thoughtful, are aware: it is a period, in the realm of fundamental beliefs, of suspense. The progress of human thought, of scientific inquiry, of critical literary and historical study, has loosened men's hold upon much that our fathers accounted precious, if not essential. The older and the more recent forms in which truths of paramount importance have been stated have alike been challenged or denied. The old moorings in many honest minds no longer hold; the anchors drag; and the mariner who looks out upon the wide sea of human beliefs and speculations is honestly perplexed. At such a moment, what a great many people cannot honestly do is, in the French phrase, to ranger themselves.

A recent experience, which came to me in a foreign land, will perhaps at this point make clear both what I have in mind, and its relation to this paper. It occurred one autumn afternoon when I was leaving St. Paul's Cathedral in London. I had been, as some thousands of people had been, to hear a great preacher, and, passing out of the west porch, found myself next an English scholar and teacher of such illustrious fame that if I were to mention his name here it would be instantly recognized throughout the civilized world. "Ah," I said, "do you worship here?" "Yes," Yes," he answered; "that is just it. I worship here -as far as I can worship." "For the sake of the music or the preaching?" I asked. "For neither," he said, "so far as they are primarily influential with me; though the service is very noble, and such preaching as we have heard this afternoon eminently worth hearing. But here is the one place where a man can come and say, 'Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!' without the risk, to use your expressive American phrase, of being 'corralled.' I recognize the value of all the methods which usually obtain in a modern parish church; I perceive the propriety of looking after strangers who drift into one's church, and seeking to shepherd and fold them; I honor the great zeal that seeks to know each person in a given congregation, and to bring them into closer relations with the parish: but for myself, I am not ready for that. You know my ancestry" (his father, I knew, was a British rector of a somewhat narrow and intolerant type), "and the traditions in which I was reared. Well, I have for better or worse I do not undertake to say-parted company with them. I am, so far as many most venerable traditions and beliefs are concerned, afloat. My mind and my faith faculty-if I have such a thing, of VOL. LXIII.-69.

which, sometimes, I am not very sure—will, I hope, some day find firm standing-ground. But I have not found it yet, and I am not going to be a liar and pretend that I have by taking a pew and identifying myself with a parish church. Some day, perhaps, all that will come, and I shall be glad if, honestly, it does. But just now I am like one who has been roughly handled by men or events, and who wants just to be 'let alone.' And yet," he added, "the religious instinct in me is not dead. When it is, then I cannot but think that there is virtually nothing between a man and the swine of Gadara. And since there is something in me that, with Ajax, 'cries for light,' I want a place in which to lift my cry; a place in which to be still; a place in which to wait on some higher Voice; and, amid whatever can speak to me through august voice, or sacred song, or stately environment, just to listen. No one notes me here. I come and go; I stand or kneel; I listen or dream or question; and then quietly withdraw as unregarded as I came."

I venture to think that such an attitude as that is, at least, intelligible. And if it is, then I submit that the place of the cathedral rises straightway into very close relationship to our modern life. I am not one of those who believe that religion is losing its hold upon the individual faith and conscience. Dogmatic statements, reactionary exaggerations of particular periods of religious revolt or reform,-hardened, under the stress of intense feeling, into cruel and inexorable forms,-may have done that, and, as a consequence, may have left many honest minds, for the moment, adrift. Such persons are not ripe to be either "corralled" or classified. The deepest in them is passing through a transition stage, out of which one may hope they will find their way to clearer light and a firmer standing-ground.

But in the meantime, and until they can, something larger, higher, wider, roomier, more impersonal for the time being, than the parish church is wanted for them; and that is the place and office of the cathedral: God's house, but with no parish list, no inquisitive interrogation, no parochial enrolment, but just space and silence, the majesty of worship-and absolute freedom to come and go! 4. And all this leads up to one other office which a cathedral alone can fill, and which, by many minds, will be esteemed the highest. It is not a "one-voice" or one-man " church. The ordinary parish church is served by one person, who fills its pulpit all the year round; and even in the churches to

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which two or more clergy are attached, the rector is expected to do the preaching, and if he does not, the people who pay their pewrent look black. Very often the preaching is excellent; sometimes it is exceptionally good; but even then, the better it is, the more individual, usually, it is.

Analyze the grounds on which A, B, or C thinks the Rev. Mr. Screed or the Rev. Dr. Homily "the best preacher in town," and you will, oftener than otherwise, find that it is because one or the other of these reverend gentlemen has some trait of voice, some cast of mind, some characteristic of imagination, which appeals specially to A, B, or C, as the case may be; in a word, that he is individual. But if he is individual it will also reveal itself in his mode of thought; in his bias of usage; in his trend of belief; above all, in his point of view.

Of the best preachers their accustomed listeners, ordinarily, can predicate the mode of treatment which a particular text or topic will receive as soon as it is announced. "The man's mind works that way," we say, and we anticipate its working almost before it is begun.

