CATHEDRAL OF THE EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 6, 8 January 1925, Page 6

CATHEDRAL OF THE EMPIRE

As St. Peter's in Rome symbolises the greatest spiritual Empire that the world has .ever seen, so St. Paul's in London is the visible centre of the greatest temporal empire of which history, has any account. Not only is St. Paul's built upon an eminence, but its vast and graceful dome rises superior, to all other buildings jn the City of London, the very heart of the British Empire, The Romans, according to tradition, built a tent pie on or near the spot where St. Paul's now stands, and somewhere about the fourth century of the Christian era a church dedicated to "the least of the Apostles" was built on the site of the pagan fane. Wren's masterpiece (not his original design) was built £o' re _ place Old St. Paul's, destroyed in the Great Fire of London-in 1666. Charles 11., for all his idiosyncracies, took a genuine personal'interest in the new Cathedral. Provision was made fqr the rebuilding in 1668, the "first stone was laid in 1675, the Cathedral opened fqr worship in 1697, and the last stpne laid in 1710. The cost was £850,000, partially defrayed by duties levied on seaborne coal coming into London. Wren was triumphantly successful in hjs ideas of bui]ding "after a good Boinan: manner and not following the Gothick rudeness."

But St. Pau.j'g, inuoh more than Westminster' Abbey, possesses an interest; for all British peoples in •the United Kingdom and. overseas, inasmuch as it is the central point of the Empire, and has been ifeg SSSUSt Ql fiiasx tfatheriiiga for

divine service of a much wider than English interest. To it - men in khaki from Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand— and from the United States^-were' pilgrims . during the strenuous years of the war; to it in'times of peace men and women from every part of the Empire, have gone, if not always for worship at least attracted by. a common interest; and they appear to have felt [a sort of proprietary interest as | well, as if it were "our Cathedral." Now St. Paul's has fallen on bad times and is showing signs of decrepitude and weaknesses ineir dental to buildings as to man, due to length of years. How much of all this is attributable to burrowings of "tube" railways, vibrations, and influences of ithe kind is for engineers to determine; but the stability of the commanding dome is imperilled, . and grave concern is felt for the structure. There is a grain of comfort in the latest official report that the dome can be repaired without closing the building.-St. Paul's was a tempting object to German bombers, and they made some pretty' close shots, but, almost providentially it would seem, they missed it. Its destruction would have been felt as a,'losg to the whole British Empire, to which in some sort St. Paul's seems to belong.