Rambles in an Old City.
by S. S. Madders.
PREFACE.
It has been very aptly remarked by a recent writer, that "to send forth a work without a preface, is like thrusting a friend into the society of a room full of strangers, without the benefit of an introduction;" a custom that no _fashion_ can redeem from the charge of incivility. A book, however insignificant, grows beneath the author"s pen, to occupy a place in his regard, not unworthy the t.i.tle of friendship; and as that sacred bond of social union is not dependent upon individual perfection, so the companion of many a solitary hour is not to be cast out upon the "wide, wide world," without one word to secure it at least a gentle reception, be its faults as manifold and manifest as they may, even to the most partial eye.
The design of this little book of "Rambles," has been to concentrate into the form of a light and amusing volume, some few of the many subjects of interest suggested by the leading features of an "Old City." It makes no pretensions to any profound learning or deep research. It is little more than a _compilation_ of facts, interwoven with the history of one of the oldest cathedral and manufacturing cities of our country; but inasmuch as the general features are common to most other ancient cities, and many of the subjects are national and universal in their character, the outlines are by no means strictly local in their application or interest.
Whether the design has been carried out, in a way at all worthy of the hale old city of Norwich, that has served as "the text of the discourse,"
remains to be proved; but the attempt to contribute to the light literature of the day a few simple gleanings of fact, as gathered by a stranger, during a ten years" residence in a "strange land," will, it is to be hoped, secure a lenient judgment for the inexperience that has attempted the task.
The sources of information from which the historical parts of the work have been derived, are such as are open to every ordinary student; its light character has precluded the introduction of notes of reference, but it would amount to downright robbery to refrain from acknowledging the copious extracts that have been made from the valuable papers of the Norfolk Archaeological Society.
For the kind a.s.sistance of the few individuals from whom information has been sought, many thanks are due; and it is but just to state, that all deficiences of matter or details, that may probably be felt by many, more familiar than the writer herself with the persons, places, and things, that make the sum and substance of her work, are referable alone to the difficulty she has experienced in selecting suitable materials to carry out her design, from the abundance placed at her disposal; a t.i.the of which might have converted her "rambles" into a heavy, weary "march,"
along which few might have had patience to accompany her.
To these few observations must be subjoined an expression of earnest and heartfelt thanks to the many liberal-minded individuals who have extended encouragement to this feeble effort of a perfect stranger. That some portion or other of the contents of her little volume may be found worthy their acceptance, is the fervent desire of
THE AUTh.o.r.eSS.
NORWICH, January 1, 1853.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Who that has ever looked upon the strange conglomerations of architecture that line the thoroughfares of an ancient city, bearing trace of a touch from the hand of every age, from centuries far remote,-or watched the busy scenes of modern every-day life, surrounded by solemnly majestic, or quaintly grim old witnesses of our nation"s" infancy,-but has felt the Poetry of History that lies treasured up in the chronicles of an "Old City?"
We may not all be archaeologists, we may many of us feel little sympathy with the love of acc.u.mulating time-worn, moth-eaten relics of ages pa.s.sed away, still less may we desire to see the resuscitation of dead forms, customs or laws, which we believe to have been advances upon prior existing inst.i.tutions, living their term of natural life in the season appointed for them, and yielding in their turn to progressions more suited to the growing wants of a growing people; but there are few minds wholly indifferent to the a.s.sociations of time and place, or that are not conscious of some reverence for the links connecting the present with the past, to be found in the many n.o.ble and stupendous works of ancient art, yet lingering amongst us, ma.s.sive evidences of lofty thoughts and grand conceptions, which found expression in the works of men"s hands, when few other modes existed of embodying the imaginations of the mind.
