T

HE history of Liverpool as a separate diocese dates only from the year 1880. The See of Liverpool was formed in pursuance of the Bishoprics Act of 1878, and two years later the Parish Church of St. Peter was assigned to the Diocese as its Cathedral. In 1885 an Act of Parliament was obtained which incorporated the Liverpool Cathedral Committee, and authorized the erection of a cathedral on a site on the west side of St. George's Hall, where St. John's Church then stood.

Various difficulties, however, arose, which showed that the time was not yet ripe for so great an enterprise, and the whole scheme was dropped. In 1900 Dr. Chavasee succeeded Bishop Ryle. Shortly afterwards he appointed a small committee to consider the revival of the project, and to select a site for the erection of the cathedral. They unanimously recommended the site known as St. James' Mount. In February, 1903, the payment to the Liverpool Corporation of 10,000 pounds for the site was completed, plus 1300 pounds for the reversionary interest of several leases and after payment had been made for the immediate possession of the houses on the site, the total payment amounted to 19,424 pounds. In the meantime, with a view to the selection of an architect, an advertisement had been issued inviting the submission of portfolios of drawings, in response to which 103 portfolios were sent in. These were publicly exhibited and carefully ex

amined by Messrs. G. F. Bodley, R. A., and R. Norman Shaw, R. A., the Advisory Architects. Final selection was made of the design of Mr. Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of Sir Gilbert Scott, R. A. In view of the fact that Mr. Scott was only 21 years of age, it was agreed that Mr. G. F. Bodley should be appointed Joint Architect in order that his long experience might reassure the public as to the practical conduct of the work, at any rate in its initial stages. (Mr. Gilbert Scott was knighted by His Majesty after the Consecration of the Cathedral on July 19, 1924.)

Work on the site was immediately begun, and on the 19th of July, 1904, King Edward VII came to Liverpool, accompanied by Queen Alexandra, for the laying of the foundation stone. The Chapter House is the gift of the Freemasons of the Province of West Lancashire, and the corner stone was laid in July, 1906, by the Duke of Connaught. In the year 1910 the Consecration of the completed Lady Chapel took place. Building operations on the main site, interrupted by the War, were resumed with renewed activity after the War, and in 1923 sufficient progress had been made to enable the Committee to fix the Consecration for the following year. July 19, 1924, was the date chosen for the Consecration and King George V and Queen Mary were present at the ceremony.

Liverpool Cathedral, the first Anglican Cathedral Cathedral to be constructed in the Northern Province,

and the third in the whole of England, since the Reformation, will, when completed, be the largest church in the country, and inferior in point of size only to St. Peter's and Seville amongst the cathedrals of the world.

While the style is Gothic, it is Gothic of no particular country or period. The building was conceived not as an essay in early English, decorated or perpendicular architecture, still less as an attempt to achieve record dimensions, but as a solution of two definite problems. First, how to design a building which, while conforming to English liturgical requirements, would accommodate within hearing distance of the preacher much larger congregations than were ever contemplated by medieval church builders. Second, to produce on the individual the sense of reverent awe, which though associated with size is dependent on something far more subtle than mere bigness. The achitect's solution of these problems has resulted in a building which, when completed, will probably be regarded as marking the beginning of a new epoch in English Ecclesiastic, and perhaps Civic, perhaps Civic, Architecture. Regarded purely from the point of view of composition, the Cathedral is classic rather than

Gothic in spirit. ... But if the bones are classic, the flesh in which they are clothed is pure Gothic, pure because it is living and not a mere aggregation of dead styles.

A word might perhaps be added on the architect's use of color. The key-note has of necessity been struck by the use of local sandstone, the warm rose tints of which dominate both the interior and exterior, but color values have been studied, not only in the design of the glass but

in the choice of marbles for the floor, the special treatment of the oak, the use of toned gold in the reredos and bronze in the light pendants, and even in the selection of the kneelers.

There are two methods which may be adopted in building a cathedral, assuming, as is almost inevitable, that sufficient funds are not available to complete the whole structure at one time. Either the fabric may be completed and decoration and furnishing left to future generations, or the fabric may be built in sections as funds permit, but each section completed in every detail before the next is undertaken. Westminster Cathedral is an example of the first method, Liverpool of the second.

No question is more often asked with reference to the Cathedral that "When will it be finished?" and no question is more difficult to answer. The present section has taken twenty years to build, and as there are at least three more sections, viz., Central Space (with the Western Transepts), Nave, and Tower to be completed, there would seem justification for those who consider that at least a further fifty or sixty years must elapse before the last stone is placed in position. Against this it can be urged that, during the four years 1917-1920, little more than maintenance work was done on the site; also that the portion already built is far more complex and therefore took far longer to build than the remaining sections are likely to take. The next section to be undertaken, the Great Central Space and two Western Transepts, can, it is estimated, be built in six to seven years, and if sufficient funds were then available, the Nave and Tower could subse

quently be completed in approximately the same time. Everything naturally depends on whether financial support in the future is forthcoming on the same generous scale as in the past; but from a constructional point of view there is nothing to prevent the Cathedral being finished in fifteen to twenty years from the present time.

Professor C. H. Reilly, of the University of Liverpool, writing in the Manchester Guardian describing the interior of Liverpool Cathedral, said:

"One does not feel crushed but lifted up. I take it that that is due to the sweetness and beauty of the lines. One has no sense of depression as one has in St. Peter's. There is no overloading of ornament on the one hand, nor excess of grim severity on the other. There is undoubtedly a sense of power and of stark strength, but best of all, there is a feeling that the world is shut out and that one is in a holy place."

