A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

The Coronation Postponed.

Imagine, then, our disappointment, on reaching the place, to find the Abbey closed, and to learn from the policeman at the door that no one knew when it would be opened again, certainly not for several weeks. You see, the building had been elaborately decorated for the coronation of King Edward VII., for this is where all the Kings of England have been crowned, from the time of William the Conqueror down; and while we were crossing the ocean King Edward became very ill and had to undergo a surgical operation, as we learned on landing at Southampton, and so the great ceremonies planned for June 26th had to be postponed. But the costly draperies used in the decorations were still in position, and had to remain till it should be seen whether the King would be well enough in a few weeks to receive the crown; and of course the public could not be admitted to the Abbey till these sumptuous fabrics had either served their original purpose or been removed. Happily the King did recover in a few weeks, to the great joy of his subjects, who, chastened and subdued by their sovereign's sickness at a time so critical, came to the coronation on the second date appointed, August 9th, in a more thankful, if less jubilant, temper.

The Abbey still Closed.

Meantime, however, we had gone on to Scotland, after three weeks in London, feeling sure that on our return there would be nothing to prevent our seeing the great Abbey to our hearts' content. But no; after two full months in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands and the west of England, we found the Abbey still closed. The work of removing the temporary structures and hangings used at the coronation was still going on, a fact which suggests forcibly the extent of these preparations, and, perhaps, also the leisureliness of English workmen, who are probably not accustomed to doing things as rapidly as Americans. But we had no idea of being deprived altogether of a sight of the interior of the Abbey by their slowness. London is a place of endless interest to visitors; and so, though we had already given three weeks to the principal sights of the city, we contentedly settled down for two weeks more there, till the work in the Abbey should be finished. At last it was all done, and on October 1st the building was again opened. We were among the first on the ground, and gave two full days to as thorough an examination of the building and its unparalleled contents as was practicable within that time.

The Assembly of Divines.

Of this inspection of the Abbey and its monuments in general we shall have something to say after a while, but for the present let us turn our attention to those parts of the building which are associated with the work of the famous Assembly of ministers and other scholars who met here in 1643 by ordinance of Parliament "to establish a new platform of worship and discipline to this nation for all time to come," and to whose pious and learned labors, extending through more than five years and a half, and occupying one thousand one hundred and sixty-three sessions, the world is indebted for the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and that great Confession of Faith "which, alone within these islands, was imposed by law on the whole kingdom," and which, by its fidelity to Scripture, its logical coherence, and the majesty and fervor of its style, still commands the adherence of a multitude of the clearest and strongest minds in Christendom.

The Two Places of Meeting.

The two parts of the Abbey especially connected with the work of the Assembly are at the two opposite ends of the building: the Chapel of Henry VII. at the eastern end, and the Jerusalem Chamber at the western; the one the most beautiful chapel in the world, the other a plain but comfortable rectangular room. Immediately after the service with which the Assembly was opened, and in which both houses of Parliament took part, and which was probably held in the choir of the Abbey, where the regular daily services now take place, the members appointed to the Assembly ascended the steps to the Chapel of Henry VII., and there the enrollment was made and the earlier sessions held. That was in summer, but when the weather became colder the Assembly gladly forsook the architectural magnificence of this chapel, called by Leland "the miracle of the world," for the comfortable warmth of the homely room at the other end of the Abbey; for, as Robert Baillie, "the Boswell of the Assembly," says in his delightful account of the proceedings, the Jerusalem Chamber "has a good fyre, which is some dainties at London."

The Two Types of Worship.

In this removal of the historic Assembly from the cold splendor of the finest perpendicular building in England to the plain comfort and common-sense arrangements of the little rectangular room where they were to reason together through so many months concerning the teachings of Scripture, one may see a parable of the Assembly's action in rejecting the ritualistic type of worship, with its predominating appeal to the æsthetic sensibilities through elaborate ceremonies, and its adoption of the New Testament type, with its predominating appeal to the mind through the oral teaching of truth. They were convinced that the spiritual life can be really nourished and developed only by the intelligent apprehension of the truth. Their own statement of the matter, drawn up in this very room, is that "the Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith unto salvation." And so those churches which have adopted the standards then framed by the Westminster divines have steadily magnified the didactic element of public worship, accentuating the teaching function of the minister to the extinction of the priestly.