It is not now my purpose to draw comparisons between the appeals thus made through the outward senses to the spirituality of our nature, and the varied other and more subtle means employed in later days, to awaken our feelings of veneration and devotion, but it may be observed in pa.s.sing, that amid the floods of change that have swept across our country"s history, it is scarcely possible but that some good should have been lost among the debris of decayed and shattered inst.i.tutions. We have now to take a sweeping glance at the general outline of the place that has been chosen as the nucleus from which to spin our web, of light and perhaps fanciful a.s.sociations. A desultory ramble through the streets and bye-ways of an old city, that owns six-and-thirty parish churches, the ghosts of about twenty more defunct, the remains of four large friaries and a nunnery, some twenty or thirty temples of worship flourishing under the divers names and forms of "dissent," two Roman branches of the Catholic Church, a Jewish synagogue, a hospital, museum, libraries, and inst.i.tutions of every possible name, and "refuges" for blind, lame, halt, deaf, "incurable," and diseased in mind, body, or estate; that is sprinkled with factories, bounded by crumbling ruins of old rampart walls, and studded with broken and mutilated bastion towers,-brings into view a series of objects so heterogeneous in order and character, that to arrange the ideas suggested by them to the mind or memory, is a task of no slight difficulty.
The great "lions" of interest to one, may rank the very lowest in the scale of another"s imagination or fancy. The philosopher, the poet, the philanthropist, the antiquarian, the utilitarian, the man of the world, and the man of the day, each may choose his separate path, and each find for himself food for busy thought and active investigation.
The archaeologist may indulge his love of interpreting the chiselled finger-writing of centuries gone by, upon many a richly decorated page of sculpture, and, hand in hand with the historian and divine, may trace out the pathway of art and religion, through the multiform records of genius, devotional enthusiasm, taste, and beneficence, chronicled in writings of stone, by its ecclesiastical remains; he may gratify himself to his heart"s content with "vis-a-vis" encounters with grim old faces, grinning from ponderous old doorways, or watching as sentinels over dark and obscure pa.s.sages, leading to depths impenetrable to outward vision, and find elaborately carved spandrils and canopies, gracing the entrances of abodes where poverty and labour have long since found shelter in the cast-off habitations of ancient wealth and aristocracy.
He may venture to explore cavernous cellars with groined roofings and piers that register their age; may make his way through moth-corrupted storehouses of dust and lumber; to revel in the grandeur of some old "hall," boasting itself a relic of the domestic architecture of the days of the last Henry, and there lose himself in admiration of old mullioned windows, tie-beams, and antique staircases; may ferret out old cabinets and quaint old buffets hard by, that once, perchance, found lodging in the "Stranger"s Hall," as it is wont, though erringly, to be designated; he may wander thence through bye lanes and streets, stretching forth their upper stories as if to meet their opposite neighbours half way with the embrace of friendship; over the plain, memorable as the scene of slaughter in famous Kett"s rebellion, to the "World"s End;" and see amid the tottering ruins of half demolished pauper tenements, the richly carved king-posts and beams of the banquet chamber of the famous knight, Sir Thomas Erpingham, whose martial fame and religious "heresy" have found a more lasting monument than the perishable frame-work of his mansion-house, in the magnificent gateway known by his name, and raised in commemoration of his sin of Lollardism. He may accompany the philanthropist in his visit to the "Old Man"s Hospital," and mourn over the misappropriation of the nave and chancel of fine old St. Helen"s, where lies buried Kirkpatrick, a patriarch of the tribe of antiquaries; he may visit the grammar school that has sent forth scholars, divines, warriors, and lawyers; a Keye, a Clarke, an Earle, {5} a Nelson, and a Rajah Brooke, to spread its fame in the wide world. He may see in it a record of the days when grammar was forbidden to be taught elsewhere; he may peep through the oriels that look in upon the charnel-house of the ancient dead beneath; may feast his eyes upon the beauties of the Erpingham, and strange composite details of the Ethelbert gateways; explore the mysteries of the Donjon, or Cow Tower; and following the windings of the river past the low archway of the picturesque little ferry, find himself at length stumbling upon some fragment of the old "_Wall_." Thence