VII:

CATHEDRALS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

"The house that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical."-1 CHRONICLES Xxii. 5.

THIS may be regarded as an utterance, not so much prompted by any direct inspiration, as of the instinct of the religious nature that is in man. Egyptians, Brahmins, Buddhists, Mahometans, as well as Jews and Christians, have striven to give expression to it. The most "magnifical" buildings in the world are those that are or have been connected with religion-pagodas, mosques, temples, minsters. You know to what extent this spirit pervades the whole-or almost the wholeof the Old Testament Scriptures. You remember the story of the tabernacle, which two men of constructive. genius were specially inspired to build, and which women, skilled in various kinds of needlework and embroidery combined to adorn. You remember the splendours of that Temple which the Great King, in all his pride of wealth and empire, erected upon Mount Moriah. You remember how the poor and feeble remnant returning from their Babylonish captivity did their

best to restore those splendours, and how the consciousness of inability to rival the glories of the first house drew tears from their eyes as they laid the foundations of the second. You remember Herod's costly expenditure of time and money on what was regarded not only as the holiest, but the grandest of their national monuments, by which he hoped to reconcile his reluctant subjects to his rule.

There was indeed one period—and, so far as I know, only one-in the religious history of the Jewish nation, a period not of lapse into idolatry, but of a decayed, an almost dead faith-when the instinct of which I have spoken seemed as though it had expired, and when a prophet was specially sent to revive it. I refer to the age of the prophet Malachi, when men who professed to be seeking God and desirous to serve Him, offered polluted bread upon His altars, and the blind and the lame and the sick for sacrifice; and though they knew that the satrap of an earthly monarch would have spurned such gifts, expected, or pretended to expect, that He who was "a Great King," and whose "Name was dreadful among the heathen," would have pleasure in them and accept these offerings at their hand. (Malachi i. 6-14.)

I may be told that Christianity has changed all this, and has made a sanctuary for the Lord of Hosts in the hearts of men, and that the conception of God dwelling any longer, if indeed He ever did dwell, in temples made with hands, is alien from the genius of the better covenant established on better promises. (See Heb. ix.-x.) This view is perhaps true in part, but not wholly. Doubtless it matters not now- -as Christ told

the woman with whom He held converse at Jacob's well-where we worship, whether on Gerizim or Moriah. A Catholic Church has taken the place of a localised religion. A high spiritual worship, of which every act is, or ought to be, significant, has liberated the human heart from bondage to the weak and beggarly elements of a ceremonial law. But still the first preachers of the Gospel seem to have never missed a chance, if I may say so, of inspiring those who listened to their message with a sense of that awe and reverence which certainly must always be in place when such a being as man falls down in worship before such a Being as God. Those glorious visions with which the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine is filled from end to end, certainly appeal more or less to the sensuous imagination, to that æsthetic faculty of the soul which feels elevated—and not only elevated but purifiedby what is graceful, beautiful, solemn, stately, grand.

The first Christians—those of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of St. Paul-with their surrounding difficulties of poverty or persecution, could not do much of a material kind to express this sense of divine awe. "Not many noble, not many great, not many rich were called" then. The Apostles did not teach-they were not so preposterous as to try and teach-their converts to set to work to build cathedrals, to raise solid towers on every hill side, or soaring spires on every plain, or humbler, but still graceful and picturesque churches in every nestling village. There is a time, says the wise man, "for every purpose under heaven" (Eccles. iii. 1): and the time

come.

for building stately minsters and cathedrals had not yet But those who preached the Gospel then with mighty signs and wonders, and demonstrations of the Spirit and of power, did try to impregnate the minds of believers with a sense of awe, without which our approaches to God in worship can hardly be otherwise than profane. (See Heb. xii. 18-29.)

A time came, and that before long, for greater things, and for a display of the majesty of external ritual to the eyes of the world; and the religious instincts of the heart, having first found satisfaction of their yearnings within, craved also an opportunity of expressing that satisfaction, in outward form. And as in Richard Hooker's words. "Solemn duties of public service to be done unto God, must have their places set apart and prepared in such sort as beseemeth actions of that regard." Men felt with David that the house they built for God should be exceeding magnifical; and the basilicas of imperial days and the cathedrals of the middle ages sprang from the same heart's desire that poured itself out in so lavish an expenditure of costly material and artistic skill on the plateau of Mount Moriah. (See Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book v. ch. xi.)

The instinct-for, from its universality and uniformity, it would seem to have been an instinct rather than a mere formal or conscious effort of the mind--founded itself upon, or else was accompanied by, many ideas; but one was paramount, and that was the idea of a noble and (so far as human resources could make it) a commensurate worship of Almighty God: that nothing should be wanting to help the worshippers to feel that

the service rendered to God is and ought to be the highest of all earthly services. Even materials, base in themselves, like wood and stone, when built (so to speak) upon that one foundation which God had laidconsecrated as instruments in the diffusion of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ-acquired from that use a sort of sanctity, and stood as it were on holy ground.

The main idea-I have said-in the minds of the founders of our cathedrals, seems to have been the desire to exhibit in their services the highest and most perfect pattern of Christian worship. They wished to unite in one great purpose all that was at once most grand and graceful in architecture, most sublime and elevating in music, most solemn and reverent in ritual, most grave and touching in language. Beneath the vaulted roof of one of our old English minsters, typical in its very structure and ground-plan of the Cross of Christ, with its solid towers standing for half a thousand years firm and immutable, like the Church's creed; or its tall tapering spire soaring, as the soul would fain soar, into the calm blue ether which fancy dreams to be the dwelling-place of the Most High; with mellow light streaming across the inlaid marble floor:

while the swelling organ and clear-voiced harmonious choir ring out triumphantly that glorious anthem which, if anything earthly can be, must be the echo of angels' songs in heaven-"Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ;"-or again, when priests and people,