Voices of Westminster Abbey, Chapters V-VII [pp. 237-245]

APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
past with such fidelity, and greets the future with
such generosity-I have time to think that he prays
for the extension of the historic structure, that he
would rejoice in the increase of that organic power
which would reach all sorts and conditions of men.
As I see him coming toward me, up the long
reach of the alley, again I think of the great procession of abbots and deans through the eight hundred years behind him, some of whom now lie under
this mosaic pavement at my back, most of whom
sleep all around here; men who were present in this
place at the coronation of every sovereign from the
Conqueror to Victoria; who (including himself) witnessed every burial here from Edward the Confessor
to Livingstone the explorer; Gislebert, who saw
Westminster Hall building; Wenlock, who received
the Stone of Scone, which rests behind that screen,
from Edward I.; Langton, William of Colchester,
Islip, and Bradford, who beheld this Abbey as it
grew and put out its branches like a spreading oak;
Esteney, who watched Caxton at his press in the
Almonry; and Benson, last abbot and first dean, who
turned the old Chapter-House into a record-office,
which, under Stanley, has been restored, and revived in the realm as the "cradle of representative
and constitutional government, of parliament, legislative chambers, and congress, throughout the
world." All these, and twenty-four more, out of the
fifty-four, are within sound of his footsteps as he
comes-and what echoes of history they give forth
behind him!
As he mounts that pulpit-stair, and his eloquent
voice is heard, I bethink me also of the great preachers whose tones have resounded under these very
arches in the ears of past generations-of Coverdale
and Cramner, Beveridge and Fuller, Howe and
Owen, Williams and Horseley; of the scholars and
divines, too, whose memory lingers where so much
of their lives was spent - of Atterbury and Wharton, sleeping at the end of the Nave; of Usher, in
one of the chapels near; of Casaubon, Camden, and
Barrow, in the South Transept; of South, under
this marble pavement.
All now mute in death, but the ever-living voice
of Truth will continue to speak from dean to dean,
from preacher to preacher, from scholar to scholar.
All now mute in death, yet all still speaking in this
age-long Trumpet of influence and fame, filled with
the undying breath of the great and good, which
shall open wider and wider its vast mouth as the
area of Anglo-Saxon civilization extends, and utter
notes deeper and deeper as it is blown under the
grander inspiration of the times to come.
Hear him who now stands in that pulpit:
"What is yet in store for the Abbey none can say.
Much, assuredly, remains to be done to place it on a level
with the increasing demands of the human mind, with
the changing wants of the English people, with the
never-ending'enlargement of the Church,' for which
every member of the Chapter is on his installation
pledged to labor.
" It is the natural centre of religious life and truth.
.... It is the peculiar home of the entire Anglo-Saxon
race, on the other side of the Atlantic no less than on
this. It is endeared both to the conforming and to the
non-conforming members of the National Church. It
combines the full glories of Mediaeval and of Protestant
England. It is of all our purely ecclesiastical institutions
the one which most easily lends itself to union and reconciliation, and is with most difficulty turned to party or
polemical uses....
"Not surely in vain did the architects of successive
generations raise this consecrated edifice in its vast and
delicate proportions, more keenly appreciated in this our
day than in any other since it first was built; designed,
if ever were any forms on earth, to lift the soul heavenward to things unseen. Not surely in vain has our English language grown to meet the highest ends of devotion with a force which the rude native dialect and barbaric Latin of the Confessor's age could never attain.
Not surely for idle waste has a whole world of sacred
music been created, which no ear of Norman or Plantagenet ever heard, nor skill of Saxon harper or Celtic
minstrel ever conceived. Not surely for nothing has the
knowledge of the will of God almost steadily increased,
century by century, through the better understanding of
the Bible, of history, and of Nature. Not in vain, surely,
has the heart of man kept its freshness while the world
has been waxing old, and the most restless and inquiring
intellects clung to the belief that the' Everlasting arms
are still beneath us,' and that' prayer is the potent inner
supplement of a noble outward life.' Here, if anywhere,
the Christian worship of England may labor to meet
both the strength and the weakness of succeeding ages,
to inspire new meaning into ancient forms, and embrace
within itself each rising aspiration after all greatness,
human and divine.
"So considered, so used, the Abbey of Westminster
may become more and more a witness to that one Sovereign Good, to that one Supreme Truth."
VII.
DoEs the Abbey speak only of death? That is
certainly the first impression we receive when we
hear it described, and when we enter it for the first
time. This is so much the prevailing impression that
some people who visit it are even surprised when
they hear a live service in it, and living truth from
some great preacher. The past,.the dead, the utterly departed, are the ideas which are apt to crowd
upon one's mind. And yet there is one general aspect, which, if the mind seizes upon it, gives a singular contradiction to this feeling. This is the almost
universal animation of the monuments. If death
lies in sad and sober reality in the graves and vaults
beneath the pavement, the energy of the Christian
faith has peopled the area above with figures full of
life.
The monuments of every age, though varying
widely in style and taste with the change from one
period to another, yet agree in this lively representation of the quick above the dead. Even the crosslegged recumbent knight of six hundred years ago,
if his eyes are closed, is only sleeping, or, if his palms
are placed together, is in silent prayer. In walking
among the tombs you find the commemorated dead
in every natural attitude-some reclining with their
heads on their elbows, others kneeling; some are sit
1, Memorials of Westminster Abbey," p. 577.
242