were written by the King's own hand, and were
used by the Archbishop at His Majesty's express command.'
'_Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou
shalt glorify Me_,' says the text.
'_When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and He heard me_,' said
King Edward and Queen Alexandra.
'I was in trouble through my _sickness_, and in trouble through my
_sin_,' said Robinson Crusoe, 'and when I called upon the Lord, He heard
and delivered me.'
So true is it that _whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord, the
same shall be saved_.