WESTMINSTER ABBEY

MOST FAMOUS OF. CHURCHES

BRITAIN'S SPIRITUAL CENTRE

GREAT PILGRIMAGE OF. OVER-

SEA VISITORS.

By the testimony of the authorities and the evidence of personal observation, one of the most remarkable developments of the present year has been the increasing multitude of pilgrini3 to Westminster Abbey.

Thece- is no «a&y means of estimating that increase statistically (declares . a special correspondent in the "Daily Mail"). No record is kept of the persons who visit the portions which are always open to the public, or the chapels on the day in the week on which they are thrown open without charge. But the impression of all familiar with th© Abbey over a considerable term of years is that never have so many visitors from the Dominions and the • United States been seen within its walls, and this though the high cost of ocean travel still severely limits the number of. those who can come to Great Britain. ' ' The Abbey has in fact become holy ground to Americans as well as to the British.,

It has been a strange and impressive sight during the summer to mark the uncreasing concourse round the grave of the Unknown Warrior, this new shrine which draws men with a surer magnet than ever did the tomb of Edward th© Confessor. The Abbey between its services has been always full. In the past there was an agreement among the authorities tiiat most foreign visitors were content with a hasty inspection. But now one striking fact is that so many of the visitors Teturn tim« after time. Americans' are no longer satisfied till they have studied its tombs and listened to the solemn music of its services repeatedly. They find that th© magic of the place grows upon them, and that with each visit some new wonder reveals iteelf.

Vergers who conduct the parties round fell_ me that since the war they hay« noticed a great development in the affection which Americans bear to the Abbey and a growth of the feeling of participation in its glories and memories. That is ,all to the good, and it meaps that an additional tie now binds them to the cmtntry whence their civilisation sprang. Since'the war, too, there has been a very marked multiplication of visitors from the 1 Dominions. Tens of thousands of Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders saw the Abbey for the first time as soldiers, and felt the force of .its appeal; they come back to it as the homing pigeon returns to its cote', and bring over their womenkilld with them to see it. . : • ' :THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR/ This increasing concentration of interest on. Westminster Abbey is beyond question due in large part to, the fact that there lies the Unknown—the fighting man who typifies the million of the JJntish race who laid down their lives for freedom in the.war: That grave with its crowded. inscription, which is so often" and so severely criticised, has always a gathering about it, whatever the day, and -the gathering ■ increases; on the anniversaries, of those terrible battles which punctuate the calendar—battles in which the flower of British youth perished, bringing anguish to so many hearts. Last September, for instance, fell the anniversaries of the First Marne, of Loos, of several of those sanguinary and obscure engagements o! the First Somme, of the fearful struggle in the mud at Passchendaele, and of the storming of the Hindenburg Line. There is hardly a month which has not to show a similar list of battles. '

With each • anniversary there are deputations of comrades, bringing wreaths of remembrance to their fallen friends— all of whom are personified in the Unknown. There is the ' constant' procession of men, wearing the silver .badge and limping, or outwardly whole and covered with medals. Saddest of all there are the women in black, to whom this tomb means so much, with haggard eyes, though the years are flying swiftly and the first sting of their pain has been assuaged by Time, the great healer. _ They weep there, like Rachel, - for their children gone, yet feel some comfort in the evidence of the universal love and respect, in which that famous tomb is held. About it, even more/ than about the Cenotaph, another memorial justly dear to Englishmen but .without the religious influence which pervades the grave of the Unknown, are fast growing up a thousand noble and tender associations. ,

To the British pilgrims the tomb speaks of the son who fell at Ypres;' or the brother who vanished on tt© Somme; of the husband who went down in that great mist of poison gas which spread over, the land as the Germans opened their last furious onset, when our men fought "with backs to ,the wall," and General Currie called on them to die rather thai) let the enemy through; or the father who was called up in our last desperate muster of the children and the middle-agjed, and who perished in the terrific struggle of the Hundred Days Battle, '/'dark to the triumph which he died to gain." It is a shrine of remembrance, keeping alive the'cult of valour and duty, and reminding living man of the eternal truth: "All.that is most real and best in our lives is'that' which has no material reality—sentiment, ; love, honour, patriotism—these continue when the material things pass away." . '

To the visitor not o€ our race to look on the tomb is as moving as it.is for the modern to stand upbD^the mound which marks where the Athenian dead rest after their great victory of M&rathon. There is the same sense of personal touch with immortal events and with the actors in them. The ages may pass bringing oblivion on most humarr things, but this feeling will surely survive and the sense of gratitude and love to those who saved freedom for mankind will grow rather than dimmish.

