The Cathedrals vs. The Gospel.

London, October 2, 1902.

Before saying what I had in mind when I remarked, in a former letter, that in some respects the English cathedrals had proved to be hindrances to vital religion, I wish to cite what Goldwin Smith says of the significance and beauty of these glorious monuments of mediÆval piety: "Nothing so wonderful or beautiful has ever been built by man as these fanes of mediÆval religion which still, surviving the faith and the civilization which reared them, rise above the din and smoke of modern life into purity and stillness. In religious impressiveness they far excel all the works of heathen art, and all the classical temples of the Renaissance. Even in point of architectural skill they stand unrivalled, though they are the creations of an age before mechanical science. Their groined roofs appear still to baffle imitation. But we do not fully comprehend the marvel, unless we imagine the cathedrals rising, as they did, out of towns which were then little better than collections of hovels, with but small accumulation of wealth, and without what we now deem the appliances of civilized life. Never did man's spiritual aspirations soar so high above the realities of his worldly lot as when he built the cathedrals." The last proposition is not true. What Professor Smith wished to say was that never did an outward, material expression of man's religion so far surpass all his other outward conditions. But even when thus stated, it must be remembered that these great structures were not erected by those who inhabited the "hovels" referred to, but by kings, or nobles, or prelates who lived in palaces and rolled in wealth. Still, the cathedrals were built as an expression of religion. Religion in the Middle Ages expressed itself chiefly in the erection of these costly and splendid buildings, as it now expresses itself chiefly in missionary activity.

Passing by, for the present, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury and Winchester, which excel all others in historical interest, and St. Paul's, which, though the largest of all, is modern, we may agree fully with Smith's estimate of the relative merits of the different cathedrals and the effect produced by them: that "Salisbury is the most perfect monument of mediÆval Christianity in England"; that in height and grandeur the palm is borne off by York; in beauty and poetry, by Lincoln; that Norman Durham, "half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot," is profoundly imposing from its massiveness, which seems enduring as the foundations of the earth, as well as from its commanding situation; that Ely also is a glorious pile, on its unique mound among the fens; and that Wells and Salisbury are "the two best specimens of the cathedral close, that haven of religious calm amidst this bustling world, in which a man tired of business and contentious life might delight, especially if he has a taste for books, to find tranquillity, with quiet companionship, in his old age. Take your stand on the close of Salisbury or Wells on a summer afternoon when the congregation is filing leisurely out from the service and the sounds are still heard from the cathedral, and you will experience a sensation not to be experienced in the New World."

Having shown by these citations that Goldwin Smith is not indifferent to the Æsthetic influence of the cathedrals, I wish now to quote from him a final paragraph which states very well the practical point to which I referred in the outset:

"The cathedral and the parish church belong to the present as well as to the past. Indeed, they have been recently exerting a peculiar influence over the present, for there can be no doubt that the spell of their beauty and their adaptation, as places of [Roman] Catholic devotion, to the Ritualistic rather than to the Protestant form of worship have had a great effect in producing the Neo-Catholic reaction of the last half century. Creations of the religious genius of the Middle Ages, they have been potent missionaries of the mediÆval faith."

I wish to call special attention to this ominous feature of the influence of English cathedrals upon the forms, and thus eventually upon the spirit, of Christian worship. I am not unsusceptible, I think, to the glorious beauty of these stately buildings, or the spell of their exquisite music, or the fascination of their spectacular forms of worship. I shall never forget the solemn impression made upon my mind the first time I ever entered a great cathedral, when, at Chester, I stepped from the broad glare of outer sunshine into the cool, dim light of the minster, and heard the choir of white-robed, sweet-voiced boys responding with a prolonged, musical "A-men," accompanied by the great organ, as the priest intoned the English service. But I am clear, nevertheless, that Goldwin Smith is right in saying that by their adaptation to the ritualistic rather than the Protestant form of worship the cathedrals have been potent missionaries of the mediÆval faith.

The Roman Catholic ideal of Christian worship is very different from that of Protestants. Its functionary is a priest, who offers sacrifice, and performs the ceremonies of an elaborate ritual. Its appeal is chiefly to the senses and the Æsthetic sensibilities. Protestants, on the other hand, hold that the minister is not a priest, but a teacher; his function is not the performance of ceremonies, but the inculcation of truth. The truly Protestant churches appeal chiefly to the mind rather than to the senses, they rely upon ideas rather than ceremonies, because they know that only by the intelligent apprehension of truth can the spiritual life be really nourished and developed. In a Romish church the central thing is the altar. In a Protestant church the central thing is the pulpit. In short, Romish churches are built for ceremonies, and Protestant churches for preaching. The cathedrals were erected as Romish churches. There was little or no thought of their being used for preaching. They were erected as expressions in stone of religious aspiration; they are "frozen music"; they are places for processions, and incense, and altars, and pictures, and vestments, and chants, but they are not adapted to preaching. They are too large, for one thing. No man could make himself heard throughout some of them. Nor was it intended that he should.

It is an extraordinary paradox that the finest expression in any language of the idea which lay in the minds of those who built the cathedrals was given by a Puritan writer:

Thus Milton in Il Penseroso, the interpretation of which I must leave to the students of that exquisite poem. Only let it not be forgotten that in his Eikonoclastes, Milton ridicules the organs and the singing men in the King's chapel, as well as the "English mass-book" of the "old Ephesian goddess called the Church of England." I am sorry to say, Milton is at times vituperative in his prose writings.

