Chapter 31

A NATION’S SANCTITIES

IT was on the fourth of September, in 1666, that the great Fire of London reached its dramatic climax by destroying Old St. Paul’s. The bewildered citizens who had watched the tornado of flame as, hour by hour, it spread with incredible speed and fury, licking up in its relentless progress institutions that had been revered for centuries, scarcely conceived it possible that the grand old cathedral could be involved in the general destruction. But the devouring element left its lordliest victim to the last. London realized with speechless awe that St. Paul’s was ablaze. The sight, we are assured, was the most weirdly magnificent that human eyes had ever seen. The entire edifice was one vast sheet of flame. And thus, as John Evelyn, with ‘infinite concern’, records in his famous diary, there was reduced to ashes that most venerable church, one of the most ancient pieces of early piety in the Christian world.

No antiquarian can trace the time when that charred spot on which Londoners then gazed in dismay was not held in sanctity and reverence. Long before our history-books began, a temple to Diana crowned that commanding knoll. In days when the grouse scurried through the undergrowth that concealed the site of Ludgate Circus; when the heron and the bittern haunted the reeds that waved where the Embankment now stands; when herds of deer grazed among the succulent grasses that luxuriated on the open spaces that the Royal Exchange, the Mansion House and the Bank of England now occupy; when the baying of wolves was heird from the thickly-timbered heights of Tower Hill; and when the otter fished for salmon from the broken boulders and fallen trees that were afterwards cleared away to make room for Billingsgate Market; white -robed priests practised their ghostly rites among the oaks and elms and beeches that clothed the picturesque hillsides that sloped down to the green banks of the broad and silvery stream.

Old St. Paul’s was part of the adventurous romance of ‘1066 and all that’. Within twenty years of their conquest, the Normans made Up their minds to achieve superb magnificence on Ludgate Hull . They did. In our natural pride in the stately cathedral that now adorns the heart of the Empire, we are ant to forget the still more imposing, building, that perished in the Fire that followed the Plague. No spire in England today, not even Salisbury, can compare with-the spire of Old St. Paul’s. Nor do we realize its profound influence on English life and manners. With its immense nave of twelve bays, its vast choir containing another twelve, and its transept which was as large in itself as many of our existing cathedrals, it dominated the whole horizon, and made the most pretentious buildings in the city look like dolls’ houses in comparison.

The staff of the old cathedral may have had their doubts as to whether it was always treated with the reverence that its glories seemed to demand. Its very immensity militated against its sanctity. Its spacious nave gradually came to be recognized as a public thoroughfare; it was a favourite trysting-place for lovers and a rendezvous for business men. Lawyers there met their clients, and carnival parties met in Paul’s Walk, as it was called, before setting out on their revels and entertainments. After a while, stalls were introduced; fruit and vegetables were sold in the cathedral aisles; whilst bakers, smiths, carpenters and others plied with impunity their various trades. Horses and mules were rieden and led through the building, whilst unseemly quarrels and even drunken brawls were by no means unknown.

As the old cathedral neared the day of its doom, still stranger scenes were witnessed within its walls. Cromwell turned it into a barracks, stabling his cavalry within the sacred precincts. In the days of the Black Death it was turned into a hospital. It was several times struck by lightning; it was once burned almost to the ground and carefully rebuilt; but it held its dominating place in the hearts of Londoners until that memorable fourth of September when the Great Fire made an end of everything. During that week of horror a square mile of buildings was reduced to a black desert of cinders.

Christopher Wren was thirty-four at the time. The conflagration kindled his genius. Jealous for the beauty of the metropolis, Wren recognized in the disaster a priceless opportunity. Four days after the last flames had been extinguished, he sought an audience of the king and laid before him a comprehensive plan for a new city. The performance stands as one of the most bewildering triumphs of architectural history; and nobody has quite forgiven the short-sighted authorities of that stagnant period for rejecting the scheme so swiftly and brilliantly conceived. Parts of the plan, including the designs for the re-erection of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and of about fifty other churches, were accepted, and the beauty of those completed fragments only tantalizes the imagination of posterity by giving fleeting visions of what might have been had the entire scheme been carried into effect. It is said that when, amidst the charred debris, Wren was seeking the spot that was to represent the centre of the dome of his new cathedral, he ordered a workman to mark the exact place that he eventually chose. The man glanced around for some object suited to the purpose and hit upon a fragment of a shattered tombstone. The splinter bore one word of the broken epitaph—Resurgam! (I shall rise again!) In that word Wren heard the voice of the ruined cathedral: and the word is not without heartening significance for us as we survey the wreckage of civilization today. If the Christian faith teaches anything, it teaches the essential deathlessness of goodness. That is the dominating thought of Easter, the Church’s supreme festival; and it is to that sublime thought that we cling when we take farewell of those whom we have loved long since and lost awhile. A new spring must emerge from the bleakest winter; new life springs from death: the world’s choicest treasure is imperishable.

 By Dr. F. W. Boreham