In te appeal to the imagination and emotion the Abbey is ■worthy of this tomb and the affection which gathers round it. St. Peter's at Rome, with all its glories, is young in years and poor in associations compared with Westminster Abbey. Notre Dame in Paris is older, but the Revolution stripped it of much of its i human interest; nor was itc history intartwined with the very- lifo of France as that of the Abbey is intertwined with the life of Britain. The Abbey is not only to-day _ the great shrine or a great people; it has beep their natioaal shrine for now nearly, ten centuries. . NINE HUNDRED TEARS OF / CORONATIONS. Over the pavements of the Abbey generation after generation has passed, laving princes have moved in procession to be crowned; the famous dead, whom the nation would commemorate, have been borne to receive their last honours. For 900 years every English Sovereign, has there been anointed, with the holy oil, of which in the old days, according to legend, a miraculous supply was given by the Virgin to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Indeed, the whole Abbey was once full of the miraculous. There St. Peter had appeared in person to honour tile church dedicated to him; there the body of

Edward the Confessor refused to decay j there was the very stone with the imprint,'of Christ's foot, at the moment o£ the Ascension; a chalice with His blood which Henry HI. had carried bareheaded through London; a tooth of Athanasius; and I know not how many other relics. There was and is the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots, the last to work miracles in this island. Of the relics, most disappeared at the Reformation, and any that survived were made away with by the Puritans!

Yet never was the Abbey wrecked as Notre Da-ac was. The English temper showed itself in this. ■ Anabaptists, Calvinißts, and Levellers respected it, though it had one moment of terrible danger under Edward VI., when the Protector Somerset is believed to Jhave contemplated its destruction as a hateful relic of the old religion. Cromwell buried there his greatest fighters as a supremo honour and himself was laid beneath its floor, to have his body torn up at the Restoration and the head chopped off on Tower Hill.

So it came about that, with very rare exceptions, tombs were left undisturbed, save for subsequent repairs or bnrials. Thus when in 1871 some work was being done on the tomb of Richard _ 11., who died in 1400, fragments of his peaked shoes nearly 800 years old could be seen in his coffin. . . '

The visitor, -when he leaves the Ab-i bey, might find it hard to answer the question, What went ye out .for to see? In that building there is so much to see and there are united so many ap-/ peals. Fresh discoveries are always be-/ ing made, fresh treasures,are constantly being disclosed, as in the last few months by the cleaning of the tombs on the north side of the high altar and the painted coat of arms on, the spandrels of the north, and south choir aisles. The colours are now visible in all their thirteenth century brilliance, as though th« 600 years that have elapsed since they were first appHed were bnt a watch in the night. • '

POLITICAL HAPPENINGS. There is the appeal of race. The Abbey is above all other churches and buildings the object of veneration not only to those of English, and British stock, but also to those who have adopted our language and customs. It is to them all that and much more than the Temple was to the Jew; and H makes this appeal' to a hundred and fifty millions of the most energetic of the human kind. i ' Connected with the Abbey are the ideals which England has given to the world, and the institutions by which she has striven to realise them. The birth of. representative government was in its precincts; the meeting_ place of the first Parliament was in its Chapter House. No building has exercised, such a profound and far-reaching influence on the political life of man. Indeed, the very exactions of Henry 111. to beautify this glorious' edifice brought into the field the parliamentary regime. In those'days the nation's representatives wished to apply something curiously like the "Geddes axe" to his building propensities, i ■ „- i Again, in its ritual and most of all m its noble Coronation Service, have been set forth the truths on which sovereignty must be-founded if it is to endure— the love of order and law, the hatred of tyranny and violence, the assertion of the belief that above the transient in the State is the Eternal, and that beyond our human pustice and its vicissitudes is a Divine authority/ Not in England, as in Germany, was the nation ever elevated above the law of God. THE SHRINE OF'ENGLAND'S HEART. As the Abbey is English of the English, it is the shrine and temple of our English heart. No single building in the world contains so many famous dead, among whom are counted the most of our great English rulers, leaders, and thinkers. Santa Croce and the Pantheon have nothing to show in comparison with. the' veritable multitude of men of genius who are gathered here, or with the array of monuments which connects the edifice so closely with every phase ] and period of our national life. And, as the English have, 1 above all popples, the instinct of toleration and a breadth of patriotism which, has 1 never been equalled, they have admitted to this shrfife and canonised in it, certain of those who are not of, English blood or of British allegiance. .

The immemorial antiquity of English history and the continuity of its traditions and beliefs are demonstrated at every turn in the Abbey. The tomb of the traditional founder, Sebert, King of the East Saxons, contains an ancient stone coffin which probably dates back to his ■ death about 616. A grant from Off a ofjMercia' is among the documents shown in the Chapter House, and goes back to 785. There is a .magnificent set of Great Seals from Edward the Confessor to Victoria, and there is a'charter from William the Conqueror, granting six "hides" of land,,, from which it can be seen what his writing was like.

This most fahious of all churches in the world has by degrees grown to be the spiritual centre of the British Empire, and some hold that as that Empiri develops it may even become the spiritual centre of the world.