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By Canon Barnett.

December, 1898.

1 From “The Nineteenth Century and After”. By permission of the Editor.

Cathedrals have risen in popular estimation. They represent the past to the small but slowly increasing number of people who now realize that there is a past out of which the present has grown. They are recognized as interesting historical monuments; their power is felt as an aid to worship, and some worshippers who would think their honesty compromised by their presence at a church or a chapel, say their prayers boldly in the “national” cathedral. A trade-union delegate, who had been present at the Congress, was surprised on the following Sunday afternoon to recognize in St. Paul’s some of his fellow delegates. No reformer would now dare to propose that cathedrals should be secularized.

But neither would any one who considers the power latent in cathedral establishments for developing the spiritual side of human nature profess himself satisfied. It is not enough that the buildings should be restored, so that they may be to-day what they were 400 or 500 years ago, nor is it enough that active deans should increase sermons and services.

A cathedral has a unique position. It holds the imagination of the people. Men who live in the prison of mean cares remember how as children their thoughts wandered free amid the lights and shadows of tombs, pillars, arches, and recesses. Worshippers face to face with real sorrow, who turn aside from the trivialities of ritual, feel that there is in the solemn grandeur a power to lift them above their cares.

A cathedral indeed attracts to itself that spiritual longing which, perhaps, more than the longing for power or for liberty, is the sign of the times. This longing, compared with rival longings, may be as small as a mustard-seed, but everywhere men are becoming conscious that things within their grasp are not the things they were made to reach. There is a heaven for which they are fitted, and which is not far from any one of them. They like to hear large words, and to move in large crowds. They see that “dreaming” is valuable as well as “doing”. They feel that there is a kinship between themselves and the hidden unknown greatness in which they live. The ideal leader of the day is a mystic who can be practical.

Men turning, therefore, from churches or chapels which are identified with narrow views, and from a ritual which has occupied the more vacant minds, are prepared to pay respect to the cathedral with its grand associations.

And the cathedrals which thus attract to themselves modern hope, and become almost the symbol of the day’s movement, are equipped to respond to the demand. They have both men and money. They have men qualified to serve, and a body of singers qualified to make common the best music, and they have endowments varying from £4000 to £10,000 a year.

A cathedral is attractive by its grandeur and its beauty, but it ought to be something more than an historic monument. Its staff is ample, and is often active, but it ought to be something more than a parish church.

Its government, however, is so hampered that it can hardly be anything else, and the energies of the chapter are spent in efforts to follow the orders of restoring architects. The building is cleared of innovations introduced by predecessors, who had in view use and not art. Its deficiencies are supplied, the dreams and intentions of the early builders are discovered, and at last a church is completed such as our ancestors would have desired.

The self-devotion of deans or canons in producing this result provokes admiration from those who in their hearts disapprove. Money is freely given, and, what is often harder to do, donations are persistently begged. The time and ability of men who have earned a reputation as workers, thinkers, or teachers, are spent in completing a monument over which antiquaries will quarrel and round which parties of visitors will be taken at 6d. a head.

The building has little other use than as a parish church, and the ideal, before a chapter, anxious to do its duty, is to have frequent communions, services, and sermons, as in the best worked parishes. In some cases there is a large response. The communicants are many, but, being unknown to one another and to the clergy, they miss the strength they might have derived by communicating with their neighbours in their own churches. The sermons are sometimes listened to by crowded congregations, but the people are often drawn from other places of worship, and miss the teaching given by one to whom they are best known. But in most cases the response is small. The daily services, supported by a large and well-trained choir of men and boys, preceded by a dignified procession of vergers and clergy, often help only two or three worshippers. Many of the Holy Communions which are announced are not celebrated for want of communicants, and the sermons are not always such as are suitable for the people.

There are, indeed, special but rare occasions when the cathedral shows its possibilities. It may be a choir festival, when 500 or 600 voices find space within its walls to give a service for people interested in the various parishes. It may be some civic or national function, when the Corporation attends in state, or some meeting of an association or friendly society, when the church is filled by people drawn from a wide area. On all those occasions the fitness of the grand building and fine music to meet the needs of the moment is recognized, and the citizens are proud of their cathedral.

But generally they are not proud. They think—when they care enough to think at all—that a building with such power over their imagination ought to be more used, and that such well-paid officials ought to do more work. “One canon,” a workman remarked, “ought to do all that is done, and the money of the others could be divided among poor curates.” The members of the chapter would probably agree as to the need of reform. It is not their conservatism, it is the old statutes which stand in the way.

