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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Cathedral"

..." He waved his hands.
Wistons, speaking again as it were to himself, answered, "I care only for
Jesus Christ. He is overshadowed now by all the great buildings that men
have raised for Him. He is lost to our view; we must recover Him. Him!
Him! Only Him! To serve Him, to be near Him, almost to feel the touch of
His hand on one's head, that is the whole of life to me. And now He is
hard to come to, harder every year...." He got up. "I didn't come to say
more than that.
"It's the Cathedral, Render, that I fear. Don't you yourself sometimes
feel that it has, by now, a spirit of its own, a life, a force that all
the past years and all the worship that it has had have given it? Don't
you even feel that? That it has become a god demanding his own rites and
worshippers? That it uses men for its own purposes, and not for Christ's?
That almost it hates Christ? It is so beautiful, so lovely, so haughty, so
jealous!
"For I, thy God, am a jealous God.'..." He broke off. "I could love Christ
better in that garden than in the Cathedral. Tear it down and build it up
again!" He turned restlessly, almost savagely, to Ronder.


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