Elizabeth W. Grierson

“ ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL
‘The Church of the Citizens.’
I
I am sure that there is no one who goes to London for the first time, no matter how hurried he may be, who does not try to visit at least three places—the Tower, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Of these three places, two are churches; but they are churches that are so connected with the history of our nation that they almost seem to stand at the heart of the Empire. ”

“ The King was powerless to resist the wishes of the great concourse of people gathered across the river, and before nightfall ‘Magna Charta,’ the ‘Great Charter,’ had been drawn up and signed.
I cannot tell you all the good things that were secured to Englishmen by this great deed, but there was one thing which, above all others, it gained for them—and gained for us as well—Justice. It is one of our proudest boasts that, by English law, no man, be he ever so poor or degraded, is condemned unheard; that every man is counted innocent till, by a fair trial, he is proved to be guilty. ”

“ Paul’s Cathedral are erected to the memory of men who died far away in other lands. It looks like it, does it not? for we have seen Gordon’s monument, who died at Khartoum; and Moore’s, who died in Spain; and Bishop Heber’s, who died in India; and that of the Colonial soldiers, who died in South Africa; and if we go on looking, we shall find very many more, to the memory of soldiers and sailors who fought our battles, and guarded our shores, but whose bones are resting in foreign lands, or, mayhap, under the rolling waves of the sea. ”

“ And then Gordon was left alone, the only Englishman in Khartoum.
It is very sad, and yet it is grand, to read how that lonely soldier defended the city, for almost a year, with no one to help him except natives, and with a howling mob of Arabs outside the walls. He lived in what was called the ‘Palace,’ and day after day he used to go up to the roof, and look in vain down the river, and all over the desert, for the help which he expected would be sent from England, and which never came. ”

“ Do you remember what is said in the Bible about people who can rule their own spirits, and are slow to be angry? That they are really greater than the men who conquer cities, and whom the world admires. Tried by this standard, Sir Christopher was a really great man. For he was not only clever enough to build St. Paul’s Cathedral, but he could rule his own spirit, and not vex himself over the way in which his enemies treated him. ”

“ Now that an Italian Archbishop sat on the throne of Canterbury, a great many Italian priests came over, and were given the best livings in the Church. Their manners were no better than those of their countryman, and the citizens became so enraged at the behaviour of these foreigners, and at the unjust way in which the Pope had forced them upon them, that they determined that not one of them should set foot in the church that they looked on as especially their own. ”

“ It was in the reign of King Edward III., and the Church of England had lost its first purity, and grown rich and corrupt. Many of the Bishops and clergy had forgotten what they had been made ministers of God for, and, instead of thinking about the needs of their people, they thought only of how much wealth they could heap up for themselves, and how luxuriously they could live. ”

“ Now let us go inside the Cathedral, and walk round it, although it is so full of monuments that it is impossible to tell you the story of each.
As we look at them we realize that St. Paul’s still keeps its character of the Citizens’ Church.
In Westminster Abbey, Kings, and poets, and writers lie buried, or have monuments put up to their memory, but here, in St. Paul’s, most of the monuments are those of national heroes, of men who have lived and died for the Empire. ”

“ Then the Scottish pipers wailed out a dirge, and the dark Egyptian band played Gordon’s favourite hymn, ‘Abide with Me.’ After that the soldiers were dismissed from their ranks, and were at liberty to wander up and down, and everybody, down to the youngest bugler, had a glad feeling in his heart, that, although they did not know the exact spot where General Gordon’s bones were resting, they had done their best, after fourteen years, to give him Christian burial.
There are many more memorials here of men about whom we could tell the most interesting stories, had we only the time. ”

“ Everyone knows that the security of a building [37] depends greatly upon the kind of foundation it rests upon. No matter how well built it is, no matter how showy the walls may be, if the foundation is not firm and solid, sooner or later it must fall to pieces, unless something is done to repair it.
Christopher Wren knew of this danger, and the first thing that he set his workmen to do was to dig down forty feet into the earth to find out if the ground on which he intended to build was quite solid and secure. ”

“ The story of Sir Christopher Wren’s life—for he was knighted as a reward for his work—is as interesting as any of the stories connected with St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was the son of a Wiltshire clergyman, and his love of architecture dated from a time when the roof of his father’s church had grown so old that it threatened to fall down. And, as often happens in a country parish, there were not very many rich men living there who could give money to pay for the building of a new [39] one. ”

“ But the people were determined, and formed themselves into an army, which they called the ‘Army of God, and of Holy Church,’ and all the clergy, and all the citizens of London, and Exeter, and Lincoln, supported them, and the King was obliged to yield.
So it came about that one June day a great assembly of people met on the banks of the Thames near Windsor. On one side was encamped the King, with a handful of followers, and on the other the great army of Barons, and nobles, and citizens had pitched their tents on a piece of marshy land known by the name of Runnymede. ”

“ Augustine preached to the men of Kent, a friend of his, named Milletus, preached to the East Saxons. And when at last their King became a Christian, his uncle Ethelbert suggested that, as Kent had its Bishop of Canterbury, with his Cathedral Church, it would be a good thing for the Kingdom of the East Saxons to have a Bishop of its own who would have his Cathedral Church also. ”

