Stained Glass Windows: An Essay With a Report to the Vestry on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church Lockport New York
9781465665089
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The subject is certainly one of present interest. The advertisements of firms who produce stained glass windows are numerous and conspicuous in our Church weeklies; glowing accounts of memorials just erected in this place and that make up a large part of our “Diocesan News.” To say nothing of the fact that we are in danger of forgetting what the real business of the Church is,—that it is not primarily to build and beautify edifices, but to save men and to establish righteousness in the earth; the uncomfortable question is forced upon us: For how much of this “embellishment” of our churches will posterity thank us? A revival of religious art we welcome with profound gratitude. But when for the moment it threatens to take the form of an epidemic of stained glass, our joy may be turned to apprehension. Stained glass is simply becoming fashionable; everybody is beginning to want some of it because ‘all the other churches are getting some;’ commercial enterprise stimulates a well-meaning zeal, taking advantage, too, of a vulgar spirit of rivalry; and the end thereof must be painful to contemplate. Individuals are often given a free hand in God’s House on the ground that thus several hundred or several thousand dollars will be secured for “enrichment;” and so the work goes merrily on. And such things can be because there is a lack of knowledge. Persons may have the best intention in the world; their experience in other, different fields may have been very wide; in a general way they may have good taste; moreover, they may possess a long purse and a liberal disposition; perhaps they may think to save themselves from going wrong by putting the whole matter into the hands of strongly advertised window-makers. But none of these things will supply the lack of a knowledge of stained glass. There is nothing for it but study and education. The clergy first of all, and after them the vestries, must inform themselves on the subject as thoroughly as possible. In the meantime, let them be slow to lend themselves to anything which they later, or those who come after them, might bitterly deplore and be helpless to remedy.
