THE CORONATION SERVICE.

THE "form and order" of the Coronation Service and of

" the ceremonies that are to be observed" has been issued in various shapes and at various prices by the King's Printers (Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, East Harding Street, B.C.), and we may employ the occasion of re-reading this noble service to look into its religious and political meaning. Gladstone wrote of the Coronation Service with passionate ad- miration. What are the underlying ideas which appealed to him, and which shine through the whole service in its relation to the people ? The Service is, as Gladstone said, a thing by which the religion of the nation is attested. It is like the compact made at the accession of a Jewish King — a covenant between the Lord and the King and the people. The King is reminded that be owes allegiance to God and justice to his people ; the obligations of the people to render homage and obedience to the King are demanded on the condition that the King obeys the Divine law, and administers justice in the light of that law ; and both King and people avow their conviction of the unalterable mercy and guidance of the Almighty on condition that their part of the covenant be observed. Although the Service is, one might almost say, lyrical in its spirit of devotion, there is no insistence whatever on purely distinguishing Anglican doctrines. It is a Service which any Christian might join in without dissent.

We hear already so much of the Coronation, and shall hear so much more as the weeks pass, that the public might easily pass into thinking that the Coronation is a kind of pageant of which the symbols mean very little beyond keeping up a tradition. Owing to gossip, the influx of visitors, and the power of a popular Press, it might happen by one means or another that the significance of the Coronation would be lost in an orgy of secondary meanings. The only corrective of that distorted yet inevitable tendency is to read the Service. If ever there was a form of words which causes all the tokens and trappings of an ancient usage to fall into their proper places and serve the central and most simple purpose of the ceremony, it is this Service. The King holds the nation in trust, and never has greater emphasis been laid on the pro- found responsibilities of that trust. One might be casually led to think of the Coronation as an excessive act of homage to the King, on whom all attention is concentrated. Nothing could be -wider of the truth. As one reads the Service one is rather impressed by the thought that a King, exceptionally sensible of the nature of his charge, could hardly bear up under the burden of respon- sibility loaded upon him and urged with all the emphasis of weighty words. The person of the King, we mean, enjoys the homage of the people only as the embodiment of the trust confided to his keeping. From the first word to the last there is not a breath or shadow of sycophancy. The Service is worthy of a free people—worthy of a people who rationally but devotedly believe in the convenience and efficacy of a constitutional hereditary monarchy.

The Service is a selection from words and usages which go back to the earliest times. The accretion of ceremonies hundreds of years ago had already become so unmanageable that an abridgment of the Coronation became inevitable. In a history of the Coronations, " The Coronation Book," by the Rev. Jocelyn Perkins (Sir I. Pitman, second edition, 7s. 6d. net), we are reminded that Richard II., worn out with the protracted rites, was carried fainting from the Abbey. Parts

of the ceremony gradually fell into disuse, but the whole was still inordinately long. After the Coronation of George IV., for example, the procession of the Regalia was abandoned.

This fine and telling ceremony was revived at the Coronation of Edward VII., and the present form of Service (with the possible exception of the sermon, which, however, is expressly required to be short) seems to have brought us to a point where nothing can be sacrificed without spoiling the historical grandeur of the office.

As Mr. Perkins says, the Coronation is in danger of losing some of its meaning through being performed so long after

accession. The " sacring " of a King with the holy oil undoubtedly expressed more to Englishmen, say before the time of Queen Anne, than it expresses to us to-day. The unction was supposed to invest the King with peculiar powers,

and he emerged from the ceremony possessed of a dual character, half cleric, half lay—a mixta persona :— " Not all the water in the rough, rude sea

Can wash the balm from an anointed King."

The divine aid was, and is, invoked upon the Sovereign in the same manner as upon Bishops; and the episcopal character of the vestments worn by the King is plain to the eye. " The Recognition," as it is called, of the King and Queen very early in the Service, takes one back to the ancient custom of electing a King :-

" The Ring and Queen being so placed, the Archbishop shall turn to the East part of the Theatre, and after, together with the Lord Chancellor, Lord Great Chamberlain, Lord High Constable and Earl Marshal (Garter King of Arms preceding them), shall go to the other three sides of the Theatre in this order, South, West, and North, and at every of the four sides shall with a loud voice speak to the people ; and the King in the mean while standing up by his chair, shall turn and phew himself unto the People at every of the four sides of the Theatre as the Archbishop is at every of them, the Archbishop saying ; " SIRS, I here present -unto you King GEORGE, the undoubted King of this Realm : Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, Are you willing to do the same ?"

" The People signify their willingness and joy, by loud and repeated &cola. mations, all with one voice crying out,

"God save King GEORGE." " Then the trumpets shall sound."

William the Conqueror, as we know, was anxious to secure his position by exacting the expression of popular consent—i.e.,

the consent of election—when he received the crown from Archbishop Eldred. The " Yea, yea!" of the people was, unhappily, taken by the Norman soldiers to be a hostile shout, and they fired the houses of the Saxons. Two or three times the suggestion of popular election is to be found still embedded in the Service. One may find a counterpart to the survival of these suggestions in the fact that anyone has a right to attend the gathering of Privy Councillors and other notable persons who assemble on the demise of the Crown to proclaim the new King, and also to sign his name to the proclamation.

That assembly is not a meeting of the Privy Coulicil but in truth represents the Witan and so the tradition of popular election.

The promises exacted from the King are sobering indeed :—

" Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Dominions thereto belonging, according to the Statutes in Parlia- ment agreed on, and, the respective Laws and Customs of the same ?

"King. I solemnly promise so to do. "Archbishop. Will you to your power cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be executed in all your judgments?

"King. I will.

"Archbishop. Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Pro- testant Reformed Religion established by law ? And will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline and government thereof, as by law established in England ? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them, or any of them?

"King. All this I promise to do."

No sooner is the King crowned than the choir adjures him in delightfully direct and simple words :—" Be strong and play the man : keep the commandments of the Lord, thy God, and walk in His ways." Nor must we forget the excellent words—as moving as any in the whole ceremony—with which the Dean of Westminster gives a copy of the Bible to the King:—

" Oust gracious King; we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the royal Law ; these are the lively Oracles of God."