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Updated: June 3, 2025
Is there One among the great of old, the dead yet sceptred sovereigns, who still rule our spirits from their urns, whose living power over thought and heart and deed among the dominant races of the earth is to be compared with His?
"This," he said, pointing to a stout old jar of Devonshire ware, "is some excellent English tobacco my one extravagance; and here," pointing to a pipe-rack, "are some well-tried friends from that same 'dear, dear land, 'sceptred isle of kings, and so forth. And now I am going to leave you, while I go with Samson and Erebus on a little reconnoitring tour around our domains."
Besides, humility in my opinion is more a weakness than a virtue, . . and even granting it were a virtue, it is not possible to Kings, not as long as people continue to fawn on royalty like grovelling curs, and lick the sceptred hand that often loathes their abject touch."
And then another mood came on him a temptation, as it seemed to him then, to fling personal responsibility overboard; to accept this tremendous claim of authority to control even the thoughts of the heart. Surely peace lay this way. To submit to this crowned and sceptred Christ; to reject for ever the other this meant relief and sanity. . . .
If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred Sovereigns who rule us from their urns. Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up to this date he was a rank failure.
And amid the frenzied squeezing and squabbling, way was miraculously made for a dazzling procession of the Only Orthodox Church, moving statelily round and round, to the melting strains of unseen singing boys and preceded by an upborne olive-tree; seventy priests in flowering damask, carrying palms or swinging censers, boys in green, uplifting silken banners richly broidered with sacred scenes, archimandrites attended by deacons, and bearing symbolic trinitarian candlesticks, bishops with mitres, and last and most gorgeous of all, the sceptred Patriarch bowing to the tiny Coptic Church in the corner, as his priests wheel and swing their censers towards it all the elaborately jewelled ritual evolved by alien races from the simple life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
"Throne him!" These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin, robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with the tinker's soldering-iron.
"Throne him!" These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin, robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with the tinker's soldering-iron.
Blank the altars stand today, As tombstones bare: Christ of his raiment was despoiled; and they His livery wear. Today the puissant and the proud have heard The "mandate new": That which He did, their Master and their Lord, They also do. Today the mitred foreheads, and the crowned, In meekness bend: New tasks today the sceptred hands have found; The poor they tend.
She is, essentially, as glorious in the Catacombs as in the Roman basilicas; as lovely in the barefooted friar as in the robed and sceptred Vicar of Christ; as majestic in Christ naked on the Cross as in Christ ascended and enthroned in heaven. Yet, since she is His Majesty on earth, she has a right to all that earth can give.
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