Let us be more respectful in our references to the Church of England. It contains many good people and has done much good work. Still, it is an indisputable fact that it never has been a thoroughly reformed church. Its origin as a separate church was different from that of the Reformed churches. Not through the protracted struggles of people and ministers did it win out clear from Romanism, with generally diffused and clear convictions of truth, as was the case with the really Reformed churches, but by the act of Henry VIII. detaching a certain portion of the Catholic Church from the papacy, for interesting domestic reasons, and making himself the head of the church. That was the origin of the Church of England as entirely distinct from the Church of Rome. Henry did not wish to become a Protestant at all, nor did he wish the people to change their religion, and, as a matter of fact, he had people burned alive for being Protestants. Of course, Protestantism did make progress afterwards under Edward VI. and Elizabeth, but there never was a sufficiently decisive break with Romish doctrine and Romish forms of worship. And, the architecture of the cathedrals and parish churches being what it is, there has been a constant tendency to relapse to the Romish model outright.

If we seem to attribute too much influence to mere architecture, let it be remembered that the structure and arrangements of the college buildings at Oxford, which did not admit of family life, but were designed for the mediÆval clerical students who were celibates, have had a tendency to revive the monk, and that, as a matter of fact, these Oxford colleges produced Newman and the other leaders of the Anglo-Catholic reaction in our day, to say nothing of Laud and his reaction two centuries ago.

How easily the cathedrals may aid Roman Catholicism, and how strong is the lingering influence of what Macaulay calls "that august and fascinating superstition," may be seen not only in the general character of the services, but also in certain details. Each cathedral has what is still called a Lady Chapel, that is, a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, the Virgin Mary. In the Lady Chapel of Winchester Cathedral is a series of highly prized wall paintings, of whose edifying character the reader may judge when he learns that one of them represents "the Virgin commanding the burial of a clerk of irreligious life in consecrated ground, because he had been her votary"; while another depicts a miracle by an image of the Virgin, which is bending its finger, so as to prevent a young man from taking off a ring, given him by his lady love, which he had placed on the image that it might not be lost or injured while he played at ball. "By this the young man was won to monastic life." Does this mean that he jilted the girl, or that she discarded him for losing her ring?

Again, the inscription on the tomb of the builder of that cathedral, William of Wykeham, the same who built the round tower at Windsor Castle, records his work as bishop, politician, and founder of colleges, and concludes with this injunction:

Finally, the most striking effigy on any tomb in Winchester Cathedral is that of a great dignitary of the Romish Church, Cardinal Beaufort, represented here by a very fine recumbent figure in scarlet cloak and hat. He was enormously wealthy, was four times Lord Chancellor of England, was present at the burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, and is said to have burst into tears and to have left the horrible scene; but he persecuted the Lollards and gave a half million pounds to put down the Hussites in Bohemia, in which crusade he was general and legate. Yet here he lies, one of the most honored figures, in what is generally regarded as a Protestant church.

These points are sufficient to indicate what I mean by saying that the cathedrals have in some respects had an unfavorable influence upon the doctrine and worship of the Church of England.

If at the Reformation every cathedral in Great Britain had been pounded to pieces by the iconoclasts, it would have been an immeasurable calamity to art, but it might have been a real gain for religion. At any rate, it is ritualism rather than religion that is now promoted by the cathedrals. Nor is the English Church the only one that has inherited these splendid but baleful monuments of mediÆval Romanism. The Presbyterian Church has come into the possession of a few. The people of Scotland at the time of the Reformation, remembering their oppression and impoverishment by the great church establishments, and disregarding the more moderate counsels of their leaders, smashed most of these buildings which fell to them, witness Melrose Abbey and many others—John Knox speaks of "the rascal multitude" that destroyed the buildings at Perth—but one or two they spared, for example, the Cathedral at Glasgow. It is maintained by some that the same tendency to ritualism manifests itself in these Presbyterian cathedrals as in others, though, of course, not to the same extent. Certainly our simple and scriptural forms of worship, with the prominence which they give to the preaching of the Word, suit a warm, home-like church, where everything can be heard, much better than they do a cold and vast cathedral of stone which is too large for any congregation that ever assembles in it, and where the voice of the preacher is lost among the lofty arches.

While the Presbyterians have in some cases not freed themselves completely from the Romish associations, and in the great buildings which were erected for Romish worship show something of the same tendency to undue ritualism, still I think it will be generally conceded that they severed the connection with Rome more effectually, on the whole, than any other church.

Nor did their worship lose in real religious impressiveness. Even Sir Walter Scott (who, though a Presbyterian elder, had a strong leaning to the ritualistic churches), in the twentieth chapter of Rob Roy, puts into the mouth of his hero this description of the Presbyterian service in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral:

"I had heard the service of high mass in France, celebrated with all the Éclat which the choicest music, the richest dresses, the most imposing ceremonies, could confer on it; yet it fell short in effect of the simplicity of the Presbyterian worship. The devotion, in which every one took a share, seemed so superior to that which was recited by musicians as a lesson which they had learned by rote, that it gave the Scottish worship all the advantage of reality over acting."

The more I see of the high church "service" the more incomprehensible it seems to me that any thoughtful man can take any other view than the one thus expressed by Scott. The service he describes was indeed conducted in a cathedral, but it was in the crypt, the part best adapted to intelligent Protestant worship, on account of its smaller dimensions and better acoustics.