Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Palette and Pen Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL. Churches differ as any personalities. Some are at their best when they are empty some are less restrained in the presence of a few wor- shippers and some should be visited during a service. The African Methodist Episcopal is one of these last. Outside, the red brick building stands flat and nondescript and self- contained; inside it is harsh and ugly and worn. Only when the people come in does it wake to amazing life. It lives only one day a week, but how it lives that one day! The people crowd in, thronging and jostling, to fill the big church in no time — tall bucks, broad capa- cious women, shrunken old men, and lanky children. And the place resounds with their shrill greetings, their hearty singing, and their deep abiding laughter. Sometimes during the service we catch a glimpse, in the parted lips and wide rolling eyes, of the gorgeous pageant of glittering angels and shadowy devils they see, of the wonder and the hope and the delicious fear they feel. But it seems no more than an inter- lude — the sociability ' s the thing. And they lean forward to whisper and nod and wait impatiently for the end of the service when they can burst forth again untrammeled, gather in groups and shout greetings, and giggle replies and shake hands. They shake hands with everyone, two and three times around. One of the women appointed to greet strangers found us and shook hands with a strong whole-hearted grip. Eyes shining and teeth gleaming, she said the most simple gracious words we have heard in any church, Thank you for help- ing us worship. TRINITY. Guide books to Boston like to speak superciliously of Trinity as a thing out of style and therefore better dead. Built in mid-Victorian days and esteemed then, it is now understood, they say, to be heavy, rambling, and over-ornamented. We cannot well defend it against them. All that they say of it is true enough, but we happen to like it that way. Trinity is usually considered a memorial to Phillips Brooks, its genius and inspiration;

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the scarlet letter of her shame. For she was the orisinal of Hester Prynne. No solacing verses, no lyres or urns or weeping willows lighten these gravestones. They are decorated with the winged skulls and dancing skeletons of a stern, hard-headed day. ST. CLEMENT’S. The delicately carved and encrusted tower of St. Clement’s holds itself aloof in the midst of apartments, warehouses, and raucous traffic. The birds understand its serenity of spirit and fly in and out familiarly. And far below the door stands open to the street, wide-flung, as if to say, Behold, I have set before thee an open door.’’ St. Clement’s is spiritually an ancient abbey or a monastery chapel, though it is not old. When the facile electric lights are snapped on, the spell is broken, the floor is obviously imitation-tiled, the stone walls are only surfaced cement, and the place is a fraud. But, half-dark, the church has miraculously the spirit of the Gothic. Sharply contrasted with the resplendent sunshine of the street, it is cool and dark as a cave inside. The high arches fade out and disappear as the eye strains after them. All the lines of the church, long and straight, slim and tall, accent its personality. The stained windows, uniform and impersonal, are all that relieve the stone walls. Sometimes the sun falls across them, sweetening and warming their cold blues and reds and greens. The church stands like a rock of ages, heedless of the weak humanity that walks about inside and around it; it is strong with all the high strength of independence and austerity. Near the door the gray walls are lighted, but gradually they show darker and darker, until the farther end of the church is quite black. The tapestry behind the altar shines mystically from the depths of the shadow, and the candles make faint glittering points in the gloom. This is a refuge from the world, sacred and inviolable — secure as ever Notre Dame that memorable day when at high noon the hunchback snatched the gypsy girl from under the sword of the executioner, leaped into the church, and shouted in one tremendous voice with the crowd of Paris, Sanctuary!

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but; more objectively; it does honor to all those tireless humble men who made with their hands beautiful things to be set in its high places. They spent years of patient love and labor on a tiny part of the church’s crowded decoration; never caring whether any one would stop to decipher the detail of a stained window or examine the intricacy of a wood-carving; or even that no one could ever see many of the paintings inside the high tower. From the massive outer porch to the cross on the altar there is no single thing in the church which has not been lavishly enriched and elaborated. And; as a church should be; it is still unfinished. There is always a little room left; enough for a tablet; a bust; a memorial chair. Trinity will never have the sheer impressiveness of unity; but it must always have the warmth of in- dividuality. And; for all its aura of Phillips Brooks; its massiveness and its richness; for all that stern Art and Science face it across the way; Trinity is a very human; comfortable church. There are always people bustling in and out; sweeping and mending; conferring and rearranging. There was the day the seventy-two year old sexton went bobbing up a swaying ladder to change the lights in the great chandelier. We youngsters below watched breathlessly as his rapt face gleamed in the light against the dizzy perspective of pillars and arches. Trinity is just such a combination of dignity and strange unreality. But most characteristic is the church when it is quite empty; black and immeasurably vast. A little light gleams on the smooth polished pews and picks out the pulpit and the altar and the candelabra. In the sweet solemn darkness the stained glass windows glow like jewels. Then the organist begins to practise softly — running; liquid notes that grow and fill the whole church with great roaring; thundering; joyous music. The tall pillars vibrate and the still air of the tower is shaken. And as the triumph of the music becomes almost unbearable; suddenly it falls away. At last the silence surges slowly backward ; and; far away; as from another world; comes the singing hum of a street-car.