now this is a very great and novel idea, the idea of a modern temple set like a miner's lantern in the forefront of school or college to light its task in the world. it rounds off and completes sanderson's vision of a modern school; it is logically essential to that vision. but meanwhile what was happening to the school-chapel project?

for, after all, in the older type of school, the chapel with its matins and evensong, its onward christian soldiers and suchlike stirring hymns, its confirmations and first communions, was in a rather dreamy, formless mechanical way undertaking to do precisely what the new house of vision was also to do, that is, to give a direction to the whole subsequent life. but was it the same direction? the normal school-chapel points up—not very effectively one feels; the house of vision was to point onward. sanderson had a crowded, capacious mind, but sooner or later the question behind these two discrepant objectives, whether men are to live for heaven or for creation, was bound to have come to an issue.

his mental process was at first syncretic. he began to think of a school-chapel, not as a place[pg 140] for formal services but as a place of meditation and resolve. he began to speak of the chapel also as though it was to be 'the tent on the mount,' the place of vision. he betrayed a growing hostility to the intoned prayers, the trite responses, the tuneful empty hymns, the anglican vacuity of the normal chapel procedure. had he lived to guide the building of oundle chapel i believe it would have diverged more and more from any precedent, more and more in the direction of that house of vision, that the premature and insufficient eric yarrow building had so pitifully failed to realise.

here is evidence of that divergence in a passage from a sermon preached after a gathering of parents and old boys in the court room at the london grocers' hall to discuss the chapel project. i ask any one trained in the services of the church of england and accustomed to enter, pray into a silk hat, deposit it under the seat, sit down, stand up, bow, genuflect, kneel decorously on a hassock, sing, repeat responses, and go through the simple and wholesome swedish exercises of the anglican prayer book, what is to be thought of this project of a chapel with hardly a[pg 141] sitting in it? and what is to be thought of this suggestion of wandering round the aisles? and what is this talk of young gentlemen who have died 'for king and country,' casting down their lives for the rescue of man?

'for the years to come, when the war is over, it will be well to have some visible memorial; some symbol of the redemption of the great war, and of the heroic part old boys have taken in it; some record of the great struggle from out of which the new spirit will rise; some record of the part the whole school took in this; some record of the boys who have fallen; some thanksgiving symbol for all who have given their service. and for this it is proposed to build a chapel. but when the time comes we shall be sad to leave our present building. it is a poor building, but it is very rich in its associations. the services in this temporary chapel have taken a large part in the building of the school. simple as is the tent in the wilderness, yet we have hoped that the spirit of god would come and dwell in it. we have hoped that the divine spirit would come into all the activities and outlook of the school in its diverse occupations, whether they be literary or[pg 142] whether they be scientific or technical. and we have always looked onward to the day when a permanent chapel should be built, symbolic of the divine omnipresence for worship and for sacrifice.

'and this is what is in mind to do—and yet i confess to a certain amount of fear. a lofty, spacious chapel i have had no doubt would at the right moment be built by the grocers' company. just before the war the building of this chapel was emerging as the next great building to undertake—a chapel, such as a college chapel with stalls, as for private service. but now we look beyond this. we want something different, more open. a lofty, spacious chapel to form the nave—no fixed seats, the clear open space; quiet, still, "urgent with beauty." joined to this the choir and sanctuary, with aisles round the three sides of it, forming an ambulatory. round these aisles, on the walls and in the windows, the recorded memory of the boys who have fallen. an east window, a reredos, stalls, altar. a chapel, abundant in space, not for the mind to sit down in, but for the mind to move about in, for contemplation, for dwelling in the infinite, for[pg 143] piercing through the night, for vision, for the clear spirit of thankfulness, for communion with the saints, our own young saints among them. so we hope. as you wander round the aisles there will pass before you the memorial of those boys who have cast down their lives for the rescue of man.'