"Nonsense! Somebody has imposed upon you, because they see you are a
foreigner."
He becomes quite angry at this, and says he can show me the figures in
the guide-book.
"The guide-book!" I reply, scornfully. "You'll believe a newspaper
next!"
B. asks me, indignantly, what height I should say they are, then. I
examine them critically for a few minutes, and then give it as my opinion
that they do not exceed 510 feet at the very outside. B. seems annoyed
with me, and we enter the church in silence.
There is little to be said about a cathedral. Except to the professional
sightseer, one is very much like another. Their beauty to me lies, not
in the paintings and sculpture they give houseroom to, nor in the bones
and bric-a-brac piled up in their cellars, but in themselves--their
echoing vastness, their deep silence.
Above the little homes of men, above the noisy teeming streets, they rise
like some soft strain of perfect music, cleaving its way amid the jangle
of discordant notes. Here, where the voices of the world sound faint;
here, where the city's glamour comes not in, it is good to rest for a
while--if only the pestering guides would leave one alone--and think.
There is much help in Silence. From its touch we gain renewed life.
Silence is to the Soul what his Mother Earth was to Briareus. From
contact with it we rise healed of our hurts and strengthened for the
fight.
Amid the babel of the schools we stand bewildered and affrighted.
Silence gives us peace and hope. Silence teaches us no creed, only that
God's arms are around the universe.
How small and unimportant seem all our fretful troubles and ambitions
when we stand with them in our hand before the great calm face of
Silence! We smile at them ourselves, and are ashamed.
Silence teaches us how little we are--how great we are. In the world's
market-places we are tinkers, tailors, apothecaries, thieves--respectable
or otherwise, as the case may be--mere atoms of a mighty machine--mere
insects in a vast hive.
It is only in Silence that it comes home to us that we are something much
greater than this--that we are _men_, with all the universe and all
eternity before us.
It is in Silence we hear the voice of Truth. The temples and the marts
of men echo all night and day to the clamour of lies and shams and
quackeries. But in Silence falsehood cannot live. You cannot float a
lie on Silence. A lie has to be puffed aloft, and kept from falling by
men's breath. Leave a lie on the bosom of Silence, and it sinks. A
truth floats there fair and stately, like some stout ship upon a deep
ocean. Silence buoys her up lovingly for all men to see. Not until she
has grown worn-out and rotten, and is no longer a truth, will the waters
of Silence close over her.
Silence is the only real thing we can lay hold of in this world of
passing dreams. Time is a shadow that will vanish with the twilight of
humanity; but Silence is a part of the eternal. All things that are true
and lasting have been taught to men's hearts by Silence.
Among all nations, there should be vast temples raised where the people
might worship Silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God.
These fair churches and cathedrals that men have reared around them
throughout the world, have been built as homes for mere creeds--this one
for Protestantism, that one for Romanism, another for Mahomedanism. But
God's Silence dwells in all alike, only driven forth at times by the
tinkling of bells and the mumbling of prayers; and, in them, it is good
to sit awhile and have communion with her.
We strolled round, before we came out. Just by the entrance to the choir
an official stopped me, and asked me if I wanted to go and see a lot of
fal-lal things he had got on show--relics and bones, and old masters, and
such-like Wardour-street rubbish.