too, for the essence of a subject should be its foundation, and Christ crucified is the essence of our religion. The cross is made up of three parts, the head, the heart, and the body. These divisions answer to the nave or body of the church, for the faithful and catechumens; the holy place, chancel, or choir for the priest to preach from to the faithful in the nave, and to receive the faithful when communicants; and the most holy place, or holy of holies, for the priests alone. We see in this arrangement a thorough knowledge of the subject; for by the three divisions, our church is made to be in trinity as it ought to be. The trinity in the cross, and the cross in trinity. In the ground plan of Kilpeck Church, the three divisions are represented; but the cross form in the body or nave is lost, probably in consequence of the original pavement being destroyed. I have seen the shaft of the cross in the nave of other churches, produced by the pavement being of two colours. . . . . This cross form is divided into three parts. In the first we have the nave, the second is the chancel, and the third is the holy of holies. The nave being the commencement of the church, would, in the language of the designer, be read the Father, and being the first part, is of none. The chancel or cross (and which is, as it were, made to arise out of the nave) is of the nave alone: and the holy of holies is of the nave and of the chancel proceeding from them. Thus it is that the ecclesiastical designer translated the creed into his own language, and informed the community, through his varied forms, divisions, and arrangements, upon the doctrine of the holy Trinity.'-Lewis, as quoted by Poole, p. 7. * "Of the windows,' says Mr. Poole, he proceeds to say: 'In these three divisions there are three arches or glories; the first, and which belongs to the nave, is the largest, and is designed to form a cross, and convey other scriptural information; the second arch, which is in the chancel, is plain; and the third, which is in the holy of holies, is designed to appear as the light of heaven. In the nave there are three windows or lights; the west one is the largest. There is also one door. All are round-headed, and the door is designed to form a cross. In the chancel, 1 suppose, there were none. In the holy of holies there are three lights, so that the beginning and the end is illuminated through the Trinity, and the whole taken together make the six lights [days] of creation; and the one door makes the seventh day.'-Ib. These interpretations, however, though quoted by Mr. Poole, are not wholly adopted' by him, as he does not see sufficient reason to believe that the relation between the divine persons in the ever blessed Trinity is indicated by the position of the three compartments of the church; nor does the allusion to the six * This is evidently borrowed from the Athanasian creed: The Father is made of none. The Son is of the Father alone.' . . . . The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son. . . . [neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but] proceeding.'-REV. days of creation appear' to him very clear in the six windows.' The mystic signs which he discovers in the structure and arrangements of the cathedral church at Wells are thus unfolded: In this case you will find the same great Christian verities, THE TRINITY and THE ATONEMENT, expressed in a different, but perfectly consistent manner. THE ATONEMENT is shadowed forth in the grand form of the church, the cross, which is the foundation of the whole; and in this instance, as in some other large churches, as in Salisbury and Lincoln Cathedrals, and York Minster, we have the smaller transept above the great arms of the cross, representing the inscription placed by Pilate over the head of our crucified Redeemer. To signify THE HOLY TRINITY, we have, first of all, the threefold division lengthwise into nave, transepts, and choir; and then the threefold division breadthwise, of the nave or choir, and two aisles. In the exterior elevation, the two western towers, with the central tower with which they are necessarily associated in the view of the whole building as we approach it, follow the same ternary arrangement; and in the interior elevation, we have the like in the three stories of the nave and choir,-viz., the first tier of arches separating the nave and choir respectively from the aisles on either hand-the triforium and the clerestory.'-Poole, ib. Such, then, is the mystic significance of Roman and Anglican churches when erected in the style required by the wants of the church,'' desiring to express' these things in all her methods of embodying herself to the eyes of the world and the hearts of her sons.' It is always contrary to our inclination to treat what is written by respectable authors with anything like ridicule, especially when they intend to be serious: but such fine-spun theories as these are certainly ridiculous enough. Not that we question for a moment that symbolism is an element of art, and that when the useful had been adequately realized in buildings dedicated to sacred uses, it became the object of a higher art to give ornament and interest to them, not merely by the adoption of forms adapted to arrest the eye, or affect the mind through beauty of form and outline, but also by creations of fancy capable of acting upon the will, the affections, and the memory, by the force of some association or other which they were felt to have with the doctrinal truths of the religion in whose service these buildings were reared. All this we admit and feel. It is symbolism which confers the highest character on the heavendirected spire; and Milton, who was no papist, could not but love the high embowed roof, To symbolism in itself, then, we have no objection, but it must be intelligent, consistent, elevated, and not overdone; to express it in one term, it must be scriptural-New Testamentsymbolism, not childish, inconsistent, Jewish, heathen, and only in part Christian, like that of Mr. Lewis, Mr. Poole, and we must with regret add, though the charge falls on him much more lightly, Mr. Pugin. The puerility of the system now under review is a point we shall not discuss. If our readers did not appreciate it when Mr. Lewis was illustrating the mystery enveloped in the number and arrangement of church windows, or deriving the relation of the larger portions of the church to that which the Athanasian creed foolishly endeavours to describe as subsisting in the Trinity, or when Mr. Poole was bringing in his recipe for giving a sacred character to round churches, or making out first a trinity in the church's length, then another in the breadth, then two others in the interior and exterior elevation, nothing which we could say would make it plainer. But certainly, nothing ever perpetrated in verbal criticism can well exceed the arbitrariness even of Mr. Poole's elucidations, though by no means so far gone as Mr. Lewis, for he has only to wish for a ternary arrangement,' as he terms it, and it comes to hand without either nicety or scruple. Thus, in the first extract which we gave from him, his three divisions of the church were porch, nave, and chancel. These served