A special correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph observed that "Liverpool Cathedral marks an epoch in English architecture. When completed the great church will be something more than the finest example of modern Gothic. It is Gothic not in the sense of gathering and using dead styles, but in the spirit which informs it. It is the living expression of a genius of our own age and owes no more to the past than do the original conception and execution of the artist of any age."

According to the art critic of the London Truth, "Mr. Scott's design is not less modern in character than in its relation to the city as a whole.

No memory of the past has been allowed to distract attention. from the practical needs of the present and future. . It is difficult to think of any modern building, in any style of architecture, which goes so far in the direction of releasing the spirit from the letter of style."

"T

HIS is a Christian Nation,"

said the United States Supreme Court in the famous decision handed down by the Court, February 29, 1892. The opinion rendered by Mr. Justice Brewer is reprinted from U. S. Reports, Vol. 143 page 457 in the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity vs. United States.

The renaissance of national interest in religion so evident in the United States today justifies the reprinting of the opinion of Mr. Justice Brewer as tice Brewer as a contribution to present-day documents on Christianity. The decision follows:

Plaintiff in error is a corporation, duly organized and incorporated as a religious society under the laws of

the State of New York. E. Walpole Warren was, prior to September, 1887, an alien residing in England. In that month the plaintiff in error made a contract with him, by which he was to remove to the city of New York and enter into its service as rector and pastor; and in pursuance of such contract, Warren did so remove and enter upon such service. It is claimed by the United States that this contract on the part of the plaintiff in error was forbidden by the act of February 26, 1885, 23 Stat. 332, c. 164, and an action was commenced to recover the penalty prescribed by that act. The Circuit Court held that the contract was within the prohibition of the statute, and rendered judgment accordingly (36 Fed. Rep. 303); and the single question presented for our determination is whether it erred in that conclusion.

It must be conceded that the act of the corporation is within the letter of this section, for the relation of rector to his church is one of service, and implies labor on the one side with compensation on the other. Not only are the general words labor and service both used, but also, as it were to guard against any narrow interpretation and emphasize a breadth of meaning, to them is added "of any kind"; and, further, as noticed by the Circuit Judge in his opinion, the fifth section, which makes specific exceptions, among them professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers and domestic servants, strengthens the idea that every other kind of labor and service. was intended to be reached by the first section. While there is great force to this reasoning, we cannot

think Congress intended to denounce with penalties a transaction like that in the present case. It is a familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers. This has been often asserted, and the reports are full of cases illustrating its application. This is not the substitution of the will of the judge for that of the legislator, for frequently words of general meaning are used in a statute, words broad enough to include an act in question, and yet a consideration of the whole legislation, or of the circumstances surrounding its enactment, or of the absurd results which follow from giving such broad meaning to the words, makes it unreasonable to believe that the legislator intended to include the particular act.

Again, another guide to the meaning of a statute is found in the evil which it is designed to remedy; and for this the court properly looks at contemporaneous events, the situation as it existed, and as it was pressed upon the attention of the legislative body. United States vs. Union Pacific Railroad, 91 U. S. 72, 79. The situation which called for this statute was briefly but fully stated by Mr. Justice Brown when, as District Judge, he decided the case of United States vs. Craig, 28 Fed. Rep. 795, 798: "The motives and history of the act are matters of common knowledge. It had become the practice for large capitalists in this country to contract with their agents abroad for the shipment of great numbers of an ignorant and servile class of foreign laborers, un

der contracts, by which the employer agreed, upon the one hand, to prepay their passage, while, upon the other hand, the laborers agreed to work after their arrival for a certain time at a low rate of wages. The effect of this was to break down the labor market, and to reduce other laborers engaged in like occupation to the level of the assisted immigrant. The evil finally became so flagrant that an appeal was made to Congress for relief by the passage of the act in question, the design of which was to raise the standard of foreign immigrants, and to discountenance the migration of those who had not sufficient means in their own hands, or those of their friends, to pay their passage."

was simply to stay the influx of this cheap unskilled labor.

But beyond all these matters no purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. The commission to Christopher Columbus, prior to his sail westward, is from "Ferdinand and Isabella, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Castile," etc., and recites that "it is hoped that by God's assistance. some of the continents and islands in the ocean will be discovered," etc. The first colonial grant, that made to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, was from "Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England, Fraunce and Ireland, queene, defender of the faith," etc.; and the grant authorizing him to enact statutes for the government of the proposed colony provided that "they be not against the true Christian faith nowe professed in the Church of England." The first charter of Virginia, granted by King James I in 1606, after reciting the application of certain parties for a charter, commenced the grant in these words: "We greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Govern

It appears also, from the petitions, and in the testimony presented before the committees of Congress, that it was this cheap unskilled labor which was making the trouble, and the influx of which Congress sought to prevent. It was never suggested that we had in this country a surplus of brain toilers, and, least of all, that the market for the services. of Christian ministers was depressed by foreign competition. Those were matters to which the attention of Congress, or of the people, was not directed. So far, then, as the evil which was sought to be remedied interprets the statute, it also guides to an exclusion of this contract from the penalties of the act.

We find, therefore, that the title of the act, the evil which was intended to be remedied, the circumstances surrounding the appeal to Congress, the reports of the committee of each house, all concur in affirming that the intent of Congress