CATHEDRALS OF THE WORLD.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20088, 18 November 1930, Page 15

CATHEDRALS OF THE WORLD.

INTERESTING FEATURES. BISHOP WEST-WATSON'S TOUR. TIIOBC who were fortuante enough to attend the annual meeting of the Cathedral Guild last night were taken by Bishop West-Watson for a tour among some of the Cathedrals of Australia, England, and America, the Bishop having taken some pains to see them during his recent trip abroad. During the whole of his journey he said he saw few buildings more impressive than the Liverpool Cathedral, which was still being added to in this the twentieth century, when everyone was telling us that religion was dead. There simple people full of faith were building to the glory of God. There was no doubt that these venerable buildings had their lessons to teach, for truly they were sermons in stones. In Australia. The Sydney Cathedral the Bishop found an impressive building of about the same seating capacity as our own, but it could not be scaid to serve as the the centre of life of the City to the same extent The advantage of having the Chapter House so close to the Cathedral was evident. From Hobart with its sandstone Cathedral the Bishop crossed to Melbourne, where ho found the Cathedral on an unimpressive site down in the city. They were still working 011 it, - but ho thought it a somewhat dark building. The yellow sandstone Cathedral of Adelaide stood in a beautiful setting amongst the trees. Its tall reredos masked a fine window in the Lady Chapel behind —a great pity, he thought. In Perth the Anglican Cathedral was of red brick. Cathedral in Jerusalem. The Bishop's next inspection of ecclescastieal architecture was made in Jerusalem. He described the Cathedral as a gem. The building itself was separate from the tower which had come through the earthquake of a few years ago undamaged. At Marseilles, besides the magnificent Cathedra] there was an old and smaller one which was said to bo built on the site on which formerly stood the temple of Diana, according to tradition.

From here Bishop West-Watson passed on to the venerable buildings of England—Westminster, Glastonbury, and Salisbury—the beauty and majesty of which we in this young land could not hope to attain. American Buildings. Crossing to America the Bishop found hotels the most predominant buildings. He went to church in Montreal in a cathedral where the spire had had to be dismantled because something had happened to it. The fourth largest in the world was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York—a gigantic example of Gothic architecture. The fact that services were held in seven different languages was indicative of the polyglot nature of the United States of America. In Winnipeg he found a Cathedral somewhat resembling an old English church built on the spot where the old Red River Mission formerly stood. Strangely enough, the city had grown away from it. In Vancouver a tiny little Cathedral was dwarfed among the hotels. It was one of the smallest he had seen. The, Bishop named British Columbia as the strongest church-going part of Canada. The town of Victoria had one of the finest buildings he had seen in Canada for its Cathedral, and in their wisdom the people there had provided for the children first.