PRESBYTERIAN ARCHITECTURE AND CATHOLIC IDEALS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 20, 3 March 1893, Page 25

PRESBYTERIAN ARCHITECTURE AND CATHOLIC IDEALS.

(Edinburgh Catholic Herald.)

On every side, and under the most varied relations are the sects ia Scotland approaching Catholic practices and Catholia ideals. Quite lately we have seen the institution of the Scottish Church Society, whose object may be briefly described as an attempt to Catholicise Presbyterianism by the introduction of many features in worship and practice, and idea hitherto discarded by Presbyterians for the sole reason of their being deemed Catholic, bat now considered by the leading Presbyterian divines as essential ia any organisation claiming to be a Christian Church. The Scottish Church Society has evoked a remarkable feeling in Scotland, which, among many other instances, finds expression in an article in a leading Scottish newspaper on " Scottish Church Architecture." The article has a remarkable commencement : — " I am not going to discuss the churches of the Roman communion in Scotland, Hampered by the poverty of their people the Boman Catholics have been helped by venerable traditions and by the genius of the Pugine, and their recently-built churches are, for the most part, good. As little need be said of the churches of Scottish Episcopalianism. Few of them are buildings of any pretentions, But they are nearly all (with some amusing exceptions) harmless, and even pleasing, copies of the modern Anglican type. lam going to give vent to my feelings about the ecclesiastical edifices in which my Presbyterian fellow-countrymen are accustomed to worship. It is time some one " lifted up his testimony," for a new condition of things is arising. The warehouse model, of which St Cnthbert's, Edinburgh, was till recently the culminating glory, was bad enough. But criticism of it was in a manner disarmed by pity, and at any rate (when all the necessary cruel things had been candidly said) the alleviating circumstance remained that it was a type. The square barn, after the similitude of St Cuthbert's within and without, was the type of a Scottish and Presbyterian chorea. But things have changed. The innovator has been active for ten years or more, and we have a type no longer. In almost every church that has been built since 1870, every sort of vagary in construction and arrangement may be seen, They correspond with no new type, while they have certainly forsaken the old." Continuing in the same strain, the writer goes on to examine the architecture of the recently.built Scottish Presbyterian churches, and finds that they " are evident approximations towards a Catholic ideal." Of this he does not complain, but he is not without complaint, nevertheless :— "Absolutely no fixed principle seems to be admitted to govern the construction and arrangement of a Presbyterian place of worship. Everything is left to the caprice of a local committee or the ecclesiological ignorance of a local minister. The notion seems to be that the architecture of a church is of no importance if the doctrine taught in it be strongly enough supervised. The preaching must be orthodox ; the surroundings of minister and people may safely be made vulgar, meretricious, and debasing. It seems to me that here is a fatal error." But if our critic is destructive in bia criticism he is more endurable than most criiics, for be goes on to offer a constructive alternative. " I have a remedy. I think that the higher Courts of the Presbyterian churches must be called upon to ' put down their feet.' My appeal is for an Ecclesiastical Dean of Guild. I propose that each of the Presbyterian churches should appoint a Guild Court with a competent head, whose duty it should be to kill architectural monstrosities at their birtb, and to allow no church to rise which ia not in general harmony with an approved and uniform type." That is to say that the " private judgment " fetish is threatened with slaughter in another regard, and tbat after three centuries of architectural preparations committed to avoid the " Papist " practice of building beautiful churches, Presbyterian Scotland finds herself coming back to the ideal she deserted and embracing it on account of its inherent beauty. In other directions, signs are not wanting that the old faith will soon again become regnant around the venerable fanes of Melrose and Dunfermline, and tbat the traditions extending from Whithorn to Bosslyn will find perpetuation in that old Oatbolio land.

The successor of Cardinal Lnvigerie in the Archbishopric of Algiers will be Mgr Dusserre, who since 1880 has been the Cardinal's coadjutor. The care of his anti-slavery work Cardinal Lavigeiio •atrneted to Mgr Briocat, an Algerian by birth.