Praise in its Beauty
The Cathedral is designed also to praise God in the glory of its Beauty. Ruskin, in “The Laws of Fesole,” says that “all great art is praise.” Here we have the three great and enduring arts of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting (the latter as yet only in stained glass,) combined in a wonderful Te Deum of Beauty. For centuries the great cathedrals of the world have been the caskets of certain kinds of art—or, rather, of certain kinds of expression of art—not elsewhere to be found; and in this respect the Cathedral of St. John the Divine fills a place in our American life which no secular building can fill. In the beauty of its general form, in the beauty of its detail, in the beauty of its symbolism, and in the record of human achievement in godly living which these express, the Cathedral stirs the most reverent emotions and creates the noblest aspirations.