STAINED GLASS WINDOWS AN ESSAY WITH A REPORT TO THE VESTRY ON STAINED GLASS WINDOWS FOR GRACE CHURCH LOCKPORT NEW YORK [Illustration] BY WILLIAM FREDERIC FABER [Illustration] [Illustration] LOCKPORT NEW YORK MCM NOTE. The first edition of the _Report on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church, Lockport_, which appeared in January, 1897, is now exhausted; as there is a constant demand for it, a second is deemed necessary; and the occasion seemed favorable for a little further talk about Windows and Glass. Hence this pamphlet. The project of four years ago is no longer an insubstantial dream. Since that time eleven windows and three mosaics have been placed in Grace Church; in them all the adopted scheme has been followed, with results more and more obviously satisfactory. Although intending this pamphlet, in the first instance, simply for a guide to his own people, to lead them to a more discriminating appreciation: the author is encouraged to hope, by many expressions from the outside, that it will, even more than the earlier _Report_, be of service beyond his parish; that it may perhaps stimulate elsewhere also a study of Church Glass, and the erection of true Church Windows. W. F. F. Grace Church Rectory, Lockport, All Saints’, 1900. STAINED GLASS WINDOWS. The subject is certainly one of present interest. The advertisements of firms who produce stained glass windows are numerous and conspicuous in our Church weeklies; glowing accounts of memorials just erected in this place and that make up a large part of our “Diocesan News.” To say nothing of the fact that we are in danger of forgetting what the real business of the Church is,――that it is not primarily to build and beautify edifices, but to save men and to establish righteousness in the earth; the uncomfortable question is forced upon us: For how much of this “embellishment” of our churches will posterity thank us? A revival of religious art we welcome with profound gratitude. But when for the moment it threatens to take the form of an epidemic of stained glass, our joy may be turned to apprehension. Stained glass is simply becoming fashionable; everybody is beginning to want some of it because ‘all the other churches are getting some;’ commercial enterprise stimulates a well-meaning zeal, taking advantage, too, of a vulgar spirit of rivalry; and the end thereof must be painful to contemplate. Individuals are often given a free hand in God’s House on the ground that thus several hundred or several thousand dollars will be secured for “enrichment;” and so the work goes merrily on.