This little book is designed to assist visitors to understand the meaning and purpose of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Some such aid, either written or oral, is needed, for a great cathedral cannot be comprehended in the glance of an eye. Certain features, such as its magnitude and general beauty, are obvious; but inwrought with these is a wealth of meaning which is the soul of the Cathedral—the real Cathedral—and which reveals itself only on intimate acquaintance. When Ruskin called Amiens Cathedral “The Bible of Amiens,” he used a figure of speech applicable to all cathedrals. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is “The Word in stone.” It is a sacred book, written in massive pier and ponderous arch, in sculptured marble and carved oak, in stained glass window and inlaid mosaic, in embroidered fabric and woven tapestry, whose pages are full of delight, inspiration and help for those who will take the trouble to read them.
The Cathedral performs its function as a place for the praise and worship of Almighty God in two ways—statically in the grandeur and beauty of the temple, and actively in the services held within it.
Praise in its Greatness
Like other great cathedrals, St. John the Divine first impresses by its size. Its magnitude is not only becoming to its rank as the chief church of the great Diocese of New York and necessary for the accommodation of large congregations, but it also has a spiritual purpose, for it gives one the feeling of something bigger than one’s self and of a Power greater than one’s own. “The Cathedral gives me a feeling of humility,” said a man to Bishop Greer one day. “When I go in,” said a college girl to him, “I forget myself.” And a man whom the Bishop met in the Ambulatory said to him: “If I came here regularly, something about it,—its size, its spaciousness, its loftiness, its great receding Choir—something about it would compel me to be a churchman.”
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.
Praise in its Service
But these silent though eloquent physical features are only adjuncts and helps to the active expression of praise in the Cathedral Service. In this, the impressive rites of the church and the congregational participation are aided by music brought to a high degree of perfection, and the preaching from the pulpit aims to interpret the Christian religion in terms of the practical every-day life of to-day.
In short, the Cathedral endeavors to employ all that is beautiful and majestic in Art and Service to bring God closer to men and to draw men closer to God.