“ In the time of the early Britons there were Christian churches scattered up and down the land, and it is almost certain, from stones that were dug up when the foundations of the present Cathedral of St. Paul [7] were being laid, that in those far bygone days a little church stood on the Hill of Ludgate, in the centre of Roman London. But, as you know, the Roman legions were recalled to Rome in A.D. 410 to help the soldiers there to drive back the vast hoards of Goths and barbarians who were pouring down from the north-west upon Italy ”

“ Paul’s’ of the Middle Ages.
When we leave our bus, we find ourselves in an open space bounded on all sides by busy streets and fine shops. In the centre of this open space stands an immense church, with a huge dome rising from its centre, and on the top of the dome, standing clearly out against the sky, so far up that it can be seen from nearly all parts of London, is [14] an immense gilded cross. ”

“ Paul’s could call the citizens to fight for their liberty as Englishmen against the oppression of the King, it could also summon them to fight for their liberty as Churchmen against the oppression of the Pope. We must [24] always remember that when first Christianity was brought to England, in the time of the Romans, and the ancient British Church was formed, it did not owe allegiance to the Bishops of Rome as it did in later days. ”

“ Then a man arose, called the Mahdi, who gathered together thousands of Arabs and raided the Soudan, vanquishing the Egyptian troops who tried to fight against them. The Mahdi became very powerful, and it was felt that it would take too many of our soldiers to hold the country against him, so the British Government determined to give it up. But we could not leave all the poor Soudanese people to be massacred by the Arabs, so it was determined to try to get them safely out of the country into Egypt, and Gordon was sent out from England to do this. ”

“ Sometimes, indeed very often, they were good men. The saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln came from Savoy. Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury was a Greek, who came from far-away Tarsus, the city of St. Paul. But some of them were bad men, haughty and insolent, who wanted to override English laws and English freedom. And when this happened the people were apt to rebel, and declare that only English Bishops should rule in the Church of England. ”

“ For this is the monument erected to General Gordon, and there is no man [44] who has died in recent years whose memory is held more in honour by the people of England. For he died in the attempt to save women and children from deadly peril; and these poor people were not English—they had not even white skins—but were Soudanese, who lived in far-away Khartoum. I expect that most of you have read the life of this great man, but for the sake of those who have not, I will tell you a little about him. ”

“ For although Englishmen may be slow to act, they act surely; and fourteen long years after Gordon’s death, the Soudan was retaken, and after the great Battle of Omdurman, Lord Kitchener, with his victorious army, entered Khartoum one peaceful Sunday morning, and what do you think was the first thing that he did?
He took his troops, British and Egyptian, into the open space in front of the ruined Palace where Gordon had fallen, and formed them into three sides of a square, while he and his generals stood in the centre. ”

“ Somehow he reminds us of a strong climber, who spends his days toiling up a great mountain, and always getting higher and higher, and nearer and nearer Heaven, while most of us are content to remain down in the valley, where life is not so hard, but where the air is less pure, and the roads are dusty. ”

“ When Henry I. came to the throne, he wanted to please the people, because he had an elder brother living, who had gone to the Crusades, and he was afraid that unless he gained the affection of his subjects before his brother came back, they might choose the latter to be King instead of him. So he granted them a Charter, promising not to seize any of their property, nor to tax them unduly, nor to touch any of the lands belonging to the Church. ”

“ And it was this great faith that made him go, promptly and fearlessly, into danger that other men might have shrunk from, and with reason. He is sometimes called ‘Chinese Gordon,’ because once, when there was a rebellion in China, the Emperor asked for a British officer to help to quell it, and Gordon was sent. The rebels had entrenched themselves in forts, and Gordon used to lead bands of soldiers to storm these forts, carrying only a little cane in his hand, with which he pointed out to the men what he wanted them to do. ”

“ Their Master behaved no better than they did. There was in the City a monastery called St. Bartholomew’s, in Smithfield. He resolved to visit it, and, appearing at the gate with his men, demanded an entrance. [27] For some reason the Prior resented this—perhaps Boniface’s insolent manner made him angry; perhaps he felt that it was the Bishop of London’s place to inspect his monastery, and not the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. ”

“ Gibbons opened the door quite civilly, and Evelyn tells us that when he saw the work close at hand he was quite amazed at its beauty and delicacy. He asked the young carver why he lived in such a lonely spot, and Gibbons told him that he wanted to have time ‘to work hard at his profession without interruption.’
Then Evelyn, who was always ready to do a kind action and to help people, volunteered to introduce him to some ‘great man,’ who might, [56] perhaps, buy the piece of carving, and asked the sum for which Gibbons would sell it. ”

“ If, as we walk up the nave, we keep to our right hand, we come, on the north side, to a recumbent statue of bronze, and we are almost certain to find one or two people standing looking at it, and perhaps someone has laid a tiny bunch of flowers against the slab on which the figure rests. ”

“ It was a foolish as well as a wicked act, for of course the news of what had been done spread through London, and the citizens began to say to each other that a man who could do a deed like that was not fit to be an Archbishop. ”