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RUSSIA AND THE GREEK CHURCH
By REV. ELIAS NEWMAN of the Chicago Hebrew Mission
When the average American first takes up the study of Russia, his
mind becomes instantly appalled by the gigantic proportions of
everything he deals with. It is like the first lessons in astronomy:
for everything in Russia is immense—extent of surface, numbers of
population, diversity of races, complexity of character, wealth of
resources, possibility of power, and extent of ambitions.
Politics and religion have, till the present time of chaos, always
been associated with each other and were always important factors
in Russian national life. In religion as in politics, we see the same
aspects, the reign of extremes—on the one side, the old Eastern
Church of ikons and orthodoxy; and, on the other, the modern relig-
ion of Tolstoy and Gorky—a contrast which is certainly remarkable.
The Russian is deeply religious, by love perhaps more than by
conviction, and with a tendency to superstition rather than scepti-
cism—but religious, nevertheless, and like all deeply religious people
who have zeal but not knowledge, bigoted. Persecution comes as
naturally to him at the sight of heresy as amputation suggests itself
to the surgeon at the sight of mortification, and one has only to read
of the orgies of persecution on the unfortunate Jews, or the atrocities
which take place when Christian and Mohammedan meet in conflict
in the minor Balkan States, to realize how deeply religious he is in
his crimes.
I. The Greek Church—Its Peculiarities
The many falsehoods and ridiculous stories reported of this church,
and spread over all countries, prove to me, at least, if to no one else,
that it is a subject that most British or American people are ignorant
about. If we reflect that the accounts we have had, for the most
part, have been given by travelers who knew nothing either of the
language or of the matter, but went into a church, stared about them,
and then came home and published an account of what they saw
according to their own imagination, frequently taking an accidental
circumstance for an established custom and not seldom totally mis-
understanding whatever they beheld; the consequence has been that
their mistakes, for want of being contradicted and cut off at first
hand, have grown and multiplied by being copied and translated from
one language into another.
There is a story of an Armenian priest who told his congregation
all he knew about Englishmen in the following words:
217
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