Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/31

31 are the rubrics of our liturgies, and rituals, and ancient traditions, and practices of the Church: the reasons and arguments for the latter are of a purely artistic and philosophical nature. Nothing is more usual, in the war of opinion, than endeavours to exaggerate and misrepresent the theories and principles of opponents. Thus it has happened, that the views of those men who advocate the revival of mediæval architecture, have been distorted in the most painful way. Not only have ecclesiologists been represented as claiming for the forms and details of mediæval architecture, the same importance and authority as for the very things of which they are the beautiful and consistent accessories, but they have even been charged with the folly and profanity of urging them as essentials of religion. More moderate opponents have treated us as mere antiquaries, who are anxious for the revival of certain forms, because they are old; whereas the simple fact is, that ecclesiologists have a real purpose in view, and that is, to build Churches in which ceremonials prescribed by our Ritual and liturgical books can be fully and efficiently carried out, and to decorate them in that style which accords best with Christian traditions and sentiments, irrespective of merely antiquarian considerations. They are careful not to confound the reverential investigation of antiquity with the blind worship of the obsolete. Hence it is, that while venerating every epoch of Christian art, they have chosen for revival that which seems best accommodated to modern necessities. They respect the Basilica, and see in it a reality and fitness for its era; they admire it various offshoots and successors—Byzantine, Romanesque, Lombardic, and the rest. They venerate the mosaics and sculptures of the Catacombs, as they admire and would imitate the frescoes of Angelico, and the sculptures of Ghiberti. They only wage war