york00orns

COMPLETION OF THE MiXSTER. 199
reconsecrated, which was accordingly effected on the
3rd of July, and that day was decreed to be the feast
of dedication of the church of York in future." ^
The completion of those western towers was the
bringing forth of the cope-stone, so to speak, of the
majestic structure, and such as it was when gazed
upon on the 3rd of July, 1472, by those who thronged
to take their part in its solemn re-dedication, such we
see it now, an emblem of the strength, and the
grandeur, and the perpetuity of the Church of Christ
in this land. In tlie building of our cathedrals, the
men of those far-off centuries " expressed all their
poetry, their visions, their hopes. The work of an
entire people, the cathedral is the noble symbol of a
people's faith. These stones speak with an incomparable
eloquence. Disposed in the form of a cross,
they tell the world that there is no glory like that of
the accursed tree on which the Holy Victim died.
The soul is conscious of a boundless exultation
beneath these high-arching domes, the spire seems to
rise from the choir to heaven, uplifted on the voice of
chant and prayer. The cathedral is to the man of
the Middle Ages the image of the world renewed
by Christ, and being lifted up to God by a grand
impulse springing from the cross Let us not
forget that it represents day by day the drama of
redemption." 2
Scrope's immediate successors left no peculiar mark
on the diocese. Archbishop Bowet sat for seventeen
'
Willis, p. 47. He quotes from the Chapter Acts of 2Sth
May, 1472.
' De Pressense :
" Mystery of Sufiei ir.g," p. 140.