THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 6, 9 January 1899, Page 2

THE FUTURE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

ADDRESS BY DEAN FARRAR

! The Dean of Canterbury, at the close of an afternoon service in Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the 'Anniversary of the Translation of Edward the Confessor,' founder of • : the abbey, gave an address appropriate to the occasion before a large congregation. Dean Farrar said the sacred building in which, after more than eight centuries of its history, the congregation were assembled- to commemorate the translation of its , saintly founder, might be described I without exaggeration as unique among the historic monuments of the human race. Other churches, even in ! England, equalled, if they did not surI pass it, in the glory of their architecI ture, and exceeded it in the antiquity I of their history. No other cathedral, ! however, no other national possession ! since time began—not even the Parj thenon of Athens, or the Temple of 'Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome —could I claim precedence over it in the raulti- ! tude of its solemn historic associaj tions. Through its precincts had flowed the majestic stream of a nation's history. Might God grant, that it would not cease to flow through them in these days of plethoric wealth and dwindling munificence. Was it not worth our while any longer to concentrate round one venerable house of God the memories of that mighty and puissant nation which in his mind's eye Milton saw 'with the sunny locks of law and freedom flowirg over its illustrious shoulders?' True it was that we seemed to be passing through an interspace of national mediocrity, or that the poets, the orators, the historians, the men of leiicrs, the preachers, the men of science of to-day could not compare with those whom we honoured in our youth. But had we made up our minds that it would continue so, and that we were to become nothing- better than what Napoleon called us, 'Le nation bout.iquiere?' If not, could we. contemplate with perfect equanimity the fact that, unless we bestirred ourselves, the great memorials of Westminster Abbey would come to an abrupt close with the nineteenth century? It was on these great memorials that he proposed to touch, without the least pretence of saying anything new or original, but only that they might once more be recalled to mind. The first historic founder of Westminster Abbey was not only a King of England, but a Saint of God. The erection of that church was the main object of the life of that Rex columbine puritatds to whom vice of every kind, injustice, and deliberate cruelty were hateful. This it was which first connected our Abbey Church with the long line of England's Icings. The connection became still closer when Edward I. placed^ there the sacred 'Stone of Fate,' on which for centuries, if tradition did not err, the kings of Ireland aud Scotland had been crowned. The haughty Normans, the impetuous Plantagenets, the strong Princes of the Houses of York and Lancaster, the lordly Tudors, the weak and misguided Stuarts, the House, of Hanover, which in the person of our beloved Queen had been blessed by the longest and most prosperous reign among the sovereigns of the world—had all received in yonder Sacrarium the anointing oil and the golden round of sovereignty. There, amid wrath, tumult, and slaughter, the Norman Conqueror clutched the crown which he had torn from the brews of the last. Saxon king. There the boy Richard 11. sat long hours of weary magnificence. There, too, were seen kings so different as the savage murderer Richard 111., and the holy boy Edward VI., and that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth. How often had those splendid ceremonials been full of evil omen. How many of those monarchs would have sighed 'Ufieasy lies the head that wears a crown?' But the Abbey had seen many other memorials of sovereigns besides their coronations. In these precincts, amid tumults and peril, the hapless Edward V. was born; from the days of Edward I. to the close of the reign of Henry VIII. the House of Commons enacted the new laws of England. Henry IV. died in the Jerusalem Chamber, whence issued our Authorised Bible, the Westminster Confession, and the Revised Bible. From his seat in the choir George 111. rose in tears of overpowering emotion as he heard the strains of the 'Hallelujah Chorus,' and established the. custom, which has continued to this day, of standing up to hear that burst of music. And on tbe dais close by in the sight of the assembled greatness of our mighty Empire and the heirs of many crowns, our beloved Queen was seen to kiss her children and her grandchildren in the great commemoration festival of her happy Jubilee. Deep as was the interest which loyal Englishmen felt in these mementoes of the history of their sovereigns, no less deep was the interest "in the graves and monuments of our men of action, and those in whom shone the God-illuminated light of genius. There lay our great statesmen—he who with eagle glance and outstretched arm bade England be of good cheer, and hurled defiance at her foes; his son, cut off ere his prime, broken-hearted at the news of Austerlitz; his great rival, the Hercules Fureus of English oratory; the murdered Spencer Perceval, the brilliant Canning, the genial and patriotic Palmerston, and he who, nobler for his goodness than even for his eloquence and his genius, was a few months since laid in his grave amid a nation's tears. There, too, were other poets whose thoughts had' enriched the blood of the worldChaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Cowley, and Dryden; and the two of our own generation, known to many and beloved—Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. There lay also many of our great writers, from Goldsmith to Dickens—the latter of whom nobly dedicated his pathos and his wit to save the wretched children and let the oppressed go free. There lay scldiers, sailors, and musicians. There lay the immortal Handel, who said that while he was writing his greatest passages he seemed to see the Heavens opened and all the cherubim and seraphim, and the great God himself seated on His Throne. Great men of science, great missionaries, and great divines were there, including Dean Stanley, whose picturesque sensibility' rendered immortal his services to that Abbey Church. One must have an imagination very dull and dead who felt no inspiration m memories like these. It was impossible to say how many high careers had been called forth by the Abbey It was the statue of L..rd Chatham which inspired some of the splendid historic pages of Lord Macaulay. It was as he stodd beside the bust of Warren Hastings with Dean Milman

