Stained Glass Windows: An Essay: With a Report to the Vestry on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church Lockport New YorkFaber, William Frederic
Religion
Stained Glass Windows: An Essay: With a Report to the Vestry on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church Lockport New York
Faber, William Frederic
Glass painting and staining; Grace Episcopal Church (Lockport, N.Y.)
And, not to detain you with all the processes of thought and long
reflection by which at last we reach our conclusion――the figures we
suggest are those which are conspicuous and representative in the
Old and New Testaments. Our Divine Lord Himself should be, as He is,
exalted in the great window over the altar. Beginning from the angle
of the chancel arch to pass around the church, we come first to the
pair of small windows next to the organ, from which now the light is
excluded by the parish building. They may be taken as in a sense going
with the organ, and scarcely a part of the general scheme. Let them
be treated, at some time, in mosaic, with SINGING ANGELS,[C] thus
corresponding to the Angels directly opposite in the corresponding
small windows. Then we pass to the first pair of lancets of uniform
size, MELCHIZEDEK and ABRAHAM: the latter the great father of the
faithful, the head of the covenant people; the former even superior
to him, a priest forever, without beginning or end of days, type of
our Lord’s own Highpriesthood. Melchizedek appears before Abraham,
bearing bread and wine, foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist. What more
suitable, as we look up to the altar and see above it the figure of Our
Blessed Lord, than to turn to the head of the nave, and find here, at
the dawn of religious history, standing out as type of the Christ in
whom the course of the ages shall culminate, this King of Salem at the
very beginning?
[C] Recently placed.
We pass on. The next pair will be MOSES and SAMUEL: both conspicuous
as appointed of God to lead, to rule, to judge the people whom God had
chosen; Founders of Israel as a nation. Surely these, if any, we must
commemorate as among the greatest in the covenant history.
This brings us to the third or middle pair. Woman, too, bears her
conspicuous part in the spiritual history of mankind. DEBORAH[D] judged
Israel for forty years in a period of disorder and confusion, and led
the way to victory: RUTH,[D] a very different type, beautiful and
gentle, became one of that line of whom David, and David’s Greater Son,
were born. Other women might have been chosen, as well as other men;
but on the whole, none more typical, none better fitted to instruct and
to impress.
[D] Now in place.
The fourth pair continues the narrative. DAVID and ELIJAH, each so
striking in his way, bring back the kingdom in its glory and the
kingdom in its disaster; religion sweetly ministrant with music, and
religion sternly denouncing national sin; the royal harp, and the
prophetic mantle.
And finally, the fifth pair on this side, ISAIAH and MALACHI: the
greatest of all the prophets, called the Evangelist of the Old
Testament; and the last of seers, who most clearly foretold both
Messiah and Forerunner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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