Dissenting chapel

“ There is nothing particularly interesting in the chapel, which is in a state of dilapidation. But it is curious to speculate that here dwelt, in what was little more than a cavern, the man who, by the austerity of his life and his gloomy views, was able to found a religious Order which has endured for many ages, and is one of the few that escaped destruction during the revolutions and upheavals of the last century. The situation of the Chapelle is one of singular loneliness and desolation, and for eight months of the year at least it is buried in snow. ”

“ There are also the severest denunciations against those who carry away the smallest particle of the stone and mortar belonging to this Chapel. The adventure of the burnt breeches, and others of a similar nature, which are industriously circulated, have contributed as much as any denunciation, to prevent such attempts. Had it not been for the impressions they make, so great was the eagerness of the multitude to be possessed of any portion of this little edifice, that the whole was in danger of being carried away; not by angels, but piecemeal in the pockets of the pilgrims. ”

“ All the fear, indignation, horror, sympathy, and wild appeal for help that had arisen helplessly in her throat and yet remained unuttered, now seemed to thrill through her fingers and the tightened rope, and broke into frantic voice in the clanging metal above her. The whole chapel, the whole woodland, the clear, moonlit sky above was filled with its alarming accents. It shrieked, implored, protested, summoned, and threatened, in one ceaseless outcry, seeming to roll over and over—as, indeed, it did—in leaps and bounds that shook the belfry. ”

“ Hour by hour the tumult increased; forked flames shot up into the gray, autumnal sky, as the governor's house at the gaol and the chapel were set on fire by the rioters; and, as the benches in the interior of the chapel had been rubbed with pitch, the whole was soon devoured. ”

“ We have such a chapel on the east side, why not establish one on Factory Hill? I would be glad to contribute for such a purpose.”
“It would not solve the difficulty, Judge,” responded the rector. “These people do not want missions and chapels when they are within walking distance of the church itself. The thing implies exactly the same sort of discrimination as would be implied by herding them in rear pews. They don’t want to be accommodated, they don’t want to be patronized, they want to be recognized as having equal rights with us in the House of God. ”

“ Old Believers say it has completely failed. The chapel is now divided from the hospital by a moral barrier; and outside people scorn to pass the door and fall into what they call a trap. Last year the chiefs of the asylum prayed for leave to build a new wall across this courtyard, cutting off all communication with what they call their desecrated shrine. The home minister saw no harm in their request; but on sending their petition to the Holy Governing Synod, he met a firm refusal of the boon. The Popular Church has nothing to expect from these mitred monks. ”

“ The Americans, with a sense of national right, of which it is a scandal to England not to have adopted the example, have insisted on having a chapel—a solitary chapel!—in Rome; while the English have been forced to run from one lodging to another, to hide in holes and corners, and to exhibit to the Roman rabble the sight of Protestants sneaking to a worship indebted only to connivance for its being suffered to exist at all! ”

“ With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;
In the proudly-arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long isle the sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a Chief of the People should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, 'wildered he drops from some cliff huge in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam. ”

“ The dark pines which crowned their sandy slopes lost their forbidding frown in an unaccustomed softness, and every harsh line and broken pillar of the ruined chapel was toned down into a rich, sad softness. A human face, too, uplifted to the sky, so silent and motionless that it seemed almost set into the side of one of those groined arches, had lost all its harshness and worldliness in the glow of that falling light. It might have been the face of a saint, save for the vague unhappiness which shone in the clear, dark eyes ”

“ Everywhere people are laughing, drinking, killing. The royal wine runs in streams. Torrents of wine, torrents of blood. The apartments, the staircase, the vestibule, are crimson pools. Disfigured corpses, pictures thrust through with pikes, musicians' stands thrown on the altar, the organ dismounted, broken,—that is how the chapel looks. But to rob and murder is not enough: they will kindle a conflagration. It devours the stables of the mounted guards, all the buildings in the courts, the house of the governor of the palace: eighteen hundred yards of barracks, huts, and houses. ”

“ It is built of rough stones beneath a coating of plaster and has a cove roof covered with red tiles. The base of the altar still stands, traces of frescoes can be seen on the walls and on one side of the altar is an ambry or small, square wall-press. It was in this sorrowful little chapel that criminals about to be executed made confession and received the last offices of the Church.
A sadder place than this in which to die could hardly be realised. The land around is so harsh, the hill so heartless, the spot so lonely. ”

“ The chapel, also, closed and forsaken, has become the prey of destruction, and its noble colonnade has fallen. Groves, convents, feudal castles, and palaces, the very ruins are disappearing, and they are not even building factories or planting orchards where they stood; to clothe the noble matron Spain, at least with muslin and flowers, instead of the tissues and jewels of which they despoil her. What, then, will remain to us? Pastures wherein to breed the ferocious beast, whose contests afford the refined and gentle diversion that enjoys, above all others, the favor of the people. ”

“ It is scarcely possible for men to realize the awful doctrines and the majestic ritual of the Church under such a form; and yet these wretched novelties are found on the altars of some of the most venerable temples, equally as in the abortions of modern erection. They disfigure alike the cathedral of the city and the wayside chapel of the mountain-pass; they flourish in religious communities, and are even tolerated in the seminaries for the education of the priests of the sanctuary. Bad, paltry, miserable taste has overrun the externals of religion like a plague ”

