Passing by, for the present, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury and Winchester, which excel all others in historical interest, and St. Paul's, which, though the largest of all, is modern, we may agree fully with Smith's estimate of the relative merits of the different cathedrals and the effect produced by them: that "Salisbury is the most perfect monument of mediæval Christianity in England"; that in height and grandeur the palm is borne off by York; in beauty and poetry, by Lincoln; that Norman Durham, "half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot," is profoundly imposing from its massiveness, which seems enduring as the foundations of the earth, as well as from its commanding situation; that Ely also is a glorious pile, on its unique mound among the fens; and that Wells and Salisbury are "the two best specimens of the cathedral close, that haven of religious calm amidst this bustling world, in which a man tired of business and contentious life might delight, especially if he has a taste for books, to find tranquillity, with quiet companionship, in his old age. Take your stand on the close of Salisbury or Wells on a summer afternoon when the congregation is filing leisurely out from the service and the sounds are still heard from the cathedral, and you will experience a sensation not to be experienced in the New World."
Having shown by these citations that Goldwin Smith is not indifferent to the æsthetic influence of the cathedrals, I wish now to quote from him a final paragraph which states very well the practical point to which I referred in the outset:
"The cathedral and the parish church belong to the present as well as to the past. Indeed, they have been recently exerting a peculiar influence over the present, for there can be no doubt that the spell of their beauty and their adaptation, as places of [Roman] Catholic devotion, to the Ritualistic rather than to the Protestant form of worship have had a great effect in producing the Neo-Catholic reaction of the last half century. Creations of the religious genius of the Middle Ages, they have been potent missionaries of the mediæval faith."
I wish to call special attention to this ominous feature of the influence of English cathedrals upon the forms, and thus eventually upon the spirit, of Christian worship. I am not unsusceptible, I think, to the glorious beauty of these stately buildings, or the spell of their exquisite music, or the fascination of their spectacular forms of worship. I shall never forget the solemn impression made upon my mind the first time I ever entered a great cathedral, when, at Chester, I stepped from the broad glare of outer sunshine into the cool, dim light of the minster, and heard the choir of white-robed, sweet-voiced boys responding with a prolonged, musical "A-men," accompanied by the great organ, as the priest intoned the English service. But I am clear, nevertheless, that Goldwin Smith is right in saying that by their adaptation to the ritualistic rather than the Protestant form of worship the cathedrals have been potent missionaries of the mediæval faith.