he may trace the ancient frontier line of the Old City, and the sites of its venerable gateways, that _were_, but _are not_; the flintwork of the old rampart, now clinging to the precipitous sides of "b.u.t.ter Hills," with an old tower at the summit, mounted, sentinel-like, to keep watch over the ruins of the Carrow Abbey, and the alder cars, that gave it its name in the valley below; now, following a broken course, here and there left in solitude for wild creepers and the rare indigenous carnation to take root upon; now bursting through incrustations of modern bricks and mortar, and showing a bastion tower, with its orifices ornamented by spread-eagle emblems of the stone-mason"s craft in the precincts below; here, forming the back of slaughter-houses, or the foundations of some miserable workshop, fashioned from the rubble of its sides; thence wandering on through purlieus of wretchedness and filth that might shake the nerves of any more vulnerable bodies than "paving commissioners" or "boards of health;" its arched recesses, once so carefully defined, its elevated walks, so studiously preserved for recreation as well as for defence, all now rendered an indefinite disfigured ma.s.s, with accretions of modern growth, that bear the stamp upon every feature of their parentage, poverty and decay. He may visit barns and cottages with remnants of windows and doorways, that make it easy to believe they once had been the shrine of a St. Mary Magdalen; may trace out for himself, among hovels and cellars, and reeking court-yards, grey patches of festering ruin, last lingering evidences of the age of conventual grandeur; here, in the priory yard of a parish, that might be said to shelter the offsc.u.m of poverty"s heavings up, he shall find a little ecclesiastical remnant of monastic architecture, converted into a modern meeting-house; the nursery walls that cradled the genius of a Bale, the carmelite monk, and great chronicler of his age, now echoing the doctrines of the "Reformed Religion," as taught by the Anabaptist preacher. In another district, but still skirting on the river-side, where those old monks ever loved to pitch their dwelling-places, down in a dreary little nook, shut out from noisy thoroughfares, and bearing about it all the hushed stillness that beseems the place, he may seek the ghostly companionship of the old "friar of orders grey" in the lanes and walks that once bounded the flourishing territory of the rich "mendicant"
followers of holy St. Francis, or "friars minors," as they were wont to call themselves. Not far distant, the whereabouts of the old Austin Friars may invite attention; and the locale of the "Carrow Nunnery," or ladies" seminary of the mediaeval times, claim a pa.s.sing enquiry, and note of admiration for the beauty of its site.
Sacred spots, consecrated by the holy waters of loving humanity and gentle charity, in ages gone by, as the refuge of the diseased leper and homeless poor, shall be pointed to as the mustard-seed from whence have sprung those glorious monuments of our land, the hospitals for the sick of these later generations.
Nor would he rest content without a glimpse of the Museum and its relics of the dead, its hieroglyphical urns and querns, spurs, fibulae, and celts, its pyxes and beads, its lamps and coins, that lead imagination back to pay domiciliary visits to the wooden huts, earthen fortifications, and sepulchral hearths of our Icenic, Roman, or Saxon forefathers, while gaping Egyptian mummies stand by, peering from their wizened-up eye-b.a.l.l.s at the industrious student of the "gallery of antiquities," looking wonder at the preference displayed for them, over the more brilliant attractions offered to the lover of natural history, and ornithology in particular, among the collections below.
Nor shall the antiquarian be alone in his enjoyment. The botanist shall delight to enrich his herbarium from the same hedgerows, fir-woods, cornfields and rivulets, that have yielded flowers, mosses, hepatica, and algae to the researches of a Smith, a Hooker, and a Lindley, the children of science nurtured on its soil. The lover of music shall find fresh beauties in the harmonies of its organs, quires, and choruses, from the halo of a.s.sociations cast around them by the memories of a Crotch, the remembrance of the Gresham professorship, filled from the musical ranks of the city, and may be, in time to come from a new l.u.s.tre added by another name, that has begun to be sounded forth by the trumpet of fame in the musical world.
The scholar and literary man shall acknowledge the interest claimed by the nursery in which has been reared a Bale, a Clarke, a Parker, a Taylor, a Gurney, an Opie, and a Borrow, and we may add, a Barwell and a Geldart, whose fruit and flowers, scattered on the way-side of the roads of learning, have made many a rough path smooth to young and tender feet.