But, obviously, the consequence of this must be that those who listen only to one such favorite preacher get a fragmentary, onesided, and often, it must be owned, a very biased view of any subject. Tradition, inheritance, partizan affiliations, a passion for consistency, one of the deadliest foes to truth, a fear of hostile criticism-all these are distinct limitations to the parish pulpit as a voice for God which shall be manytoned, and not monotoned, which shall present both the Petrine and the Pauline aspects of a truth with equal candor and with equal fervor.

And so it is well that, in every great center, at any rate, there shall be one pulpit which shall command and constrain to its service the best, of whatever bias or tradition, the ablest, the most fearless, the most persuasive; one pulpit which shall be dominated by no trustees or vestry or plethoric pewholder-by nobody who can threaten to "give his pew," for the simple reason that there will be no pew to give up, and who can stifle or strangle no clarion voice that dares to tell men the truth by "cutting off the supplies," because the preacher and the hearer will be, so far as all that is concerned, absolutely independent of each other.

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There is much more to be said along these lines, if there were space here to say it. Besides all that I have urged, there still

remains the tremendous influence upon thought and feeling-the highest thought and feeling-of environment. We are sensible of this not alone in the presence of mountains, in the grandeur and silence of a forest, in the Colosseum seen in moonlight, but in the most ordinary and familiar surroundings. There are houses and homes that soothe or hush, or irk or irritate us. There are congruities of form and color, of proportion and decoration, that compose and refresh us, just as there are violations and incongruities that insult and exasperate us. There may be many people so insensitive or so uncultivated that they are not keenly aware of this, or, what is oftener true, cannot clearly express what they feel. But that they are influenced by it is shown by the awe and hush which fall upon them when they come within walls and move to and fro under soaring arches the mere proportions of which silence, solemnize, subdue.

No one had less respect for the archaic, whether in architecture or in anything else, than Henry Ward Beecher. And yet, when Mr. Beecher first entered an English cathedral at even-song, he broke down under a flood of uncontrollable emotion, and straightway fell upon his knees. Every instinct of awe, of reverence, of worship, as he afterward wrote of the experience, woke in him under the touch of that august environment. And yet, with heartiest respect for the great uses which it has served in the cause of freedom and righteousness, it must be owned, I apprehend, that neither Plymouth Church nor its like anywhere could produce any such effect.

I do not urge that, in the domain of religion, feeling is the factor of paramount consequence; but ah, my brother who art hard pressed by the exacting claims of life's more sordid interests, is it not well to be able to turn aside sometimes from these into some august majesty of space and form and tone, and there, just for a little, to be still, harkening for the Voice that is highest of all?

It remains, as part of the story which the illustrations which go with this will tell, to add a few words as to the history of this particular enterprise, its progress, and its hopes. A corporation known as the Trustees of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was formed in the year 1872, under the presidency of the late Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, which secured one or two considerable pledges, met once or twice to discuss thé question of site, and rested.

When the writer, in the year 1887, became

Bishop of New York, he took up the matter, published a letter addressed to the citizens of New York, convened the board of trustees of the cathedral, initiated steps to fill its vacancies, and proceeded, as opportunity afforded, to push forward the undertaking toward a beginning. Liberal gifts were madein one instance of five hundred thousand dollars, others of one hundred thousand dollars, and others of smaller sums; considerable bequests have been received-in one case of four hundred thousand dollars, and in others of one hundred thousand dollars, and lesser amounts. The noble site formerly occupied by the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, and comprising the blocks between West One Hundred and Tenth and One Hundred and Thirteenth streets and Morningside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue, has been secured. On St. John the Evangelist's day, December 27, 1891, the corner-stone was laid; and since then, as fast and as far as funds would permit, the work has been pushed, until now a congregation is worshiping in the crypt of the choir, a considerable part of the foundation has been carried up to the water-table, the great arch of the tower entrance to the choir has been completed, and at this writing work is proceeding more especially upon one of the Chapels of Tongues. A word about these may interest the readers of this paper.

New York is, to a degree as yet imperfectly recognized even by its own citizens, a polyglot city. A catalogue of the languages daily spoken by its inhabitants would be to most people surprising reading. A clergyman living in New York called, one day, upon his superior officer to ask that provision might be made for religious services for some Mesopotamian immigrants.

sir," said the young clergyman, striving to hide a smile of compassionate contempt for the ignorance of his chief. "There are some eight hundred families of Mesopotamians within ten minutes' walk of where we are sitting at this moment; and as for the attendance of Mesopotamians upon Armenian services, the languages of the two people are about as remote from each other as Choctaw and Greek."

