In the SW corner of St. Stephen’s interior, its baptistery, stands a monumental group that has long intrigued me: a 19th-c baptismal font in marble and silver-gilt bronze.

You only realize how tall it is—89 inches high—up close. This arresting sculpture, however, originally dominated the center aisle near the chancel.

That first location says a lot, I think, especially since the more I studied the group, the edgier its message seemed.

This font, by Carl Steinhäuser, who executed St. Stephen’s 1852 Burd Children’s Memorial, represents three life-size cherubs supporting the lidded basin surmounted by John the Baptist. It’s an ambitious religious sculpture that joins the many remarkable figurative baptismal fonts over time. Others, like this one, include John the Baptist baptizing or angels who embody divine blessing upon the rite.

Yet consider what these cherubs do. They test the “business” end of Instruments of the Passion: the tip of a nail and spear and the Crown of Thorns resting on one head—carefully (with draped hand). The cherubs explore Jesus’ horrifying ordeal by feeling its pain-inflicting instruments.

As celestials they probe the strangeness of the God-man’s human suffering. But what if they also remind us of our role? Martin Luther is among those who accuse us of torturing Jesus Christ: 

You must . . . not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this . . . When Christ is tortured by nails penetrating his hands and feet, you should eternally suffer the pain they inflict and the pain of even more cruel nails, which will in truth be the lot of those who do not avail themselves of Christ’s passion (Meditation on Christ’s Passion, 1519)

St. Bernard of Clairvaux is another, which was why, Luther noted, he was so awed that our victim, God’s only son, bore the terrifying sentence on “my“ behalf out of compassion for “me.” 

Steinhäuser’s cherubs may delicately invoke this scenario to highlight the deliverance celebrated in the inscription: “He hath loved us/And washed us from our sins/In his own blood Apocal. Chapt. I. V 5.” *

As embodied in the font, baptism reiterates that washing, source of the Regeneration that St. Stephen’s doctrinal father, Bishop John Henry Hobart, put forth and that High Church communities have asserted to today. Hobart’s regenerative baptism marks a 

change of heart and life . . . [it[ takes us from the world, where we had no title to the favour of God, and placed [sic] in a state of salvation in the Christian Church . . . where we enjoy all the blessings of the covenant (A Catechism for Confirmation, 1819)

Furthermore, Steinhäuser’s inscription emphasizes why Christ suffered so appallingly to cleanse us: He loved us. That suffering for love, for which we give regular thanks and reciprocate with our own love as we struggle with life, is essential to the covenant and to many mystics’ visionary encounters with the loving Christ.

This love, his and ours, certainly hurts. . .. 

I’m struck how close this image of painful Christian love comes to classical counterparts from this same period, even within Steinhäuser’s Roman circle. One, by his mentor Bertel Thorvaldsen, renders the Three Graces fingering Cupid’s arrow, a weapon whose wounds inject desire.

The pensive mood and arresting rhythms of Steinhäuser’s group pull us into the work and, for all its classical elements, convey its Christian message.  

Given its initial prominence near the chancel, I wonder how the font represents St. Stephen’s, not just its donor, in the 1850s? Was it any less potent 20 years later, in a different doctrinal climate, as centerpiece of Furness’ 1878 baptistery at the canonical site by the church entrance, where it still stands?

Regardless, up close there, we today are given much to meditate.

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator

*Steinhäuser’s inscription identifies its biblical source as the book of the Apocalypse, thus from the Douay-Rheims (Catholic) English translation of the Bible rather than the King James (Protestant) version that calls the book “Revelation.” More to explore here—someday!