The philanthropist shall dwell upon the early lessons of Christian love and humanity breathed into the heart of a Fry from its prison-houses, and the silent teachings of the quiet meeting-house, where the brethren and sisters, in simple garb of sober gray, are wont to a.s.semble, and where yet may still be seen the adopted sister Opie, resting in the autumn of her days in the calm seclusion of the body of Friends, after a life spent in scattering abroad in the world, germs of simple truth, pure morality, and heart-religion, the fruits of the genius which has been her gift from G.o.d. He shall visit Earlham Hall, the birthplace of that great "sister of charity," Elizabeth Fry, and her brother, the philanthropist, Joseph John Gurney, and beneath its avenues of chestnut, by the quiet waters of its little lake, and the banks of bright anemones, that lay spread like a rich carpet, in the early spring time, along its garden borders, inhale sweet odours, and drink in refreshing draughts of pure unsullied poetry, fresh from the fount of _nature_, and fragrant with the love that breathes through all her teachings, the first child of the Great Parent of good.
Hence he may trace his way back through the village hamlet, that gave a home in his last years to the weary-hearted Hall, yielding a refuge and a grave to the head bowed beneath the weight of a sorrow-burthened mitre; and with hearts yet vibrating to the mournful cadences of woe, that swept from his harp strings, forth upon the world from its saddened solitudes, they may pa.s.s on to the garden of the Bishop"s Palace, and the monuments yet lingering there; ivy-clad ruins, meet emblems of harsh realities, over which the hand of time has thrown the sheltering mantle of forgiveness. And among the many chords touched by the hand of memory here, where the shades of harsh bigotry and persecuting zeal vanish in the gentle and softened light of Christian charity, breathed forth by the spirits of later days, whose heart does not respond to the refined poetry of the Charlotte Elizabeth, who has given such sweet paintings of this familiar scene of her girlhood"s years? Who can forget the song of the Swedish Nightingale, as it thrilled through the evening air upon the listening ears of the ravished, though untutored mult.i.tude? happy a.s.sociations of the enjoyments of working world life, and lay minstrels of G.o.d"s creation, to be blended with the grander, but scarce more solemn, memories of the great heads among the labourers in the harvest field of souls. Nor shall the poet forget to take a glimpse of the quiet home, not far distant hence, of Sayer, the poet, philanthropist, philosopher, and antiquarian, whose memory is still green in the hearts of many of the great and good still living, and the remembrance of whose friendship is esteemed by them among their choicest treasures.
The historian has a yet wider field for labour, and a busier work to do, to connect into one chain the links that lie scattered far and wide, among deserted thoroughfares, decaying mansion houses, desecrated churches, and monastic ruins; to gather up the broken fragments of political records, enshrined in many a mouldering parchment, crumbling stone, or withered tree; and to weave into a whole the threads of tradition and legendary lore, unravelled from the mystic fables of antiquity. It is his, to trace the ident.i.ties of King Gurgunt and the Danish Lothbroc; to establish the founder of the castle, and commemorate the achievements of its feudal lords; upon him the duty of sifting evidence, and searching out causes, of tracing the famous "Kett"s rebellion," to the deep-seated sense of wrong in the hearts of the people, that found expression in the vague predictions and mystical prophecies of the Merlin of the district.
