Like other great cathedrals, St. John the Divine first impresses by its size. Its magnitude is not only becoming to its rank as the chief church of the great Diocese of New York and necessary for the accommodation of large congregations, but it also has a spiritual purpose, for it gives one the feeling of something bigger than one’s self and of a Power greater than one’s own. “The Cathedral gives me a feeling of humility,” said a man to Bishop Greer one day. “When I go in,” said a college girl to him, “I forget myself.” And a man whom the Bishop met in the Ambulatory said to him: “If I came here regularly, something about it,—its size, its spaciousness, its loftiness, its great receding Choir—something about it would compel me to be a churchman.” Praise in its Beauty The Cathedral is designed also to praise God in the glory of its Beauty. Ruskin, in “The Laws of Fesole,” says that “all great art is praise.” Here we have the three great and enduring arts of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting (the latter as yet only in stained glass,) combined in a wonderful Te Deum of Beauty. For centuries the great cathedrals of the world have been the caskets of certain kinds of art—or, rather, of certain kinds of expression of art—not elsewhere to be found; and in this respect the Cathedral of St. John the Divine fills a place in our American life which no secular building can fill. In the beauty of its general form, in the beauty of its detail, in the beauty of its symbolism, and in the record of human achievement in godly living which these express, the Cathedral stirs the most reverent emotions and creates the noblest aspirations. Praise in its Service But these silent though eloquent physical features are only adjuncts and helps to the active expression of praise in the Cathedral Service. In this, the impressive rites of the church and the congregational participation are aided by music brought to a high degree of perfection, and the preaching from the pulpit aims to interpret the Christian religion in terms of the practical every-day life of to-day. In short, the Cathedral endeavors to employ all that is beautiful and majestic in Art and Service to bring God closer to men and to draw men closer to God. Those who live near enough to the Cathedral to be able to attend its services frequently can appreciate the words of a man who lived most of his life in one of the great cathedral towns of England, and who said: