Wonderful Sanctuary

In Manhattan are many preachers who are well aware of the Press. Dr. Christian Fichthorne Reisner of Broadway Temple has held baseball services, a Jiggs & Maggie service. He is almost always willing to help the Hearstpapers pick a Typical American Girl. Dr. William Norman Guthrie's tiff with Bishop William Thomas Manning over "dance rituals" kept them both in the headlines for days (TIME, Feb. 8). Rev. Charles Francis Potter of the First Humanist Society described for gumchewers the last hours of Murderer Francis Crowley (TIME, Feb. 1). But very rarely does publicity attach itself to vigorous, wavy-haired Dr. Robert Norwood of St. Bartholomew's, one of the smartest and richest of U. S. Protestant Episcopal churches./- Dr. Norwood's Sunday sermons draw large and genteel crowds. Weddings in St. Bartholomew's are society page news. Last week St. Bartholomew's made news of a different sort.

Into the sanctuary of St. Bartholomew's, day after day, streamed visitors, mostly female. Many church members knew it already, but the Press discovered for the first time that on the brown-veined marble wall is a realistic figure of Jesus Christ, rising from the dead. Apparently illumined by strong light from above, the figure much resembles the heroic Transfiguration over the high altar. Dr. Norwood says he noticed it some time ago. But that is not all. He has also found a Buddha, another Christ, and a horrid Brute Man with slit-eyes, pointed ears and lightning coursing about his head.

"This wonderful sanctuary," cried Dr. Norwood last week, "is filled with presences and faces, and I accept them all as good chums of mine. . . . Joan of Arc, one of my favorite saints, marches across the marble, and in the marble altar, given by Maria Dehon Polk in memory of my son, I can see my son's face, as he looked when a small boy."

To the Press, Dr. Norwood gave the following explanation:

"The dominant theme in my sermons at St. Bartholomew's has been the resurrected Christ. A year ago, during Lent, I delivered a noonday series on 'His Glorious Body' which is now published in book form.

"I have a weird theory that the force of thought, a dominant thought, may be strong and powerful enough to be somehow transferred to stone in its receptive state. How this Christ-like figure came to be there, of course I don't know. It is an illusion that grows before the vision. Has thought the power of life? People can scoff, but the figure is there."

Soon as Dr. Norwood's discoveries became known, New Yorkers began hunting other images in marble. The Evening Post announced it would investigate, photograph, report. In the new hotel Waldorf-Astoria was found a silly-looking moose and a little gnome with long beard and tall hat. In the Empire State Building are two cadaverous Geisha girls and a Tammany Tiger, upside down.

/-But St. Bartholomew's was obliged to cut all salaries 10% last week. Said Dr. Clifton Macon, assistant minister: "Our receipts from parishioners have not been up to expectations. . . . The plates are getting heavier with collections now. It is silver, and not so many bills."

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