SYMBOL OF GOD

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 110, 3 February 1941, Page 9

SYMBOL OF GOD

Importance Of A Cathedral EXAMPLE OF COVENTRY Advancement Of Wellington Scheme As an illustration of what a dominating object in the life of a community a cathedral can be, the Bishop of 'Wellington, Rt. Rev. 11. St. Barbe Holland, recalled m the sermon he preached at St. Luke's Church, Wadestown, yesterday morning the circumstances in which Coventry Cathedral, which was recently destroyed by German bombs, was built 500 years ago. The bishop was impressing on the congregation the importance to New Zealand of the erection of the projected Wellington cathedral. Special services for the advancement of the cathedral building fund were held in all the churches of the Wellington diocese yesterday. “When that glorious building in Coventry was erected iu the fourteenth century it dwarfed and overshadowed and outdid every other building in the city round it to an extent that cannot now be imagined,” said the Bishop. Invisible Carvings. “I myself never knew to the full the love and devotion which was poured into that great church till, in my own time of office, for the first time m its history the whole of the interior of tlie cathedral from top to bottom was cleaned by tlie vacuum process, and 1 remember the light in the eye of the foreman as he descended from the highest of the ladders within the nave and told me lie had seen exquisite bits of carving completely invisible from the ground, which probably ins was tlie first human eye to have perceived since tlie stonemason’s chisel had been at work on them 500 years ago. Still, (bank God, the tower stands, with its spire soaring 300 feet into the sky, tlie emblem both of mans devotion to God and of God’s everlasting majesty and love. “That same story was repeated over the whole of the British Isles. The one building that mattered in the early days of our civilization was the church. It is left to the twentieth century to discover that any building, even a shed, is good enough for the worship of God. Do we not see there a symptom of the disease which has eaten into the very heart of our so-called. 'Christian civilization? Man exalted, God dethroned, that has been the story of the world in recent years. And the result we now know to our sorrow. There lay the whole reason for the great adventure to which the diocese had set its face. A cathedral had a place in the national life which nothing else could fake. The very object of the church’s life in (ho Dominion was to keep this nation God-eoiiscious, and in the attainment of that object the cathedral must flake a very real place. There must be some great sacramental symbolic sign of God's control and guidance of human destinies. He looked forward two or three hundred years when the building had woven itself into the heart of the people of New Zealand as St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminister Abbey had taken their places in the heart of the average Englishman, because it symbolized for them the fact that God was the one and only foundation on which could be built the temple of freedom, of righteousness, of brotherhood and unity, of everything which in the war the democracies were defending. Appeal Part of War Effort. “Can any member of our own church fail io be thrilled by the thought of taking his or her share iu the great adventure, or desire for one moment that the project should be abandoned, the Bishop continued. “We begin to see that we are lighting for more than the survival and the prosperity of Great Britain and its Dominions. We are fighting for those great values of life, the spiritual values, which God has given to our peoples as a great trust to be preserved and handed on to future generations., If we are sincere in that conviction the cathedral falls into its proper place quite easily and definitely as part of the war effort —not something iu competition with it, but something essential to it.” People had sometimes asked him if he had abandoned the cathedral appeal, but God forbid. Since the beginning of the war £11,230 had been given in hard cash to the Centenary Fund, nearly £lO,OOO of which was for the cathedral. That did not suggest abandonment. Hundreds who had promised annual instalments for five years were quietly and steadily redeeming their promises, and £2500 of the total amount was uew money given without any suggestion or stimulus iu the way of propaganda. In the same period more than £5OOO had come from rents and interest on money already given, so that tlie progress was £15,000 in the 15 months which the figures covered. There could be no third abandonment of the scheme. Church people were bound in honour to those who had already given to see that the cathedral became a living reality when the war was over. It seemed nothing short of tragic that there should be any doubt about ability to complete the work when the amount subscribed to the totalizator at Treutham for one of its important races would finish the building of the cathedral. It was all a question of what people valued.