It is for him to unfold the little germs of after-history, that he treasured up in the kernels of such doc.u.ments as he order addressed to the county sheriff, to commit to prison those who refused to attend the services of the established church; to trace the growth of the spirit among the people, that opened the city gates to the army of the "Parliament," fortified its castle against royalist soldiers, and turned its market-place into a place of execution for fellow-citizens, who dared to espouse the cause of their king; to rescue from oblivion the gems that were buried beneath the blows of the zealous puritan"s demolishing hammer; to read in the nailed horseshoes, that surmount the doorways of hundreds of its cottages, as a talisman against witchcraft, the legacy of superst.i.tion bequeathed to their descendants by these earnest "abolitionists;" to mark the _rise_ and _progress_ of the unfranchised ma.s.ses in this age of enlightened liberalism, and the deepening and mellowed tone of the "voice of the people," as it rises from the chastened and self-disciplined homes of the educated and thriving artisans. Upon him too, it devolves, to mark the age and the man-to see the monuments of the great-hearted and liberal-minded of the days gone by, in the hospitals, charities, and endowments, their munificence has showered down, from the heights of prosperity, upon the depths of poverty-to trace the progress of the philanthropist of later times, in his house to house visits, and read statistics of his labours in the renovated homes and gladdened hearts of thousands, thus lifted out from the swamps of misery and crime, by the single hand of Christian benevolence, stretched forth in sympathy; to mark the efforts of legislation to remove causes that evil results may cease, to note the patriotism of honest hearts, that would seek to level, if at all, by lifting up the poor to that standard of moral and physical comfort, beneath which the manhood of human nature has neither liberty nor room to grow; and finally, it is his to cast into the treasury of his nation"s history his gleanings among the bye-ways of a single city, no mean or despicable bundle of facts, with which to enrich its stores.
But we must tarry no longer to generalize with archaeologist, poet or historian; we have many storehouses to visit, where a.s.sociations of religion, poetry, and art, lie garnered up in rich abundance.
CHAPTER II.
THE CATHEDRAL.
THE CATHEDRAL.-_Forms_.-_Symbols_.-_Early history of the Christian church_.-_Growth of superst.i.tion_.-_Influence of Paganism_.-_Government_.-_Growth of the Papacy_.-_Monasticism_.-_St.
Macarius_.-_Benedict_.-_St. Augustine_.-_Hildebrand_.-_Celibacy of the clergy_.-_Herbert of Losinga_, _founder of Norwich Cathedral_.-_Crusades_, _their influence on Civilization_.-_Historical memoranda_.-_Bishop Nix_.-_Bilney_.-_Bishop Hall_.-_Ancient religious festivals_.-_Easter_.-_Whitsuntide_.-_Good Friday_.-"_Creeping to the Cross_."-_Paschal taper_.-_Legend of St. William_.-_Holy-rood Day_.-_Carvings_.-_Origin of grotesque sculptures_.-_Old Painting_: _mode of executing it_.-_Speculatory_.-_Cloisters_.-_Anecdote_.-_Epitaph_.-_List of Bishops_.-_Funeral of Bishop Stanley_.
"What is a city?" "A city contains a cathedral, or Bishop"s see."
Such being the definition given us in one of those valuable literary productions that we were wont in olden time to call Pinnock"s ninepennies, and which have since been followed by dozens upon dozens of series upon series, written by a host of good souls that have followed in his wake, devoting themselves to the task of retailing homeopathic doses of concentrated geography, biography, philosophy, astronomy, geology, and all the other phies, nies, onomies, and ologies, that ever perplexed or enlightened the brains of the rising generation; we adopt the term, in memory of those so-called happy days of childhood, when its vague mysticism suggested to our country born and school-bred pates a wide field of speculation for fancy to wander in; a Cathedral and a Bishop"s see being to us, in their unexplained nomenclature, figures of speech as hieroglyphical as any inscription that ever puzzled a Belzoni or a Caviglia to decipher.
We have grown, however, to know something of the meaning of these terms; and having lived to see a few specimens of real cathedrals and live bishops, we are now quite ready to acknowledge the priority of their claims upon our notice when rambling among the lions of an old city.
