HOW THE SERVICE IS DONE.
The awakening was not a pleasant one, and so we left the Abbey, disappointed, as though we had been given the promise of something wonderful and then been denied it. The service, no matter how beautiful in and of itself, is not in keeping with the grandeur of the place. There is lacking, to an American, that sense of power and majesty in it that the massive building, glorying in its wondrous architectural beauties, demands. The clergymen had an aimlessness that was simply tiresome, and as they drawled out the words, it seemed as though they did not care whether it produced an effect upon the worshippers or not. But it did produce an effect. Not the one to be desired, perhaps, but an effect after all, for the greater number of them quietly left the place, and reached the open air with a sigh of relief, as if they had escaped from some very depressing, dispiriting place.
In America religion and religious services mean something more than form, and the ministers, no matter of what denomination, or in what sort of a building, throw something of life and fervor into their services. They act and talk as though they had souls to save, and that the responsibility of the souls of their congregations were upon them. This was not of that kind. The priests went through the service as though, having offered the bread of life to their people, it was for them to take it or let it alone, as they chose. Indeed, when one was a little slow, as though he had been up the night before, the other would look at him reproachfully, as if to say, “Look here; why don’t you hurry up and get through with this, and let us get home. I don’t want my dinner to spoil,” and the boys in the choir, though they sang like angels, did it, not as if they knew or cared anything about it, but as a mere matter of business, looking from one to another, and then upon the congregation. Whatever the effect upon the people, their beautiful music had no more effect upon them than as if they had been so many oysters.
These people would not do for a Western camp-meeting, or even for a fashionable revival in an Eastern church. But they have their uses.
One room in the Abbey is devoted to the effigies in wax of seven Kings and Queens, but few people visit it. They can see a more extensive collection of murderers at Madam Tussaud’s for the same money, and they go there.
The cloisters, as they are called, form a not uninteresting portion of the Abbey, they being the former places of residence of the monks of the establishment. In the various walks, with their quaintly carved pillars, and moss-covered arches, are buried many distinguished personages, most of whom belonged to the Abbey.
