with suspicion and dislike was satisfactory and refreshing from its simple exposition of symbolism as an element in life, quite apart from ecclesiasticism. I had upon the first mooting of the question by the Prince, taken the opinion of the Rural Deans as representative of the clergy. And their unanimous opinion was that it was even desirable to use an old guild in this way, provided that the Church Service and order were in no way interfered with. And the Prince, both through Lord Mount Edgcumbe, and at Marlborough House himself, said that nothing should be done except in full accord with my own arrangements as Bishop and the usual forms. I then found on examining, that the common little books of Foundation-stone Services were nothing but a watered down version of the Pontifical, omitting some grand phrases and meaningfull terms. These I restored, I hope, to nearer the original and printed for our own use. (A small number were printed with Rubricated Titles, one is in British Museum, one in Cambridge University Library.) The laying of two stones with the processions between enabled us to approach still nearer the original, which is said in three places of the wallcircuit. Accordingly all proceeded according to this Form until the place of the Rubric "the stone is prepared by the Masons with the accustomed ceremonies." Here the Free Masons did their part, just instead of common masons, and when the "Grand Master" had concluded this portion the Service proceeded. The dignity and the simplicity and naturalness with which the Prince poured the corn and wine and oil over the stone added much to the ceremony, and the force and clearness with which he delivered the impressive little sermon, ending with an excellent passage of Ezra, chosen by Lord Mt. Edgcumbe, rang out of a really serious spirit. The whole of the clergy, near 400, had previously assembled in Church, and robed in silence, and then by ourselves we had the Veni Creator, the usual Psalms of the Office and the Lord's Prayer. This was most solemn. And in all the Churches of the city there had been Holy Communion celebrated, at the Cathedral twice. Over the whole of the vast crowd of the amphitheatre, or rather two amphitheatres (N.-E. and S.-W.) and over the whole day's events was a strange, solemn, sweet brooding which none have ever failed to own. All was quiet, all was natural, but we all felt that there was something of unwonted sense of the Eternal being near. How can we live up faithfully enough to that day? The scene itself is very fairly indeed described by Precentor Venables in the next "Guardian." The whole of the High Cross was taken in by an oblong amphitheatre of wood decorated with colours and shields, and round the Eastern stone was a large semicircular amphitheatre. The colours of the Masons which look quaint on the individual, looked very soft in the mass. The most striking moment was when the procession of military and naval authorities and Deputy Lieutenants came sweeping in with a great curve leading the Princess and her boys. She was received by our tall Mayor in his stately new furred gown and me, and taken up to her throne. At the end she was led to the newly laid stone and seated by it, while a long train of girls brought their purses and laid them before her, after the little Princes had each presented £250 in behalf of Miss Goldsworthy Gurney who wished thus to memorialise her father's invention of the Steam Jet. The Prince of Wales was timidly asked whether he would approve of this, and said, "O why not? The boys would stand on their heads if she wished!" The younger of the boys is a little bright coloured cheery lad, but the elder, on whom so much may depend, is pale, long-faced, and I can't help thinking, for a child, like Charles the First-it is a very feeling face. At night when they were sent to bed between 12 and 1, having been allowed to sit up as a special privilege to the Ball, the Princess said to me as they pleaded for a little longer, "I do wish to keep them children as long as I can-and they do want so to be men all at once."-May she prevail. People are saying, "the first Cathedral founded since the Reformation." Has any been founded (one or two have been translated) since the Conquest? The Prayers then were the rendering of a venerable Office less venerable than the act itself. Da nobis, Domine, Truronensibus Sanctam et pretiosam Basilicam. On the Sunday after the Stone-laying I preached in the High Cross. The staging was still standing and it was occupied by four thousand people at least. They were, with few exceptions, poor people. The men's black coats, the sober colouring of wives and families made a strange contrast to the brilliance of Thursday's scene. Many walked miles to come. A great cushion with a large Bible was placed on the stone which the Prince had laid on the nave pillar, and I preached from it. A beautiful sky and a strong wind,-a large choir in which two cornets blown by surpliced riflemen led the singing in a way these Cornishmen truly delighted in. It was an extraordinary scene from the mid-pillar and the windows of houses behind the staging were full of people. My text was "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." When the hymn after the sermon was ended they were not ready to go. I gave out another—and the people poured down into the area, surrounded the pillar and sang most vehemently. We produced hymn books-then another hymn and another, the trumpets leading. They would have gone on all night. Again such a feeling filled the crowd that I could quite realise what a religious impulse seizing a multitude might effect-but-"not by might." As we came away I heard some one say, "Well, the 20th of May