We say old, but where is the cathedral not old? save and except a few just springing into existence, evidences we would hope of a reaction in the devotional tendencies of our nature, rising up once more through the confused a.s.semblage of churches and chapels, and meeting houses, reared in honour of man"s intellect, sectarian _isms_; human deity in fact, with its standard _freedom of thought_, under which the myriad diverse forms of hero worshippers have rallied themselves, each with their own atom of the broken statue of truth, that they may vainly strive _of their own power_ to re-unite again into a perfect and harmonious whole. Setting aside, however, these later efforts to regain something of the lofty conceptions that can alone enter into the mind of a worshipper of G.o.d, not man, we have to deal with the monuments of a past age yet left among us, witnessing to the early life in the church, though not unmingled with symptoms of disease, and marks of the progress of decay,-marks which are indeed fearfully manifest in the relics existing in our country, that bear almost equal traces of corruption and spiritual growth, each struggling, as it were, for victory. Is there any one who can walk through the lofty nave of a cathedral, and not feel _lifted up_ to something? may be he knows not _what_; but the spirit of worship, of adoration, is breathed on him as it were from the structure around him.
And should it not be so? does not the blue vault of heaven, with its unfathomed ocean of suns and worlds, each moving in its own orbit, obeying one common law of order and perfect harmony, call up our reverence for the G.o.d of _Nature_? and has it ever been forbidden that the heart and understanding should be appealed to through the medium of the outward senses, for the worship of the G.o.d of _Revelation_? Is the eye to be closed, the mouth dumb, the ear deaf, to all save the intellectual teachings of a fellow man? Is _music_ the gift of heaven, _colour_ born in heaven"s light, _incense_ the fragrance of the garden, planted by G.o.d"s hand, _form_ the clothing of soul and spirit, to be banished from the temple dedicated to the service of that living G.o.d, who created the music of the bird, the waterfall, and the thunder, who painted the rainbow in the window of heaven, who scented the earth with sweet flowers, and herbs and "spicy groves," who gave to each tree, each leaf, each bird and flower, each fibre, sinew, and muscle of the human frame, each crystal, and each gem of earth, each sh.e.l.l of the ocean"s depths, each moss and weed that creeps around the base of hidden rocks, even to the noisome fungus and worm that owes its birth alike to death and to decay a material body, full of beauty and adaptation in all its parts; revealing thus to man, that all thought, all life, all spirit, must dwell within an outer covering of _form_. True, the spirit and life may depart, the garment may cover rottenness and decay, the symbol may be a dead letter, in the absence of the truth it should shadow forth, the candle at the altar, be meaningless from the dimness of the light of the spirit, that it should represent as ever living and present in the church; the eagle of the reading-desk be a graven image, without place in G.o.d"s temple, when the soaring voice of prophecy, rising above earth, and fed from the living fire burning on heaven"s altar, that it should symbolize, has ceased to be heard. Incense may be a mystic mockery, when the prayers of the children of G.o.d have ceased to ascend in unison as a sweet smelling savour to the throne of their Father; the swelling chant be monotonous jargon, when the beauty and harmony of _one common voice_ of praise, thanksgiving, and prayer, is not felt; the vestment be a mere display of weak and empty vanity, when purity, activity, authority and love, have ceased to be the realities expressed in the alb, the stole, the crimson and purple, the gold and silver; the screen, a senseless ma.s.s of carving, the long unbenched and empty nave, so much waste stone and mortar, to those who see not in it the vast Gentile court, where the voice of preaching and invitation was sent forth to sinners to enter the temple and join in the _worship_ of _praise_ and _prayer_ of the _church within_.
Why are all these too often as cold and empty outlines of a nothing to our senses? is it not that their life is gone? But should we therefore cast away the fragments that remain? should we not rather desire that the spirit may breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live again, and form a new and living temple for the most High to dwell in; the outer edifice of wood and stone, being the _model_ or _statue_ of that spiritual church, of which every pillar, every window, every beam, and curtain, should be formed of living members, with Christ for the foundation and chief corner stone, to be built up and fashioned by the hand of G.o.d; every sand or ash of truth that lies scattered over the surface of the earthy being cemented together by bonds of love and charity, to form the masonry of the one great Catholic Church.
