Читать книгу The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey онлайн

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It is thus that Westminster Abbey can truly claim to be our great National Church.

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“It is finished!

The Kingliest Abbey in all Christian lands,

The lordliest, loftiest minster ever built

To Holy Peter in our English Isle!

Let me be buried there, and all our Kings,

And all our just and wise and holy men

That shall be born hereafter. It is finished!”

Tennyson (Harold).

The writer of this little book was once showing Westminster Abbey to a party of foreigners—they were Germans,—and after hearing something about the Abbey and the people who are either buried or commemorated there, one of them turned and said: “I can understand the pride of English people when I see a place like this.”

Now, it must be remembered that this German visitor was not thinking of our wealth, or of our Empire, or of our commercial prosperity. He was thinking of the “great cloud of witnesses,” the people of our race who have gone before us, and who are gathered together, resting and remembered in our chief national church. He was thinking, too, of the wide and catholic spirit which would shut out no one who had done good service to God and man.