The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-11-02
Bishop Shahan's Sermon

ism ana the rreSlStlDle OnSlauSutS or the barbarian world, driven on blind 1y by some divine impulse, the arts and sciences retired as by instinct to the shadow of the new churches. And in the fifth and sixth centuries, When the civil order of Europe was utterly broken and helpless it was within the precincts of these churches that poe try eloquence, dramatic liturgy and divine music found a welcome Shel- ter, and that the class traditions of that could appreciate and utilize them. Nor was it the fine arts alone which sought in the Church shelter. Poor sufferng humanity crept in be.
 heath the folds of her mantle. It was around these great Christian
 centres that were built the first hos
 pitals and refuges for orphans,
 widows, the blind and the aged. It was there that the slave. the debtor,
 the threatened virgin and the oppress-
 ed matron, found an inviolable asy- Ium. There were truly in every land
 the city of God among men: the last
 all that was lovely and unworld1y.
 pure and elevated, pitiful and self
 sacrificing. Who can look back up- on the ha.l1owed walls of the ancient
 churches of Rome and ConStant1nople
 and Ravenna without feelings of pro- found veneration, as he reflects on
 the mighty civilizing influences that
 have gone out from them in the last
 fourteen hundred years, especially Tn
 the days when they stood alone in
 the awful wreck of culture and learn
 ing, the only points of light upon the
 dark and angry sea of civil dfscord
 and dissolution?
 When some measure of the civil
 order again appeared in the world
 Christian architecture has undergone
 a profound modification. In the place
 of the elegant classic forms of Greece
 and Rome there have sprung up new
 models, begotten with the Church and
 developed by her. What we call the
 Gothic architecture is really the
 Church architecture, for it was not
 born in the frozen North; it comes to
 us from the Syrian Orient, where its
 elements and the laws of it's being
 are first met with in the eccles1asd-
 cal buildings of that ancient Christian
 Iand Thence it was gradually trans
 planted to the West, where it grew
 through many phases, influenced by
 climate, by politics, by religious dis
 cords, by the logic of it's own prln-
 ciples, by the sympathy of church
 men, by it's marvellous harmony with
 the fundamental teachings of the
 Christian religion and the needs of it's
 worship. When the teachings of
 Mohammed crushed out all spiritual life and missionary activity in the
 Occident and where once only gross
 barbarism reigned supreme, the law
 of Christ made now daily conquests
 of surpassing importance. Islam and | ChT1SCenQOIn
 soon went down into that great arena of medieval conflict, which lasted for five centuries, and ended in the saIva- ton of Europe and her colonies from the bighting pest Of Turkish fata1sm:
 In these centuries the whole of
 Europe was covered with a multitude of admirable edif1ces, which the trav- el1er gazes at today with profound amazement The church drew forth from her own consciousness one ideal From theim to Otranto there rose a thou- sand poems in stone, and the eye or the Christian was everywhere saus- fled with a multitude or beaut1ful forms and lines and combinations of which antiquity had no present1ment. The Gothic church lifted up in the smallest hamlets it's vast archlng
 height into the clear blue sky, and It's
 white. towers and broad buttresses
 stoof out from afar as symbols at once of the unshakeable soidity of the Christian religion and its ire pressible yearnings for the golden and the promise. What beauty and mystery in the 1ong-drawn a1sleS, where the ever-shifting lights of day recall the solemn march of life from | ness and inviolable sanctity in the great white walls that loom up from afar and emphasize the purity o1 Christian life! What stability and permanence about these structures whose foundations are knit into the | bedrock of the world, as those of the Church herself are inseparably ce- mented upon the rock which is | Christ! Who can gaze upon the cathedrals of Cologne or StraSsbur2 without feeling that he stands very close to the eternal truth the source | of such ineffable order and harmony, or who can enter the drink of their unutterable charms without feeling @ very silence is musical with angeH- cal confession of His glory?
 | These churches were built in ages of simple and joyous faith, when
 Christian principles penetrated every l rank of society and were operative in | private and in public; when the things of earth underwent a heavenly | transfguration and the whole life o1
 man seemed but a tourney 10 the .he l true centres of public life, and from ] them and about them grew up hun l dreds of the cities of Europe. Their | influence on the institutions of every | land was enormous, and well it might | for there was never work more pop | ular than their erection. The baroT | and the peasant toi1ed side by side | to hew the stones and transport then i over hills and rivers; the merchan | and the scholar, the soldier and the monk, contributed their weekly | share and often, where money was ! wanting, the poor man gave his labor | or that of his horse or his OK, ant l even the maidens and the chiIdreI ] sold their ornaments and toys to swel | the revenues of work in Whicf 1 every soul in the city felt a common | interest. No wonder then that the! | possess a strange fascination for us l They are . half-human, since from l foundation to capping stone the.
 were built with loving and syn1pa | thetic hearts; since the joys and sor
 rows of whole generations are buried | deep in their massive courses; sine l their walls have echoed for long, Ions | centuries to the saddest burdens O | human woe and the sublimest chant of human gladness and exaltation.
 But while the, Church built. up thu l walls of the city of God among men | and while in so doing she cherished especially the greatest of. the arts | their mother and mistress. the ma jestic art of architecture, she did no | neglect the others. The painter an'
 the sculptor, the jeweler, the gold l smith and the engraver, the nlumi l and inc wnrker in glass th