AN HISTORIC BUILDING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1902

AN HISTORIC BUILDING.

The Mosque of St. Sophia was not a mosque when it was erected, but a Christian basilica. Justinian was at the head of the great Byzantine Empire, and he planned this grand edifice to emphasize the idea of “the triumph of the kingdom of Jesus Christ over the heathen world.” He chose a sightly spot, overlooking the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. Several successive churches had occupied this site, the first of which was built by Constantine the Great, the real founder of the beautiful city of the Golden Horn.

The building was begun in A. D. 532. Ten thousand workmen were engaged on it, working under a hundred masters; and when it was completed, it had cost the imperial treasury about $5,000,000. Altho of Gothic architecture, the beauty of its external appearance is marred by its lack of symmetry. But within one is impressed by “the bold span of the arches, and the still bolder sweep of the dome;” and the “eye is at once bewildered and charmed by the rich, if not altogether harmonious, variety of decoration, from the many-colored pillars down to the mosaics and inscriptions on the walls. The dome is raised at the center 180 feet above the ground, and has a diameter of 107 feet; the curve is so slight that the depth is only 46 feet, and around the rim it is relieved by a row of forty windows.” The whole interior was lined with costly marbles; for Justinian, in emphasizing the idea of Christ’s supremacy over the heathen world, “tore from the temples of Jupiter, and Venus, and Diana, and Baal, and Astarte, and Isis, and Osiris, through all the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, their finest marbles and most noble columns. And the gracious majesty of that venerable monument to the overthrow of paganism still draws visitors from all parts of the world.”

Mahomet II. captured Constantinople in 1453, and St. Sophia has since been a Mohammedan mosque. Dr. Dwight, in “Constantinople and Its Problems,” one of Revell’s new books, thus describes a visit to this historic building:—

Being an unbeliever, one has to go into the unused galleries; entering the mosque by the narrow dark passage and cavernous side gateway assigned to women in Greek times; and to other inferior classes in these days. A winding way, which is an inclined plane, leads up and up to the gallery above. At last the dim light of the vaulted passage suddenly brightens, and another turn of the way brings to view a lofty, splendid marble gateway that is full of light. Not that there is a lamp there. The light is in the atmosphere.

Sixty feet beyond the gateway is a group of noble columns joined by many a gracious sweep of arch. Beyond them is the blazing glory of light which has penetrated to the end of the winding passage. No lamps are to be seen; nothing but the penetrating golden glow, against which columns, arches, and parapet are black as ink. It is like coming out of the depths of a mountain cavern, to see through its yawning mouth the noontide glory of June, where sky and clouds alone as yet limit the view. In an instant, of course, the sense of perspective returns. The black columns, and parapet, and arches are not black. Their shaded surface is rich with delicate traceries and mellow tints, and there is the glitter of gold where the glow from beyond strikes the under edge of the arches; and upon the darkness of the opposite gallery other columns and other arches stand forth, bathed in a dead gold color, while the columns and arches of the foreground are seen to stretch away in unnumbered succession.

The shock of the first impression of an infinite glory, holds one on the threshold of the marble portal. The second more sentient glance draws one quickly to the parapet of the wide gallery, that the mystery may be solved of the glory of light without visible source, and of the columns and arches that do not confine one within walls. Far below are hundreds of tiny lamps hanging in huge clusters in invisible connection with the dome, which is equally far above the level of the gallery. In long lines upon the cornices, and even around the base of the dome, hundreds and thousands of tiny lamps glitter before the eyes. The ruling tint of the walls and of the wonderful dome above is the dull gold of mosaics a thousand years old; exactly the color of the light from the little lamps. Thus it comes to pass that the impression from the dark gateway is of softly gleaming light unlimited in depth.

Dr. Dwight thus gives the lesson of this wonderful structure with a singular and impressive history:—

The name of Mohammed gleaming in letters of gold by the side of the name of God above the place where the Christian altar used to be, testifies to the failure and downfall of oriental Christianity in that place, and makes that ancient cathedral monument to warn men of the doom awaiting political Christianity everywhere. Knowing by experience, ourselves, the blinding splendor of the temptation, when the devil insidiously offers to satisfy all cravings of selfishness in return for some small concession—the kingdoms of the earth in return for admission that the glory of such possession will content our cravings—we may not judge too harshly the fall of the early church into this snare. But thus it was that this [Greek] church, after celebrating in the fourth century the triumph of Christianity over the pagan world, became itself, in the tenth century, an object-lesson in the capacity of the old pagan covetousness and lust for power to deaden disinterested devotion to Jesus Christ, so that in the fifteenth century the Lord “removed its candlestick out of its place.”