(2) Another remark, still more obvious, but one of which we sometimes lose sight in speaking of the good influences of race and nationality, is that the power of religion, of the Christian religion, though coloured by these several influences, is yet above and beyond and independent of them all. I spoke before of the old story which tells how he who stands on the turf from St. David’s churchyard and looks out on the western sea was believed to see in the distance the green island of the fairies. But there is a still better thing that can be done by each one of us, Saxon or Celt, Englishman or Briton, old and young, rich and poor. Take your stand on any good religious lesson, learnt from whatever quarter—any piece of fresh fragment of knowledge, cut out of your inner experience—a good text from your Bible, a good prayer from your prayer-book, a good hymn from your hymn-book, a good counsel, or example of friend or teacher anywhere, which has enabled you better to know yourself, and better to know what God is,—stand fast upon it, and look out over the wide sea of your future years, and the still wider ocean of eternity beyond, and from that green turf of duty or of knowledge you will see in the distance the islands, not of the fairies, but something far better—the islands of the blessed, of the eternal shores across the stormy waves of this troublesome world. Such an example, such a memory, such a life {39} you have had in the recollection of her who devoted her life to the welfare of the people of Holyhead, who loved the Welsh nation with a constant love, who spoke their tongue as her own, who cherished all their traditions, who longed for the restoration of this venerable church, whose heart’s desire has been on this day fulfilled by its reproduction in all its antique simplicity, in all its gracious adaptation to our living needs. She was a Welshwoman to the heart’s core; but she was also a generous, loving, wise, Christian spirit; and when we stand round her grave, and in this church which is the monument of her goodness, we stand as it were on the fragment of St. David’s turf, and we look out beyond a wider than any earthly sea to those islands of the better land where she and the great family of God’s servants have gone before; the islands of eternal rest—the islands where truth and holiness have “room and verge enough” to flourish undisturbed by earthly tempests, unwarped by the winds of earthly cares—in the haven where they and we would all be, through the grace of God and the power of His Spirit in our Lord Jesus Christ. On a granite cross standing upon rocky ground near Llanfawr, is engraven the following inscription by Dean Stanley.