in life have never a penny to bless themselves with, as so many poor people have to be helped that there is never anything left for the poor queen; she has to be content with looking at other people's beautiful creations.

Make a home for the homeless, a place that belongs to everybody alike, where there are no rights and

no precedences, no hustling, as there is room for all; no unkind words spoken, as speaking is forbidden; no strife, as it remains outside; the place in which king and beggar take off their hats and pray; a place where your bitterest enemy is an enemy no longer; a place where you would be alone in a crowd, and surrounded by thousands if you were quite alone.

T

HE highest point in the District of Columbia today is a cross. Nearby is a great steel crane whose arm obeys the will of the master mason laying the white limestone blocks in a great Gothic monument which is arising above the skyline of the nation's capital. Higher above the Potomac than the Washington shaft or the Capitol dome; above the giant oaks on Mount Saint Alban, workmen are engaged in the construction of a new type of building in the old "Federal City" which George Washington planned more than a century ago.

Two main highways from the busy thoroughfares of the City lead to this hill overlooking government buildings, banks, apartment houses and modern homes which have grown like mushrooms to meet the needs of a population multiplied by the war and its aftermath. Massachusetts Avenue on the left and Woodley Road on the right, where they traverse Wisconsin Avenue in the northern sector of the District, enlose a sixty-five acre park which to

day is the mecca for travelers from all the states and from many parts of the world. of the world. Here 38,000 persons have assembled in a natural amphitheatre formed by the sloping hills and heavy foliage. The Close has been common ground for Presidents and hod carriers, for men and women of wealth and others in distress. Workmen have volunteered their services. A stone mason, in reverence and with grave solemnity, has mixed the ashes of his dead mate in the mortar as his sacrificial offering.

Is it curiosity or the realization of President Washington's dream of “a church for national purposes;" is it the 14th Century Gothic buttresses and windows of the apse and choir, or the possibilities and the need of a great Christian church in the capital of the nation, which attracts thousands of visitors each week to Mount Saint Alban where Washington Cathedral is under construction?

When Major L'Enfant made his plans for the Capital of the United States, under the personal direction of our first president, he provided

for "a church (to be erected) for national purposes such as public prayer, thanksgiving, funeral orations, etc."

During the administration of the twenty-two successors of President Washington nothing was done by the Christian peoples of America to promote the idea of such a church. In 1893, however, a group of citizens resolved to erect a cathedral in the City of Washington. Congress granted a charter for the promotion of religion, education and charity. In the intervening years progress has been made in the erection of Washington Cathedral. Today a new skyline is in the making. The apse and choir of the Cathedral rise above the treetops overlooking the City of Washington, the Potomac valley and the hills of Virginia and Maryland.

This span of thirty-one years covers considerable material progress in the erection of a "House of Prayer for all people," but that advance, steady and inspiring as it has been, is dwarfed by the vigorous growth of an idea of "a church for national purposes."

That such a church should appeal to the imagination of the American That people is not an accident. there should be today as many visitors to the Bethlehem Chapel as there are to Arlington or Mount Vernon is not due entirely to tourist curiosity. The revival of a century old idea is, doubtless, the result of a growing conviction among men and women that the architecture of prosperity, exemplified in Washington by beautiful and serviceable public buildings, should include as well a monument to Christianity.

History does not record what kind of a church President Washington had in mind. Pohick church, five miles from Mt. Vernon mansion, which was built in 1768 from plans drawn by General Washington who was a member of the building committee and a vestryman for twenty years, resembles a large colonial mansion more than the conventional church because it lacks both tower and spire. Christ Church, Alexandria, however, where Washington was a vestryman previous to the Revolution, and where he was one of the first to buy a pew, is typical of early colonial church architecture. Washington's early plans for "a church for national purposes," however, so far as we know, did not reach the architectural stage although the location was selected as the present site of the pension office.

That the United States of today is not the nation of Washington's period is evident. Railroads, battleships, dirigibles, the radio, the telegraph and telephone, electric lights, super power, automobiles and daily newspapers make the structural character of the nation as a whole of a century and a half ago. Then something quite different from that the skylines of every community were irregularly laced by trees, house tops and church spires. Since then the material progress of this country has wrought skyline revolutions. In every large city today cathedrals of commerce, railroad stations and banks dwarf the churches of early America. Architecturally our national skyline is an evidence of our material prosperity.

