Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/177

Rh patriot to them as if He had been born of a Picard maiden.

4. It is to be remembered, however—and this is a theological point on which depended much of the structural development of the northern basilicas—that the part of the building in which the Divine presence was believed to be constant, as in the Jewish Holy of Holies, was only the enclosed choir; in front of which the aisles and transepts might become the King's Hall of Justice, as in the presence-chamber of Christ; and whose high altar was guarded always from the surrounding eastern aisles by a screen of the most finished workmanship; while from those surrounding aisles branched off a series of radiating chapels or cells, each dedicated to some separate saint. This conception of the company of Christ with His saints, (the eastern chapel of all being the Virgin's,) was at the root of the entire disposition of the apse with its supporting and dividing buttresses and piers; and the architectural form can never be well delighted in, unless in some sympathy with the spiritual imagination out of which it rose. We talk foolishly and feebly of symbols and types: in old Christian architecture, every part is literal: the cathedral is for its builders the House of God;—it is surrounded, like an earthly king's, with minor lodgings for the