The concluding statement was doubtless an exaggeration, but it was a sufficient illustration of a large and little-recognized fact. There pour into New York from all parts of the world steady streams of immigrants, German, Swedish, Russian, Oriental, and all the various tribes and nationalities of which these are typical,-who, for a while, are shut up to the one language with which they are familiar, their own. For them there is needed some provision which shall bridge over the space between their coming and their later acquisition of the tongue spoken in America. And so there has been provided in connection with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine the one feature which it is believed is absolutely unique. Surrounding the great choir the design provides for seven Chapels of Tongues.

In New York to-day the Episcopal Church provides services in nine different languages. In the cathedral the seven Chapels of Tongues will stand for seven of them, German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Italian, Armenian, and Chinese, -with services in these languages on every Lord's day. These Chapels of Tongues will open directly into the cathedral, and as they become familiar with the tongue of their adopted country, those who have worshiped in them will pass from the services in the chapels to that of the great mother church itself. One's mind turns back at such a picture and recalls, with a strange sense of its new and wider meaning, that cry that broke from the lips of the multitude in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost: "How hear we every man in our own language, wherein we were born, . . . the mighty works of God?"

to consider. He thought only of the beauty and the archæological interest; he doubted that the façade was in a perilous condition; pleased himself by fancying how many windows he could open to the morning sun on the garden, how many balconies could be added toward the south; in fact he may be said to have passed a month, not in building, but in restoring a "castle in the air" hanging over the waters of the Grand Canal. Even when he became convinced that Fate had kept a kindly hand over him, and that the purchase, had it been concluded, would have proved a source of endless trouble and perhaps regret, he still remained offended with the unseen and unknown owners of the palazzo. It was only after his son had bought the Palazzo Rezzonico that the father was really reconciled to the loss of the Manzoni. The poet's nature was so essentially joyous that one was at a loss to decide where he took the keenest pleasure, whether in his daily walks or his afternoon rows in the gondola. He seemed never to weary of either, but my personal experience of his delight was in the latter, when we floated over the still lagoons. The view of the rose-colored city rising from the pale-green waters, of the golden light of sunset on the distant Alps, of the day as it turned to evening behind the Euganean Hills, never seemed to pall upon his sense.

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Only Shelley has given us an idea of this," he would say, and quote lines from 'Julian and Maddalo." "Never say Eugánean," he corrected me; "many people make that mistake, but if you keep in mind that the poet makes the word rhyme to 'pæan,' you will remember to pronounce it Eugané-an."

His memory for the poems he had read in his youth was extraordinary. If one quoted a line from Byron, who, he said, was the singer of his first enthusiasm, he would continue the quotation, never hesitating for a word, and then interrupt himself, saying, "I think you have had enough of this," to which his dear sister and I would give silent consent, lest the effort of memory should tire him. He was very proud of his retentive memory and of his well-preserved sight; the latter he attributed to his practice of bathing his eyes in cold water every morning. He was proud, too, of his strength, of his power of walking for hours without fatigue, of the few requirements of his Spartan-like daily life, and above all he was proud of his son, who was his idol.

Yes, that was his vulnerable point, the

heel of Achilles. People who praised or loved or noticed his only child found the direct road to his heart. Even those who only spoke with him of "Pen were at once his friends and worthy of attention and interest. He said to me many years ago, while awaiting anxiously the result of his son's earnest art studies:

"Do you know, dear friend, if the thing were possible, I would renounce all personal ambition and would destroy every line I ever wrote, if by so doing I could see fame and honor heaped on my Robert's head."

What a proof are these words of an intense nature devoid of all egotism! In his boy he saw the image of the wife whom he adored, literally adored; for, as I felt, the thought of her, as an angel in heaven, was never out of his mind. He wore a small gold ring on his watch-chain. "This was hers," he said. "Can you fancy that tiny finger? Can you believe that a woman could wear such a circlet as this? It is a child's."

The only other souvenir on his chain was a coin placed there years ago, the date 1848, a piece of the first money struck by Manin in Venice to record the freedom from Austrian dominion. "I love this coin," he said, "as she would have loved it. You know what she felt and wrote about United Italy."

He had no personal vanity: it never occurred to him to admire himself in any way, to call attention to the beauty of his hand, which in old age was the hand of youth, nor did he seem to be aware of the perfect outline of his head, the color and brightness of his eyes, or the fairness of his skin, which, with his snow-white hair, made him look as if carved in old Greek marble.

After his disappointment with regard to the Palazzo Manzoni he cherished a momentary-idea, may I call it?-perhaps fancy is the better word-of buying an unfinished villa on the Lido, the sand-strip toward the Adriatic, begun in years gone by for Victor Emmanuel. He would talk of this with great zest, saying, "Thence one could see every day the divine sunsets," and continue with a list of the charms and advantages of the really beautiful place, then pause and wait for the assent and approbation of his sister or some listening friend. He seemed annoyed when no such word was spoken. He could not bring those who loved him quite to agree with so unpractical a scheme, yet all contrary arguments of distance from town and markets, exposure to storms, and so on, seemed to annoy him, until at last every one ended by listening to his enthusiastic plans,