Then there is the question of a single scheme of subjects for all the windows, so that all when completed shall tell, chapter by chapter, one great story, or part by part, one great truth: say, the Christian Faith, or the Redemption of Man, or the Sacramental Economy of Grace, or the History of Religion, or the Mission of the Church in the World. Thus again, as in old time, will the church windows instruct the people, and the sum total of that instruction will be a unity, with harmony and interrelation of parts, of the utmost value to sound Christian thinking and feeling, and to symmetry of Christian character. For it is just this which our modern religion so much lacks: the sad result of sectarian thinking and teaching, where each hath a doctrine, a truth, and few the whole doctrine and the wholeness of truth.
Individualism, let us realize, is not what the Church should foster: though individuality, in its rightful place, be precious and sacred. The application here is not fanciful. Sadly absurd examples there are, where ecclesiastical art has been pressed into service by sectarian minds (not among the sects alone) to teach some one portion or fragment of truth through the eye every time the eye gazed upon the interior of the house of worship and fell upon the favorite symbol or picture.
But not this alone. Individualism is rampant in our day in the form of utterly arbitrary choice of subjects, as well as of their mode of treatment in point of material, color, scale of drawing, and—expensiveness. A Babel of confusion is the result, and that in some of our foremost churches, which have become thereby rather picture galleries or museums adapted to the study of all schools and all tastes, than restful, devotional, solemnizing and uplifting temples for the worship of Almighty God. A low motive ruled, and how can one help feeling it as one looks upon the performance?—here the wealthy donor, or the ambitious so-called artist, forgetting Whose this House was, demanded worship for himself. “Verily, they have their reward.”
Therefore let those who have such things in charge study first of all what a church should be, and then what their particular church, such as they have received it in trust, is. It will often be found that a building very little esteemed has something to say for itself, and is worthy of respect as originally conceived, in its own structural character as designed by its architect. And if not, and if it must be borne with, then all the more reason, in planning to do anything further in it or upon it, to “abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.”
And after such careful study, determine (before the first enthusiast has an opportunity to put into some one window chosen at random a “most superb” production of the much advertised glass man) determine in advance what should be your total result when every window shall have been filled with stained glass: what story the whole shall tell, how best its parts may be distributed, what each part shall be, in what style, what design, what scale of drawing, scheme of color.
And when this has been determined, in the fear of God, in soberness of judgment, in conscientious fidelity to a sacred trust, with a willingness to be judged by a wiser posterity,—then let such a plan be adhered to as a law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not. To sacrifice one window to the seductions of some alien grandeur is to sacrifice the whole principle at stake. The plain glass patiently awaiting its time to give way to the right thing is more eloquent of a truly reverent and truly artistic intention than a medley of incongruous splendors.
And now, what is stained glass? This simple question it is of the utmost importance to answer, because a little familiarity with the materials and the methods of workmanship will itself serve as a guide to the choice of good windows and to the avoidance of bad.