Such thoughts may be misunderstood, and bring down upon us, in these days of Papal Aggression, anathemas from many a zealous reformationist, or member of the heterogeneous Protestant Alliance, nay, perhaps every shade of Protestant dissenter, evangelical churchman, and Puseyite, may shake his head at us in pity, and wonder what we mean; we would say to the last, beware of the _shadow_ without the _substance_, the _symbol_ without the _truth_, the _emblem_ without the _reality_; and of the others we would ask forbearance. Popery does not necessarily lurk beneath the advocacy of _forms_.
With such formidable prejudices as we may possibly have raised by these suggestive hints, dare we hope to find companions in our visit to the venerable pile of building, whose spire still rears itself from the valley, where some eight hundred years ago, the foundations were laid of one of those huge monastic inst.i.tutions, combining secular with spiritual power, once so common, and plentifully scattered over our country, and even then grown into strange jumbling ma.s.ses of error and truth, beauty and deformity? the sole trace of whose grandeur is now to be found in the church and cloister of a Protestant cathedral, and the palace of a Protestant bishop.
We must not, however, lose sight of the fact, that this edifice, in common with most others, among which we have to seek the past history of the church either at home or abroad, did not spring into existence until almost every truth possessed by the early Christians was so hidden by c.u.mbrous ma.s.ses of superst.i.tion, the growth of centuries of darkness, that it is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to trace any harmony of purpose in their outline or filling up; hence the inconsistencies that have sprung from the efforts to revive the ornaments and usages of a period when, the life having departed from them in a great measure, their meaning had been lost, and their practice perverted; hence, too, the folly often displayed by zealous ecclesiastical symbolists, in regarding every monkey, dog, mermaid, or imp that the carvers of wood and stone fashioned from their own barbarous conceits, or copied from the illuminations that some old monk"s overheated brain had devised for embellishment to some fanciful legend, as embodied ideas, to be interpreted into moral lessons or spiritual sermons.
Before, however, we enter into the detail of the remnants left us for examination, we may take a glance over the page of the early history of the church, and trace a little of the origin of those errors which had grown around simple truths, converting them from beautiful realities into monstrous absurdities.
A moment"s reflection may suffice to enable us to believe that the church, as planted by its first head and master, was a _seed_ to be watered and nurtured by the apostles, prophets, and ministers appointed to the work, and intended to have an outward growth of form, as well as inward growth of spirituality. During the early period of its existence, while suffering from the persecution of the Roman emperors, it was impossible that the church could develop itself freely; consequently, we are not surprised to find that "upper chambers," and afterwards the tombs and sepulchres of their "brethren in the faith," perhaps, too, of their risen Lord, were the places of meeting of its members. Nor is it difficult to trace from this origin the later superst.i.tious worship at the shrines of the saints.
As early, however, as the peaceful interval under Valerian and Diocletian, when there was rest from persecution, houses were built and exclusively devoted to worship; they were called _houses of prayer_, and _houses of the congregation_. And the idea that the Christian church should only be a n.o.bler copy of the Jewish temple was then clearly recognized, the outline being as nearly as possible preserved, and the inner part of the church, where the table of the Lord"s Supper stood, ever having been inaccessible to the common people; an idea that has in a certain sort of way survived all the reformations, dissolutions, and dissensions of sixteen hundred years; for do we not even yet see the minister and _deacons_ of the most ultra-dissenting meeting-houses appropriating to themselves the _table pew_? There has always seemed something incongruous in the idea, that the minute instructions which G.o.d himself thought it worthy to deliver unto Moses in the mount, for the construction of a "tabernacle for the congregation," and to contain the ark of the covenant, which also formed a model for the gorgeous temple of Solomon, should be doomed to entire annihilation at any period of the world"s history.
As Jewish sacrifices, laws, and covenants, were types, pictures, of the embodiments to be found in the Christian dispensation, when the anti-type had appeared, surely it is possible that the tabernacle too was a type of a real building of living stones, then to be formed and fitly framed together, and which might have its outward symbol in the edifices of worship in all ages. We may not pause to dwell upon this idea, further than it was recognized by the early Christians, of which clear proof exists.