Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/7



The disregard of the beautiful and significant principles of Christian art, in the structure and decoration of modern Churches, is a subject of very general complaint. Contrasts are frequently drawn between them and the religious edifices of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. People are amazed at the superiority of these to all modern buildings of the same class, and destined for the same purposes; and sometimes inquire, What is the cause of the excellence of the religious edifices of ages popularly known as “dark,” and generally believed to be imperfectly civilized; and of the defects of corresponding structures in an age which calls itself enlightened, and in which science is so generally diffused? I believe that, upon a careful consideration of the subject, it will be found that the defects of modern Churches are partly attributable to the empiricism with which Church builders now-a-days work, unrestrained by any generally-received principles of ecclesiastical art; but, more especially, to their habitual neglect of the real requirements of