Religion: Stone

In Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine one day last week, plump-cheeked little Dean Milo Hudson Gates read from Acts, XVII. Lean little Bishop William T. Manning stood in red vestments by his side. Dean Gates read from the words of another little man, but a great one: bald, homely St. Paul who stood on a rock on Mars Hill in Athens and cried:

“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitions. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. . . .

“God . . . dwelleth not in temples made with hands. . . .

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said. . . .”

A piece of the very rock upon which St. Paul, preached was received with pomp and ceremony last week by Cathedral-builder Bishop Manning, who loves to collect relics for his fane. It is a 30-lb. chunk of rose granite, 18 in. by 12 in. by 6 in.

For the acceptance of the stone Bishop Manning arranged a Greek-Episcopal service during which St. Paul’s sermon was read in Greek as well as English. A choir of Greek moppets sang a Byzantine hymn to St. John the Divine. Greeksand Episcopalians were photographed together as bushy-bearded Athenagoras. Archbishop of North & South America, presented the stone in a velvet-lined box on behalf of Chrysostomos, Archbishop of Athens, who wrote to his western brother saying: ‘”I consider this stone more precious than gold or silver.”