was grand, but the 23rd will be my Commemorative Day for Truro." Canon Mason says:— If it was "an extraordinary scene" from his point of observation, it was no less so for those to whom his was the central figure. I thought of the lines "Oh, for a sculptor's hand That thou might'st take thy stand, Thy [long] hair floating on the eastern breeze!" But they were written of a very different kind of prophet! Not all the audience allowed themselves to be carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment. One very Cornish critic, an old fellow who had walked in from Idless, said, "Aw, he'm a good pracher, but he lacks diction." "The Bishop stood," says another spectator, "his face pale with emotion, and yet irradiated with the tenderest smile of hopefulness; he seemed like a man who had won a victory by prayer: his place was by a pillar-base; as he gave out hymn after hymn, which were taken up and sung with the most moving intensity by the crowd, his hair waving in the sharp gusts which whirled the dust and shavings of the enclosure about, it was as though we were translated out of the nineteenth century into some strange chapter of mediaeval religious life." Of the ceremony of laying the Foundation Stone of the Cathedral the Bishop spoke in his Address to the Diocesan Conference, 28th October, 1880, as follows:: ...Moreover, we who begin to build may learn a reverent moral from those who finish. The eyes of Europe have now watched the finial set on the head of the earth's loftiest spire above her mightiest Church. But how? By a secular ceremony, a Te Deum sung by an opera troupe', the Archbishop in exile. Parvis componere magna solebam, but some one will say Magnis praeponere parva. As we think of our own little column-segment swung to its place before our Throne's and our people's nearest and dearest ones, with the fulness of the Church's most ancient ritual, with the hymns of a great society which, in other lands, was denounced as irreligious till it became so; with our Duke, the heir of England, solemnly reading in our ears the lesson of Ezra; as we think of the vast enclosure emptying itself of this world's greatness, only to resound louder yet with the blessings and hymns of miners and peasants, and footweary yet happy women and children, we shall pause before we suffer this dear country of ours to take that fatal leap of irreligious education which has filled the Continent with doubt of God, with distrust of man, and founds the commonwealth of toleration upon warrants of suppression. May it at least be one work of assemblies like these in England to cast some light on what true liberty is even the glorious liberty of the children of God. 1 The inauguration of the completed "Dom," or Cathedral of Cologne took place on Oct. 15, 1880. The deed referring to the finishing of the building having been read aloud, it was signed by the Emperor William I., sitting at a table in front of his pavilion, who then rose and addressed the assembly. Archbishop Melcher was at the time an exile in Rome, under the "May" or "Falk" laws, his offence being his expressed unwillingness to submit to them. The Suffragan Bishop Baudri, in addressing the Emperor, said, "May the longed-for day dawn which may give peace to the Church, which may restore to the finished Dom its chief pastor !" Good Catholics regarded the historical procession—the pièce de resistance of the ceremony-as a profane show, a Carnival frolic or masquerade. It was intended to illustrate the history of the Dom from 1248 to 1842. This display, which was admirably and picturesquely contrived, savoured rather of a Lord Mayor's day, or a Drury Lane pantomime than of an Ecclesiastical Ceremony. Of the gradual growth of the Cathedral fabric the Bishop in his Address to the 5th Diocesan Conference, 27th Oct. 1881, spoke : Last year our Inaugural ended naturally of itself in the thought of the Foundation Day of our Cathedral Church-a day still fresh to us in all its glow, in all its promise. To-day I cannot but ask you whether you do not look with something of awe on the solemn growth-material and moral-of that structure; on the manner in which the funds just necessary for our progress come quietly in— on the massive strength of the crypt pillars, and the springingstones squaring their vast bulk to take the weight of ages; on the pleasant sound solution of the Stone Question' (so-called) natural as it was, yet difficult as it seemed. To me these things seem half fact, half parable-a kind of mystery play. A living symbolism of the Kingdom of Christ, putting obstruction on one side, paying no heed to it, turning it at last to account; smiling at what is flimsy, shattering what is flinty, towering by depression. In faithless moments we have sometimes held our breath, lest ever there should be said over our graves, "These men began to build and were not able to finish." All this is past. We know that it will be said of this generation Fundamenta locant illi immanesque columnas Rupibus excidunt, rebus decora alta futuris. Wisely they Lay deep foundations for a coming day, To grace the Kingdom-old, yet ever new. And again in his Address to the 6th Diocesan Conference, 26th October, 1882 :- ... Christ meant all Humanity to be His Temple. Of that design in its present stage our own Cathedral at this day is no inapt image. Based on rock, the stately choir-piers stand, as it were, balanced on the massives of the yet open crypt, crowned with their capitals and unfolding out their arches like mighty wings, right and left, to touch each other. For all mechanical uses, their mutual linking and tree-like harmony are perfect and need no more support, and are equal to receiving the loftier 1 See p. 453. |