A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

Passing by, for the present, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury and Winchester, which excel all others in historical interest, and St. Paul's, which, though the largest of all, is modern, we may agree fully with Smith's estimate of the relative merits of the different cathedrals and the effect produced by them: that "Salisbury is the most perfect monument of mediæval Christianity in England"; that in height and grandeur the palm is borne off by York; in beauty and poetry, by Lincoln; that Norman Durham, "half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot," is profoundly imposing from its massiveness, which seems enduring as the foundations of the earth, as well as from its commanding situation; that Ely also is a glorious pile, on its unique mound among the fens; and that Wells and Salisbury are "the two best specimens of the cathedral close, that haven of religious calm amidst this bustling world, in which a man tired of business and contentious life might delight, especially if he has a taste for books, to find tranquillity, with quiet companionship, in his old age. Take your stand on the close of Salisbury or Wells on a summer afternoon when the congregation is filing leisurely out from the service and the sounds are still heard from the cathedral, and you will experience a sensation not to be experienced in the New World."

Having shown by these citations that Goldwin Smith is not indifferent to the æsthetic influence of the cathedrals, I wish now to quote from him a final paragraph which states very well the practical point to which I referred in the outset:

Their Romanizing Tendency.

"The cathedral and the parish church belong to the present as well as to the past. Indeed, they have been recently exerting a peculiar influence over the present, for there can be no doubt that the spell of their beauty and their adaptation, as places of [Roman] Catholic devotion, to the Ritualistic rather than to the Protestant form of worship have had a great effect in producing the Neo-Catholic reaction of the last half century. Creations of the religious genius of the Middle Ages, they have been potent missionaries of the mediæval faith."

I wish to call special attention to this ominous feature of the influence of English cathedrals upon the forms, and thus eventually upon the spirit, of Christian worship. I am not unsusceptible, I think, to the glorious beauty of these stately buildings, or the spell of their exquisite music, or the fascination of their spectacular forms of worship. I shall never forget the solemn impression made upon my mind the first time I ever entered a great cathedral, when, at Chester, I stepped from the broad glare of outer sunshine into the cool, dim light of the minster, and heard the choir of white-robed, sweet-voiced boys responding with a prolonged, musical "A-men," accompanied by the great organ, as the priest intoned the English service. But I am clear, nevertheless, that Goldwin Smith is right in saying that by their adaptation to the ritualistic rather than the Protestant form of worship the cathedrals have been potent missionaries of the mediæval faith.

The Roman Catholic ideal of Christian worship is very different from that of Protestants. Its functionary is a priest, who offers sacrifice, and performs the ceremonies of an elaborate ritual. Its appeal is chiefly to the senses and the æsthetic sensibilities. Protestants, on the other hand, hold that the minister is not a priest, but a teacher; his function is not the performance of ceremonies, but the inculcation of truth. The truly Protestant churches appeal chiefly to the mind rather than to the senses, they rely upon ideas rather than ceremonies, because they know that only by the intelligent apprehension of truth can the spiritual life be really nourished and developed. In a Romish church the central thing is the altar. In a Protestant church the central thing is the pulpit. In short, Romish churches are built for ceremonies, and Protestant churches for preaching. The cathedrals were erected as Romish churches. There was little or no thought of their being used for preaching. They were erected as expressions in stone of religious aspiration; they are "frozen music"; they are places for processions, and incense, and altars, and pictures, and vestments, and chants, but they are not adapted to preaching. They are too large, for one thing. No man could make himself heard throughout some of them. Nor was it intended that he should.

Their Charm for the Greatest of the Puritans.

It is an extraordinary paradox that the finest expression in any language of the idea which lay in the minds of those who built the cathedrals was given by a Puritan writer:

"But let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloisters pale;