I that the Dean, then one of the Canons jof the Abbey, suggested to him that Ihe should enrich our literature by ! his brilliant essay on the Great ProI consul. The germ o!.' many a noble ; anmition had first been quickened into life in that sacred Walhalla of the Dead. The Abbey had been called : the great temple not oiuy of silence, but of reconciliation. Of those who | jay there, how many in their lifetime | v oulci have regarded each other with ; savnsrt animosity, would have.excommunicated, would have tortured. They j lay there side by side in the common ' dust. Our religious controversies, • with all their meanness and malice. ; must be a babbling dissonance to the Lord, to whom religion did not mean superstitions and ceremonials, but meant a good mind and a good life. Fiom graves hard by two voices, among tbe noblest of those whom deaih had recently silenced, pleaded with us trumpet-tongued tor. more of mutual forbearance. One was the voice of Dean Stanley, who said m tones rarely heard among those who ra'jfd themselves Churchmen, 'It is no by magical charms or by senseless superstitions, or by foolish fancies, or by uncharitable curses, but by becoming better and wiser, by acting more justly to each other, and with more control over ourselves, that we can hope to find in the unknown norld in which we pass a more^ enduring- habitation than can be given to us" even in the happiest homes of farth.' The other was tbe voice of the last great statesman who lay in yonder grave. 'God forbid,' he said. 'that by our asperity and rancour, or by our narrowness and cxclusiveness,, by our obtruding matters of opinion into regions sacred to matters of faith, by our setting up standards of orthodoxy more rigid than God requires to be used as such, the day should be averted or postponed in which thf children of all Christian Churches shall again be one. even as He. with whom in all things they seek to be identified would have them to be identified for ever.'

He 'Dean Farrar) appealed to England once more not to allow the old associafions of the Abbey to cease with the year 1900. It would be a disastrous omen; it would be a proof of culpable apathy. Was it that, content with money-getting- and mediocrity, we no longer expected that England would produce any more supreme poets, slaiesmen, or universal benefactors of the human race? Or was it that, even if she did, she would no longer have the gratitude or the admiration to commemorate them? Or was it that our fathers, in their more generous poverty, heard voices which our ears had become too crass to hear, and that hands beckoned to them which, through the rank mist of our commonplace and worldliness, we could no longer see? He could not believe that we should suffer it to be so; but. even if we did, the last or almost the last memorial in Westminster Abbey must be that statue by the western door in white marble, not whiter than the life of him whom it commemorates —the statue of Antony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury. On that statue were carved two words, 'Love, Serve.' They were the epitome of his life, they were the expression of his ideal, they were the bequest of his example.