The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of EuropePrime, Samuel Irenæus
History
The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe
Prime, Samuel Irenæus
Europe -- Description and travel
On Sunday, after searching in vain to find the English service which was
said to be performed in an _evangelical_ chapel by a clergyman of the
Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from
an open square, is a prominent object in the city. The building itself
is a _rotunda_, and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of
carriages, wagons, droskies, and carts, with horses of various grades,
by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of
these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic wagons, and being covered
with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and
long and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people
had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is
rare to see such a show of _teams_ about a city church. It was all the
more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.
I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the
thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive
galleries rising above each other; and, following the winding staircase
in the vestibule, we reached the first, and, unable to get admission
there, we mounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the
third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly imposing spectacle
was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three
galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it.
The pews on the ground floor were occupied by a class of persons by
their dress and manner more elevated in rank than the others. The pew
doors were kept locked, until the sermon was to be commenced, when they
were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permitted to take those not
occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with
plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse
and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but
their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded the whole
assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated,
and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime
spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people,
worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the
hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the
cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were
burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the
Lutheran was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still
lingered. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir
of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and sang,—the whole
assembly, men and women,—with the organ, singing with a mighty noise.
The sermon followed. The Polish is not one of the tongues with which I
am familiar, and I shall not undertake to pass an opinion upon the
eloquence or the orthodoxy of the discourse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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