This is a service of unique interest in the history of our city, and of our cathedral. It is one of those occasions which make us realise, amid many differences, the essential fact of our national spiritual unity. All who are loyal, all who are patriotic in Calcutta, are gathered or would have gladly gathered within this cathedral to-night. There is not in all this congregation—there is not, I think, in all Calcutta—a British heart that is not moved with sympathy and admiration for you, my brethren, who are going forth to the war in South Africa. And surely there is not a British heart but feels how just it is, how wise and how truly consonant with the best traditions of our race, that it should be your wish on the eve of your departure to seek the protection of, invite the benediction of, and to consecrate yourselves to the name and service of the Most High God. For if it has been possible at other times and in other places within the last few weeks to strike a note of felicity and festivity—I do not say that they have been unduly prominent, but who has not heard them?—if there has been excitement, merriment, and applause on your behalf, it is a note that I would not sound this evening. You are going, I know, with deep solemnity and resolution, and you are going as men who have undertaken a noble duty from which you might have held aloof without reproach, in the full consciousness of its cost and peril, and in the sure conviction that the part you are playing is not unworthy, as indeed it is not, of the British race and the British Empire. You are proud, then, of your self-chosen mission, but it may well be that someone who looks forward with eager anticipation to the future is yet, in his heart, possessed with the not ignoble anxiety that warfare is no child’s play. It is stern and awful. He who enters upon it with a light heart is no true soldier of God or man. You are assembled now within the sanctuary of religion. In a few hours or days you will set sail for a distant land. It is certain that you all will be exposed to the strain and danger of the battlefield, and it is by no means certain that all will return to their homes in safety. Some who hear me now will probably yield their lives for the Empire. Can I forget how, on the 24th day of last September, I shook hands at the Kidderpore Docks with the gallant officer commanding the Gloucestershire Regiment, and how within a few weeks from that day he had fallen—shot dead at the head of his regiment? As his fate was, so may be yours. That is the nobility and dignity of your service. The people of Calcutta would not throng into this cathedral to pray for you, with you, if it were not impressed upon their minds that you are inspired with the brave ambition that makes great Empires great. When they shall bid you farewell, as the troopship slowly passes into the distance, it will be with full hearts, and believing that you will be true even to death, that they will one and all say, ‘God bless you.’ You go for the conservation of the Empire. I look upon the British Empire as the highest of human institutions, and realise that the Empire appeals to the spirit of chivalry, magnanimity, unselfishness, and devotion in all its members. Nobly, indeed, has India, European and Native, responded of late to that inspiring appeal. Who is there that has not felt his pride of Empire to be quickened by the generous loyalty not of Englishmen only but of the princes and nobles of India to her Majesty the Queen-Empress? For that loyalty, unexampled as it is in the history of other peoples, is itself a witness to the beneficence of British rule. May I venture, if only in passing, to express the hope that such an exhibition of loyalty may bring comfort to the sick-bed of that illustrious soldier, the Commander-in-Chief, who in a retrospect of his life can recall many a battle in which Europeans and Indians have fought side by side for the Empire? But if to the princes and nobles—may I not add to the people of India?—the thought of the Empire makes a paramount appeal, how much more to every man and woman of us.
The Imperial spirit is in the air, it has passed from the chamber of philosophical thinkers to the common life of the nation. We are all Imperialists now, and it may be said in the sacred language, of our country in relation to her colonies and dependencies, that ‘her children have risen up and called her blessed.’ So in the hour of her stress and suffering there is not one colony that has failed to render her aid with the resources of its wealth, strength, and its armed men. Well is it, then, that Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen resident in India should take their stand with the colonists, not of South Africa only, but of Australia and Canada, in a cause which makes them one, for the Empire means not conquest alone. It means the principles upon which the modern Christian world is broadly based—justice, equality, freedom of thought and speech, intellectual progress, pure religion, and the sense of personal responsibility to God. You go forth, and by your going you assert that all the constituent members of the Empire are one. As the Apostle said of old, ‘We are members one of another’; and again, ‘If one member suffer all the members suffer with it.’ It is not nothing to you, and it is a matter which vitally and personally touches your interest, that to your fellow-subjects in South Africa should have been denied the elementary rights of citizenship and the common privileges of humanity. The injury that has been done to them is done to you. That you should go forth in a right and reverent spirit is the prayer of all who worship with you in this cathedral. Is it possible—I hardly like to suggest the reflection—but is it possible that we have lately thought too little of Almighty God? Is it possible that we have entered upon the war with something like levity in, the reliance upon our army and upon our pecuniary military resources rather than upon Him who has made and sanctified our Empire? Is it possible that we have forgotten that even if the ‘horse is prepared against the day of battle’ yet victory is of the Lord? If so, let us return to Him in penitence and prayer.
Let us, confess our many failings and shortcomings, our imperfect sense of responsibility to Providence, and our disloyalty, if such there has been, to His commands. May you go forth, brethren, as trusting in Him, for you believe that your cause is just. If it were not just, if it were the cause of oppression or aggrandisement, may He Himself forbid that it should prosper; but if it be His will to use you in His service, to make you the instrument of His providence in the subjugation and pacification of the country which has flouted the majesty of the British Empire, if He has called you, and you have responded to His call, then His blessing will abide with you always. It is in this spirit that we bid you an honourable farewell. It may be that when you are severed by thousands of miles of ocean from the country of your birth or of your adoption, the memory of this service shall not wholly fade from your hearts. Here, in India, where the majesty of the Empire was most fiercely assailed and most successfully vindicated—here in this cathedral, where many monuments eloquently remind you of the courage, faith, and heroism of your race down to the memorial of those young Englishmen who laid their lives down for their country saying that they were not the last English—here, in the presence of the Power which controls the destinies of nations, we invoke the Divine blessing upon your arms. One last word, one inspiring motto, we will offer you. It is the watchword of our race: it is ‘Duty.’ ‘I thank God,’ said Nelson to Captain Blackwood, on the morning of Trafalgar, ‘for this great opportunity of doing my duty.’ ‘Whatever happens, Uxbridge,’ said the Duke of Wellington on the morning of Waterloo, ‘you and I will do our duty.’ That the thought of ‘duty,’ inspired and sanctified by Heaven, may dwell in your hearts is our prayer for you all—the highest prayer that man may offer for man. May the God of our fathers be with you always, and help you to be brave, generous, and merciful, and vouchsafe to you safety; and if it be His will may victory and peace restore you to those who love you so well at home or in India, and grant you in life or in death to prove yourselves worthy citizens of the Empire, faithful servants and fellow soldiers of Jesus Christ our Saviour.
The choir next sang
‘Soldiers of Christ, arise,
And put your armour on,’
and this was followed by two special prayers. Then came the National Anthem, in the singing of which the whole congregation joined, and then the Recessional hymn, ‘For all the saints who from their labours rest.’ The service over, Lumsden’s Horse marched back to camp through roads that were thronged with enthusiastic spectators.
The next ten days were crowded with necessary preparations that left the men little leisure for enjoyment of social entertainments arranged in their honour, yet they found time for a pleasant gathering as spectators at an amateur performance in the Calcutta Theatre, and possibly for some tender leave-takings of which no note was made. They were not, at any rate, allowed to