“I account it one of the greatest blessings of my life, and a circumstance which gave a tone to my imagination which I would not resign for many earthly gifts, that I lived in a place where the cathedral service was duly and beautifully performed.... If the object of devotion be to make us _feel_, and to carry away the soul from all earthly thoughts, assuredly the grand chaunts of our cathedral service are not without their use. I admire—none can admire more—the abstract idea of an assembly of reasoning beings offering up to the Author of all good things their thanksgivings in a pure and intelligible form of words; but the question will always intrude, Does the heart go along with this lip service? and is the mind sufficiently excited by this reasonable worship to forget its accustomed associations with the business and vanities and passions of the world? The cathedral service _does_ affect the imagination and through that channel the heart.” The Spirit of Democracy While the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is a Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, its ministrations are not restricted. “Our democratic age,” said Bishop Henry C. Potter, “demands a place of worship that will not disregard the teachings of the Founder of Christianity. In this Cathedral there will be no pews, no locked doors, no pre-payment for sittings, no reserved rights of caste or rank, but one and the same welcome for all.” And what Bishop Potter prophesied when the Cathedral was first planned is literally true to-day. The charter of the Cathedral requires that “the seats for worshippers in said Cathedral Church shall always be free;” and the Cathedral welcomes everybody to its services, irrespective of denominational affiliations, nationality or worldly estate. The Cathedral also welcomes those who belong to no denomination. Its appeal to the latter was particularly contemplated when Bishop Potter said: “The person in the period of suspense as to certain fundamental beliefs needs something larger, higher, wider and roomier, more impersonal for the time being, than the parish church.” It is hardly necessary to add as a corollary of the foregoing that there are no “strangers’ pews” in the Cathedral; and nobody, however unaccustomed to the Cathedral service, needs to feel any timidity or hesitation about attending. The large proportion of men in the Cathedral congregations is particularly noticeable. A Civic Institution