The cross, however, which marks the summit of architectural develop

do the work of the Lord best by doing His work for the people best."

President Roosevelt took an active interest in the Cathedral and on several occasions preached at the open air services at the Peace Cross which was erected after the SpanishAmerican war. On one occasion he said:

"In the seventh hymn, which we sung, in the last line, you all joined in singing 'God save the State.' Do you intend merely to sing that, or to try to do it? If you intend merely to sing it, your part in doing it will be but small. The State will be saved if the Lord puts it into the heart of the average man so to shape his life that the State shall be worth saving, and only on those terms."

The first President of the United States to preach at Washington Cathedral Close, before Bethlehem Chapel was built and opened for public worship, was William McKinley, a war president whose theme was "Peace." The first President to rest in the crypt of the Cathedral is Woodrow Wilson, another war President and advocate of peace. But, while President McKinley thought of the Cathedral as an influence in the peaceful relations between men and nations, President Wilson associated the work of the Cathedral with the uplifting of the community and the "stimulation of the nation." Six months before Mr. Wilson's death he wrote the Right Reverend James E. Freeman, D.D., the present Bishop of Washington: "I am glad to second you in any way possible in accomplishing the completion of the Cathedral here. Its completion will not only add greatly to the stately beauty of our national capital but it will provide a center from

President Coolidge carried their thoughts a step further when, on September 18, 1923, he declared that Washington Cathedral "has already become both an adornment and an inspiration in the national capital. "Your work is to be commended," he added, "because it represents the foundation of all progress, all government and all civilization. That foundation is religion. Our country is not lacking in material resources, and though we need more education, it cannot be said to be lacking in intelligence. But, certainly, it has need of a greater practical application of the truths of religion. It is only in that direction. that there is hope of solution of our economic and social problems. Whatever inspires and strengthens the religious activity of the people, whatever ministers to their spiritual life, is of supreme importance. Without it, all other efforts will fail. With it, there lies the only hope of success. The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions."

"It is my hope and prayer," said General John J. Pershing, "that the magnificent structure planned to rise on this ground may soon be a reality, a great monument to the glory of God and a visible evidence in the Capital of the Republic of the faith of the people in their religious insti

tutions."

All of these utterances were inspired by Washington Cathedral. Solomon's Temple was built by cooperation. King David led, the Princes followed and the public joined with them. Their offerings were measured as talents of gold. Each contributed according to his means and the measure of his faith. Cathedrals have been the most democratic of all institutions, from their conception and construction to their rvices. They have been the mother of hospitals, of art schools and other democratic institutions, and, in Europe where cathedrals are far more numerous than they may be for decades to come on the American continent, they, alone, have survived the centuries of changes.

Ten centuries is a long period in the life of a nation but not in the life of a cathedral. As the late Thomas Nelson Page observed:

"The most enduring and spiritual of the material monuments of men which have survived the passage of time are the temples which men have created from age to age to their

God.

"Where the civilizations alike of Egypt, of Greece and of Rome have passed away, the sacred temples Mich sprang from them yet tower ue Nile, the Ionian Sea and

the Tiber, as though to prove that man's spiritual aspirations are the only lasting portion of his being.

"Every cathedral appears to me to stand as representative of the spiritual aspirations of Christendom and of all in Christendom who confess Christ-nay, of all who seek after His Truth. As towering in its structure, springing up into God's blue heavens, high above the heads of men, so in its spiritual significance. towering above their puny divisions fies the devout worship of the one and passions and contentions, it typiMaster of the Universal Church. true God, Father and Creator and

"These great cathedrals were built by the people-founded in their willing sacrifices, they express in their greatness the greatness of their builders' devotion and piety.

"The unity of the Church is the dream of God's most devout children on earth. This dream may never be realized, so far, at least, as the outward manifestation is concerned; for, while men differ and feel keenly, so will the effects of their differences be manifested. But, so far as the substantial and essential union of God's Church is concerned, this, I believe, is steadily coming nearer. More and more all branches of the Church must come to hold in common the essential Truth; more

and more, however men may oppose it, the non-essentials will be differentiated from those things which are of the substance; more and more the Church must realize that its true power lies not in things temporal but in things spiritual, that its true mission is not gain for itself, though it gain the whole world, but to hasten