“ Horrible and still more horrible grows the vision. The lamp is still burning in bluish flame, sending a mystic light through the vaulted archway of the chapel beyond the state bed. 0 God! a white figure kneels and groans upon the steps of the altar, then, drawing back, approaches his chair; her bands are meekly crossed upon her breast; like the marble drapery of a statue, her robe falls in countless snowy folds, none of which are broken in the onward-gliding motion of the shrouded form. ”

“ Pons came to an end; for the desecrated building was never occupied from that day. No nun ever again paced its quiet courtyard; no pigeons came fluttering to the sister’s hand nor did the passer-by hear again the sound of women singing in the small grey chapel. In the course of centuries the building fell into ruin and, year by year, the scandalised walls crumbled away, while tender rosemary and chiding brambles crept over the place to cover its shame.
On this eventful morning the bishop’s efforts did not end when he had sentenced the lady abbess and had swept the convent from the earth. ”

“ It would be something, if this building had but a sorrowful character; even sadness may entertain the soul. No, it is not sad, yet it is not the more cheerful on that account; there is nothing to be said against it, the character and the style being equally null; there is nothing one can even blame. Of what age is the chapel? Neither Gothic nor the renaissance, nor is it even the Jesuit style. Perhaps, then, there is something of the Jansenist austerity? It is by no means austere. What is it then? Nothing. But this nothing causes an overwhelming ennui, such as one would never find elsewhere. ”

“ Later in the autumn, the opening of a Nonjuring chapel in Spital Fields roused the fury of ‘loyal people.’ The pious and peaceable ‘Weekly Journal’ hoped that ‘all persons loyally affected to King George will timely suppress the diabolical society, as they have done the like seditious assemblies of blind, deluded fools in the Savoy, Scrope’s Court in Holborn, and in Aldersgate Street;’—where the chapels had been set on fire, and the congregations beaten and kicked, as they tried to escape, by the Hanoverian roughs. ”

“ There is always a more and a most obscure little miracle chapel, and as faith seems ever to lead unhesitatingly to the latter one, there is ever rising out of humility and obscurity, as in response to a demand, some new shrine, to replace the wear and tear and loss of other shrines by prosperity. For, alas! it is hard even for a chapel to remain obscure and humble in the face of prosperity and popularity. ”

“ A chapel needs an altar with a foot-pace, and a credence, all of which may be smaller than those belonging to the chancel. Minor altars are not allowed unless they stand in a chapel. Chapels are intended for the Eucharist, not for choir offices.
Of all the objectionable ways of warming a church that of noisy iron gratings on the floor is one of the worst. They have a power of spoiling the effect of the architecture which is curiously beyond their importance; they are a danger at weddings and at other occasions; and they harbour rats. ”

“ Agnosticism and science and other Danite companies sweep with them a good deal that is dear to the religious mind and may leave it very distressed and anxious—the chapel empty, the oracle as it may appear lost for ever. With the symbol the authority, the hope, the power seem to be lost irrecoverably. ”

“ It has been recently restored and re-built in an uninteresting style,—the exterior is bare to ugliness, the interior so painted that the six old Roman columns which support the choir are overwhelmed by the banality of their surroundings. The plateau on which the chapel is built is now almost bare; olive-trees grow to its edges and there is no trace of the Seminary that was once so full of active life. ”

“ Andover does not sew for the missionaries now. Her poor married theologues must wait a little for their babies' dresses. Even the blue flannel shirts for the drill are forgotten. The chapel is turned into sudden, awful uses, of which the "pious founders" in their comfortable graves did never dream. For there the women of the Hill, staying for no prayer-meeting, and delaying to sing no hymns, pick lint and roll bandages and pack supplies for the field; and there they sacrifice and suffer, like women who knew no theology at all ”

“ The ravager is at the gate, and there is none on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister vows should suffer violation!”
The Moors redoubled their assault upon the portal; the gates gave way, with a tremendous crash; a savage yell of exultation arose; when of a sudden the earth yawned; down sank the convent, with its cloisters, its dormitories, and all its nuns. The chapel tower was the last that sank, the bell ringing forth a peal of triumph in the very teeth of the infidels. ”

“ In the Portinari chapel, architecture and painting are kept distinct in treatment, and the fusion between them is effected by unity of line and colour, and still more, perhaps, by an identity of sentiment, which keeps the whole chapel in the same mood of blitheness,—a mood which makes it difficult to remember that the chapel is the mausoleum of a martyred saint. But Saint Peter Martyr’s marble sarcophagus, rich and splendid as it is, somehow fails to distract the attention from its setting. ”

“ A discussion raged as to the opening of his strong box, the men who stamped down the earth on the grave using the action as an emphasis to their assertions. At length the churchyard emptied, the evening wind was raw, and in the gloom the white chapel on the hill stared with its gaunt windows, impervious to the life histories of its own making impossible as an accessory to sentiment. ”

“ A thousand times has my soul sunk within me, when it loudly pushed the bolt of the lock aside. When the door opened, it was either a signal to prepare for instant death to some of those who were within, or for the gloomy purpose of admitting new victims." When we entered the chapel, my surprise and abhorrence were equally excited. The windows were beaten through, the hangings were flapping in the wind, the altar was shattered in pieces and prostrate, the pavement was every where torn up, and the caves of the dead were still yawning upon us. ”

“ The retro-choir itself narrowly escaped sharing its fate, but was fortunately spared, and the tomb of Bishop Andrewes was removed to its present position immediately behind the high altar. The true Lady Chapel being destroyed, the dedication seems to have been popularly transferred to the structure so closely associated with it, and most people concerned are now very unwilling to part with the familiar name. ”