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An ode to the past and a critique of the present

[The reception room beside the sanctuary is named in honor of the late Thomas F. Cadwalader, Jr., one of the most memorable of St Stephen’s founders. Recently, I came across the following article written by Tom’s father. It is an acutely perceptive commentary that is just as apt today as it was in 1937, when it was published in The American Historical Scene. Tom—modest, kind, courageous and wise—was clearly his father’s son. The article will help you understand why Tom is remembered with such affection. GPH✠]

Thomas Francis Cadwalader was born near Philadelphia and received his education at the University of Pennsylvania. He lived in Maryland, was a member of the Baltimore City and Harford County Bars, and served on boards of several charitable and church institutions in Baltimore. He was a direct descendant of General John Cadwalader of Shrewsbury Neck, Kent County.

At the corner of Third and Pine streets in Philadelphia there stands today—practically unchanged—the second building constructed in Pennsylvania for Church of England worshipers. St Peter’s Church was completed in 1761 and, with the addition of tower and graceful spire in 1842, it remains inside and out almost as the first congregation knew it. The close of the nineteenth century saw the ground-glass panes of the lower windows changed to stained glass and the beginning of the twentieth century gradually covered the plain buff walls with a host of mural tablets, but the old box pews, the paneled galleries, reading desk, and lofty wine-glass pulpit projecting from the inner face of the tower, surmounted by a sounding board topped with a gilt flame, are unaltered since George III was prayed for there.

In particular the high box pews still save sleepy children from discovery and disgrace. The preacher’s eye it is true they cannot escape, but neither dare he reprove them. From his vantage point high above their nodding heads he must exercise toward them the Christian charity and humility he professes, while from the prying eyes of neighbors they are safe. It is well that this is so, for services at St Peter’s have not usually been short. The full round of Morning Prayer, Psalms, Litany, and Communion with Ten Commandments unexpurgated, Sermon and Anthem, formed the spiritual fare every Sunday, and when at long last the Prayer for the Church Militant [alas, no longer militant and no longer a release for the young] ushered them out, so they had cause to bless the foresight of the eighteenth century architect who had so thoughtfully shielded them through it all.

Their elders, too, found home comforts in the Lord’s House, cushions and carpets and foot-warmers when needed, as about Christmas time they surely were. Nor need they face the preacher and meet his eye if the flesh was too weak for such a test. For as the lettered text proclaimed, this was a “House of Prayer for All People,” and in those far-off days All People had rights, including the blessed right of privacy.

The eighteenth century, last of the great civilized epochs, and the only one which America has enjoyed—what nostalgia its name stirs up! Could men in perukes and velvet smallclothes have been crooks and grafters? Could vulgarity accompany brocades and powdered hair? Yes. Human dignity depends not on these things, as Washington learned by hard experience and Jefferson taught in words of fire. But the wretched nakedness of the average human soul needs covering, and it is the function of civilization to supply it. Strip men bare and they are in the mass neither attractive nor inspiring to behold. Unteach them the manners the ages have slowly evolved, and, when want and hardships befall, distinguish them if you can from the wolf pack.

For all its punctilio and satin, it was no easy-going time. Do we realize the stoutness of heart required of a Redcoat, to defy the perils of sea, savages, jungles, or frozen wastes all in the garb and tempo suited for guard mount at St James’s?

The same gorgeous infantry that might have declined the enemy’s invitation to fire first at Fontenoy did show at Dettingen what nineteenth century Carlyle grudgingly called “the requisite unconscious substratum of taciturn inexpugnability.” There was magnificence in its stoicism that differs from the heroism of Pickett’s Charge or the sodden agonies of the Ypres Salient* in quality, though not in degree.

The eighteenth century never knew of nerves. It acted upon reason, not impulse, without hurry or deviation. It failed where reason is often at fault in making insufficient allowance for passion. When passion swept out logic, the eighteenth century was over. The nineteenth century for reason tried to substitute romance and sentiment. Its world also has crumbled, in blood and mire. We are trying to rebuild it by science, like a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, but cannot find human brains of sufficient tensile strength for the latter, or human character firm and erect enough for the former.

Meanwhile reason remains and beckons to us from the few classic fanes which the follies of two centuries have spared. The erect form of Washington still graces the memories that crowd in St Peter’s pews. The snowy hair of William White, who naturalized the Anglican Church in the newly formed United States and saved for us the richest heritage of England, appears above the pulpit. The lawyers, the doctors, the merchants, the artists, the men of science, the soldiers and the sailors who made the society of Philadelphia when it was for a season the capital of a continent, filled those galleries or knelt at that plain rail before the communion table, thanking the Almighty who had bestowed reason upon mankind.

They dressed as we think elaborately, but their lives were lived more simply than ours. For all their conventions, they loved not vain ceremonial. Bishop White himself thought it no disrespect to the Lord’s Table to rest his hat and stick upon it, for he worshipped not an altar graven with art and man’s device.

Others have tried to make the world safe for democracy, for the proletariat, for the middle class, for the unemployed, for Nordics, for union labor for forgotten men of all shades and colors. The men who worshipped in St Peter’s when it was new tried simply to make their world decent and safe for people, unclassified and uncatalogued. If they failed, at least they did not live to see their own failure. And no self-constituted messiah has ever yet dared to condemn their effort and their ideal.

—by Thomas F. Cadwalader

*Scene of an horrific First World War battle.

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