Those who live near enough to the Cathedral to be able to attend its services frequently can appreciate the words of a man who lived most of his life in one of the great cathedral towns of England, and who said:
“I account it one of the greatest blessings of my life, and a circumstance which gave a tone to my imagination which I would not resign for many earthly gifts, that I lived in a place where the cathedral service was duly and beautifully performed.... If the object of devotion be to make us feel, and to carry away the soul from all earthly thoughts, assuredly the grand chaunts of our cathedral service are not without their use. I admire—none can admire more—the abstract idea of an assembly of reasoning beings offering up to the Author of all good things their thanksgivings in a pure and intelligible form of words; but the question will always intrude, Does the heart go along with this lip service? and is the mind sufficiently excited by this reasonable worship to forget its accustomed associations with the business and vanities and passions of the world? The cathedral service does affect the imagination and through that channel the heart.”
The Spirit of Democracy
While the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is a Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, its ministrations are not restricted. “Our democratic age,” said Bishop Henry C. Potter, “demands a place of worship that will not disregard the teachings of the Founder of Christianity. In this Cathedral there will be no pews, no locked doors, no pre-payment for sittings, no reserved rights of caste or rank, but one and the same welcome for all.” And what Bishop Potter prophesied when the Cathedral was first planned is literally true to-day. The charter of the Cathedral requires that “the seats for worshippers in said Cathedral Church shall always be free;” and the Cathedral welcomes everybody to its services, irrespective of denominational affiliations, nationality or worldly estate. The Cathedral also welcomes those who belong to no denomination. Its appeal to the latter was particularly contemplated when Bishop Potter said: “The person in the period of suspense as to certain fundamental beliefs needs something larger, higher, wider and roomier, more impersonal for the time being, than the parish church.” It is hardly necessary to add as a corollary of the foregoing that there are no “strangers’ pews” in the Cathedral; and nobody, however unaccustomed to the Cathedral service, needs to feel any timidity or hesitation about attending. The large proportion of men in the Cathedral congregations is particularly noticeable.
A Civic Institution
In its present state of incompletion, without Nave and Transepts, the capacity of the Cathedral is taxed to the utmost by its ordinary congregations, and on special occasions thousands are turned away unable to enter. The completion of the Cathedral is therefore imperative; and this is so for more than denominational reasons, for the many notable special services held during and immediately following the late war already foreshadow the position which it is destined to occupy as a great Civic and National Institution. The Board of Trustees recently said: “The city requires a religious edifice where people can gather together in large numbers to express in a corporate way their religious promptings and to find spiritual interpretation of great events.” Such were the gatherings,—to mention but a few instances,—on the occasion of the Kossovo Day service June 16, 1918; the thanksgiving for the withdrawal of Austria from the war November 10, 1918; the thanksgiving for the cessation of hostilities November 17; the thanksgiving of the twelve Liberated Nationalities of middle Europe November 24; the great Thanksgiving Day service for victory November 28;[1] the rendering of Gounod’s “Death and Life” December 1, 1918, and Dvorak’s “Requiem” March 30, 1919, for all who died in the war; the memorial service of the 107th (including the former 7th) regiment April 27, 1919; the Lusitania memorial service May 7; the New York Letter Carriers’ memorial service May 25; etc. People rarely think of the English cathedrals as belonging to the Church of England or of the French cathedrals as belonging to the Roman Catholic church. They are regarded as belonging to everybody. And such, it is believed, is the place which the Cathedral of St. John the Divine will occupy in the minds of the people of the city and nation.
A Great Symbol
The symbolism of various details of the Cathedral will be mentioned hereafter; but it should be said here that the Cathedral as a whole is a great and wonderful symbol. “The religion which is inwrought with all the history of the American people,” said Bishop Potter, “stands for certain lofty ideals of truth, purity, honesty, loyalty and self-sacrifice. Every ideal must have some visible expression or symbol, and this ideal of our religious faith from the very nature of it demands expression, incarnation, visible and material utterance worthy of its majesty and grandeur.” And the Trustees not long ago said: “New York is the chief city of the Western World. It impresses the imagination at every turn by visible evidence of the power and splendor of material achievements in American life. Such a city should be dominated by a building which, in its greatness, dignity and beauty, bears witness to those spiritual forces without which material achievement is valueless because soulless.”