The Manning Times

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Where the Dead of All Sects and All Political Opinions Meet.

Here, side by side in their stately tomb, lie the Tudor Queens—of whom the one burned Protestants for their faith and the other sent Romish priests to the block for their treason—of whom one defeated the Armada equipped for the thraldom of England by the husband of the other. Regno consortes et urna Maria et Elizabetha sorores, sharers in one quiet grave and wearers of the same uneasy crown. And opposite them lies the other ill-fated Queen, Mary Stuart, whom Elizabeth sent to the block, and whose tomb was once supposed to be resplendent with miracles. Here are alike the monuments of Dryden, the Catholic, and Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, the highly unorthodox, and Watts, the independent. The tomb of Popham, the Roundhead Colonel, stands close beside that of Cary, the cavalier, who died heart-broken at the execution of Charles I. And here stands the statue of Milton, the mere mention of whose name in a single line of another's epitaph was once held to defile the abbey. Many who would have cursed each other when living here lie side by side at peace, judged not by their unessential differences, but by the larger eyes of Divine wisdom and national gratitude. Man's opinionativeness is no measure of God's infinitude, nor ought we to exclude from our sympathy those whom God does not exclude from His forgiving love. The censers may be different, yet the incense is the same; the form may be different, yet the faith one; the theology different, yet the righteousness identical. It is a fact of which we need often to be reminded, and which nowhere finds so emphatic a witness as within these venerable walls—that God is not the leader of a sect.—Congregational Review.