These statutes differ in the various cathedrals, but all alike suffer from the neglect of the living hand of the popular will which in civil matters is always shaping old laws to present needs. Their object seems to be not so much to secure energetic action as to prevent aggression. Activity, and not indolence, was apparently the danger which threatened the Church in those old days.

The Bishop, who is visitor and is called the head of the cathedral, cannot officiate—as of right—in divine service; he is not entitled to take part in the Holy Communion or to preach during ordinary service.

The Dean governs the church, and has altogether the regulation of the services; but he can only preach at the ordinary services at three festivals during the year.

The Canons, who preach every Sunday, have no power over the order or method of the uses of the church.

The Precentor, who is authorized to select the music and is required to take care that the choir be instructed and trained in their parts, must not himself give instruction and training.

The Organist, who has to train and instruct the boys, has to do so in hours fixed by the Precentor, and in music chosen by him.

An establishment so constituted cannot have the vigour or elasticity or unity necessary to adapt cathedrals to modern needs. It affords, as Trollope discovered, and as most citizens are aware, a field for the play of all sorts of petty rivalries and jealousies. No official can move without treading on the other’s rights. Bishops, Deans, and Canons hide their feelings under excessive courtesies. Precentors and Organists try to settle their rights in the law courts, and the trivialities of the Cathedral Close have become proverbial.

The apparent uselessness of buildings so prominent, and of a staff so costly, provokes violent criticism. Reformers become revolutionists as the Dean, Chapter, and choir daily summon congregations which do not appear, and the officials become slovenly and careless as they daily perform their duties in an empty church. Sacraments may be offered in vain as well as taken in vain, and institutions established for other needs which go on, regardless of such needs, are self-condemned.

If the army or navy or any department of the civil service were so constituted, the demand for reform would be insistent. “We will not endure,” the public voice would proclaim, “that an instrument on whose fitness we depend shall be so ineffective. It is not enough that the members of the profession are prevented from injuring one another. Our concern is not their feelings, but our protection.” It is characteristic of the indifference to religious interests that an instrument, so costly and so capable of use as a cathedral establishment, has been left to rust through so many years, and that the troubles of a Chapter should be matter for jokes and not for indignant anger.

A Royal Commission, indeed, was appointed in 1879. It was in the earlier years presided over by Archbishop Tait, who showed, both by his constant presence and by his lively interest, how deeply he had felt and how much he had reflected on this subject. The Commissioners had 128 meetings, and issued their final report in 1885; but notwithstanding the humble and almost pathetic appeal that something should be “quickly done” to remedy the abuses they had discovered, and forward the uses which they saw possible, nothing whatever has been done. The position of the Cathedrals still mocks the intelligence of the people they exist to serve, and the hopes which the spread of education has developed.

The Commissioners recognized the change which had been going on in the feeling with regard to the tie which binds together the cathedral and the people, and their recommendations lead up, as they themselves profess, to “the grand conception of the Bishop of a diocese working from his cathedral as a spiritual centre, of the machinery there supplied being intended to produce an influence far beyond the cathedral precincts, of the capitular body being interested in the whole diocese, and of the whole diocese having claims on the capitular body”.

This conception, apart from its technical phraseology, may be taken as satisfactory. “A live Cathedral in a live Diocese” is, in the American phrase, what all desire. It may be questioned, however, in the light of thirteen years’ further experience of growing humanity, whether their recommendations would bring the conception much nearer to realization.

Their recommendations are somewhat difficult to generalize. The peculiarities and eccentricities in the constitution of each cathedral are infinite. Some are on the old foundation, with their Deans, Precentors, Chancellors, and Prebendaries. Some date from Henry VIII, and have only a Dean and a small number of residentiary Canons. Some possess statutes which are hopelessly obsolete, and one claims validity for a new body of statutes adopted by itself. Some are under the control of the chapter only, some have minor corporations. Some have striven to act up to the letter of old orders, some have statutes which are of no legal authority. But the difference of constitution of the several cathedrals was by no means the only difficulty with which the Commissioners had to contend.

There is the difference in their local circumstances. Some, as Bristol and Norwich, are in the midst of large populations; some, as Ely and St. David’s, are in small towns or amid village people. St. Paul’s, London, stands in a position so peculiar that it does not admit of comparison with any other cathedral in the kingdom.

There is, further, the difference in wealth and the provision of residences for the capitular body; some are rich, and endowed with all that is necessary for the performance of their duties; some are comparatively poor.

The Commissioners have met these difficulties by considering each cathedral separately, and by issuing on each a separate report with separate recommendations. There is, however, a character and a principle common to all their recommendations, by which a judgment may be formed as to how far they would, if adopted, fit cathedrals to the needs of the time.