to distinguish them. Afterwards, however, when he comes to illustrate the Trinity, they are nave, transepts, and choir, so that there are, in fact, four divisions; but as he wanted only three, and wanted two sets for two different calculations, he hit upon the happy expedient of beginning his two calculations at different ends, and so obtained two different sets. One question, however, occurs to us before we proceed. If churches with three towers set forth one Trinity, what do churches with two or one set forth? We passed the other day a church with two towers, the one lofty, the other low. This said we must be an Arian church. But no: it was a catholic church (so called) erected by Mr. Pugin, and the lower tower was unfinished for want of funds. We suppose the proper explanation of this matter is, that complete and perfect churches have a positive mystical character, but that in others, the symbolism is latent. It is time, however, that the world was enlightened on the subject, for we have seen both churches and unitarian meetinghouses with two turrets. A graver charge than that of puerility and arbitrariness may however be advanced against these symbols. They teach, if anything, error as well as truth, the inventions of men as well as the true sayings of God.' The spirit embodied in them, as Mr. Poole pretends, is, if Scripture be the standard, a lying spirit.' That we may not advance this charge without satisfactory evidence of its truth, we shall apply to Mr. Poole's ideas of architectural structure the same test (in part, at least) which in the next extract he has applied to some decorations of churches adapted to the Roman service. The head and front of Romanist offence is indeed oddly described in the words which we have put in italics, but the general complaint is just. 6 The decorations of churches refer, perhaps, more to the communion of saints than to any other article of the faith, which is remarked by the frequent occurrence of the statues of martyrs and confessors, of the founders, and benefactors, and patron saints of churches, of Christian kings and princes, of bishops and other ecclesiastics, but more especially of the Blessed Virgin and of the twelve apostles, with persons eminent in ecclesiastical history, in the niches and other receptacles of sculpture and painting with which our older churches abound. Now I am obliged to confess that the doctrine which is thus embodied is sometimes decidedly corrupt. The position of the Blessed Virgin, at the right hand of God the Father, as she is sometimes represented in Gothic sculpture, does not agree with Scripture, or with catholic theology; but it is worse than this that the false doctrine of the saints is made to disturb that distinction to which I have just alluded, between structure and ornament; and that, not content with giving the saints, the Blessed Virgin especially, a false place in the niches or pediments, or painted windows of churches, the ecclesiastics of the middle ages have given them a portion of the very structure of the church which seemed to be devoted to the embodying of those great mysteries which respect the divine objects of our worship. The chapels of the saints occupy a prominent place in the very foundation, and form a remarkable portion of the great lines of the elevation, and this is obtruded upon the notice in almost all our larger churches, where the chapel of our lady is placed, eastward of the very altar itself,—that is, above every symbolical representation of which the church admits. In Canterbury cathedral, even the Lady's chapel is thrust into a cold north corner, to make way for the crown and martyrdom of Thomas a Becket.'Poole, pp. 7, 8. 6 Now, although we cannot recognise in that highly favoured' woman, of whom our Lord was born according to the flesh, any title to the epithet, Our Lady,' and do not feel the horrors which Mr. Poole (perhaps in the same spirit of chivalric admiration and platonic affection for her which had previously animated the breasts of Augustine and the judicious Hooker*) We dare not except, no, not the Blessed Virgin herself, of whom, although we say with St. Augustine, for the honour sake which we owe to our Lord and Saviour Christ, we are not willing in this cause to move any question of his mother; yet,' &c.-Hooker Disc. on Justification, sect. 2. expresses at the thrusting of her chapel into a cold north corner, seeing that she herself is in a better place and does not feel it, we must admit the charge advanced against the architecture of the Romanist to be, in the main, well founded. Our readers will remember, that in a previous extract, Mr. Poole had stated that the one altar in a church expressed the unity of the church of Christ. Yet the Romish communion has many altars in one building, though preferring an exclusive claim to that most necessary note' of the true church. To the Romanist, therefore, these symbols speak a different language altogether, each separate altar representing the claims of some distinct object of worship. If structure have a meaning, this is the meaning of the numerous altars to be found in the larger churches of the Roman communion-the objects of our worship are many; and this, whatever glosses and distinctions on the subject may be framed by Romanist divines, is the conviction of the people. In the cathedral at Prague, a chapel at the eastern extremity of the south aisle, a little in the rear of the high altar, is fitted up for the worship of St. John Nepomucenus; and such is the empressement with which the saint is worshipped, that we have seen upon a Sabbath morning, and while a single service sufficed for the high altar, three successive services performed in the presence of as many congregations, each filling almost the whole aisle from the altar to the western door of the cathedral, and kneeling to the colossal silver image which is reared above his altar. Many of our readers must have seen similar exhibitions. The well known facts, therefore, which Mr. Poole has mentioned in his lectures, and which we have transferred to a note below,* breathed a spirit which is by no means extinct in the Roman communion; and while they serve to illustrate the symbolical import of the many altars which some of their churches contain, will show that Mr. Poole has so far rightly charged their structures with the expression of error instead of truth. But does not every parish church or chapel of ease in our protestant country teach the same error? In a lugubrious passage, which we cannot quote at length in this connexion, Mr. Pugin complains that Our good old Saint Martin's, Saint John's, Saint Peter's, and Saint Mary's Streets, are becoming Bellevue-places, Adelaide-rows, Apollo-terraces, Regent-squares, and Royal Circuses.' Why does Mr. Pugin lament this alteration of old customs? Because he believes that when their In one year there was offered at Christ's altar (in the cathedral church of Canterbury] 31. 2s. 6d. ; at the virgin's altar 637. 5s. 6d.; but at St. Thomas's altar, 8327. 128. 3d. But the next year the odds grew greater; for there was not a penny offered at Christ's altar; at the virgin's only, 4l. Is. 8d.; but at St. Thomas's, 954l. 6s. 8d.'—Poole, p. 8 |