Part 12

“The improved taste of the present hour will not sanction the mode in which Mr Bennett at first undertook to be the censor of society: but _a philosophical analysis of the means which were used in his peculiar and eccentric course (!)_ exhibits motives as the springs of action, which do not necessarily indicate a callous heart or a bad temper.... That Mr Bennett had been provoked to use any and all power at his command, to overturn the wanton assailants of his character, cannot be denied. _He had but armed himself with the best instruments heaven had bestowed upon him_, and his mode of warfare was quite as dignified as that which had been resorted to, and adopted for fifteen or twenty years before, by the Press generally.”

If instead of the blasphemous word “Heaven” we substitute another more congruous to the nature of the subject, the above may be taken as a sufficiently “philosophical” view of the point at issue. A little farther on there is a still clearer admission. After telling us that the public did not care for political articles in such small sheets as the _Herald_, the biographer shows how it became _necessary_ for Mr Bennett to fill his paper with falsehood and obscenity:—

“It would have been folly, therefore, to have attempted to make a daily offering to the public of a newspaper, such as is accepted even at the present hour. Mr Bennett saw this—he felt it. He wrote to create an interest for himself and the _Herald_. In this he was pecuniarily wise, for had he taken a more dignified course, and thus have produced only such studied articles as he had contributed to the _Courier and Enquirer_, from 1829 to 1832, the _Herald_ would not have existed for a single month, unless sustained by a sacrifice of capital which it was not in the power of Mr Bennett to command. All of his success depended upon his making a journal wholly different from any one that was in existence.”

And in that attempt the enterprising editor succeeded to a miracle, for certainly anything approaching to the _Herald_ in its “peculiar” character, the literature of civilisation had not seen!

That there may be no mistake on the matter, the biographer, in summing up the transcendent merits of Mr Bennett near the close of the volume, assures us that the course pursued was perfectly deliberate:—

“On the 5th of May 1835, he commenced _his work of regeneration_ by publishing the first number of the _New York Herald_, which, till it was established, was conducted with such peculiarities as secured it attention—_peculiarities which seemed to have sprung from a mind resolved to carry out certain broad personal characteristics_, which in themselves furnish the bitterest satire upon the true nature of political and social life known to the literature of any age or country. _The course adopted was not based on impulse. There is no excuse for it on that ground. It was the fruit of the most careful reflection, as is proved by the fact that the original prospectus has not been departed from in any point whatever during a period of twenty years._ The original design was to establish a journal which should be independent of all parties, and _the influence of which should be grounded upon its devotion to the popular will_—a plan which has found numerous imitators, and which is the only one suited to satisfy the demands of the public.”

Mr Bennett, who of course “endorses” these sentiments, is thus, it is evident, as much at ease in his “conscience” with regard to his past conduct as ever, and would, if the thing were to be done over again, do it _con amore_ again. The _popular will_—not Truth or Righteousness; the most sweet voices of the rabble, not the still small voice of the man within the breast—that, then, is the creed of this “regenerator” of journalism—_Apage Satana_.

The best type of Scottish character is eminently distinguished by force and earnestness; but as a Scotchman, when he is good, is intensely so—a Scotchman, when he sells himself to Clooty, is perhaps of all human beings the most devoted servant of that personage. Scotland, which has produced such eminent examples of genius and nobleness in this century as Thomas Chalmers and John Wilson, had the misfortune to give birth also to James Gordon Bennett. Let her not grieve, for the same England that gave birth to John Milton, was the mother likewise of Titus Oates.

THE GREEK CHURCH.

There can be no question with the philosopher, that war is one of the great sources of change in the movement of the world. Whether its purpose be conquest or defence, or its stimulant ambition or restlessness, or its immediate impulse the genius of some great leader, urging the rapacity of a people, the changes which it makes in the general mass of society are always more remarkable than those of any other instrument of human impression. Wars are the moral thunderstorms, which either cover the face of society with havoc, or purify its atmosphere. War is the shifting of the channel in which the great stream of society has hitherto flowed on, and the formation of the new course which fertilises a new region, while it leaves the old one barren; or, is like the power of steam, a pressure in its nature explosive, and marking its power only in its ruin, but capable of being guided into a general benefactor of man, and originating effects large and general beyond the means of any other mover.

To the reader of the Scriptures, the question is decided at once. War is constantly held forth as the instrument of Divine action—sometimes as punishment, sometimes as restoration, but always as subservient to a great providential intention. A voice of more than man calls Cyrus from the sands of Persia, at once to smite the pride of Babylon, and to break the chains of the Jew. The same voice summons Alexander from the hills of Macedonia to subvert Persepolis, and be the protector of the chosen people. We have the distinct declaration from the highest of all sources, that the Roman war which closed the national existence of that unhappy but memorable people, was the direct performance of the Divine will by the instrumentality of the heathen sword.

It is true, that in later history we have not the same power of ascertaining the distinct purposes of Providence. We “see through a glass darkly,” through the dimmed medium of human knowledge, through the comparison of things imperfectly shown, and the misty conjectures of man. Yet still it is a study honourable to human intelligence, and we are sometimes enabled, even by flashes and fragments of evidence, to trace without superstition or exaggeration the ways of that great Disposer, who balances the fates of nations, and whose vigilance is as sleepless as His power is immeasurable. No man conversant with modern history can doubt, that the war of the German princes in the sixteenth century sheltered the cradle of the Reformation, until the mighty infant was enabled to quit that cradle and assume maturity; or that the war with Spain and the destruction of the Armada gave English Protestantism an embodying of strength in England, and a renown abroad, which secured it from all assault either at home or abroad; or that the wars of William III., in Ireland and on the Continent, were the virtual throwing of a shield over Protestantism in England, and extinguishing by the sword in France the power which had pledged itself to the extermination of French Protestantism; or that the French revolutionary war, however originating in the national vices, had, in its conquest of the three Capitals of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, a direct connection with the vengeance of insulted justice, and the retribution of outraged humanity on the royal spoilers of unhappy Poland.

Nothing among the phases of human affairs has been a matter of older or more frequent wonder to both the philosopher and the Christian, than the condition of the country ranging along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. That, within the perpetual hearing, and almost within sight of the civilisation of Europe, with the sounds of its moral revolutions, progress, and discoveries in its ears, it has never exhibited an inclination to try the strength of its own frame in any of the exercises of self-government; that, with a population highly gifted by nature, acute, adroit, and even warlike, fifty-fold more numerous than the Turk; that, with the finest climate of the globe, the richest soil, the noblest historic recollections, the whole region, from Egypt to the Euphrates, should have exhibited its bravery in nothing but the exploits of banditti, its intelligence in nothing but the craft of the trafficker, and its philosophy in nothing but the submission of the slave, seems unaccountable.

Yet especially that Palestine, the land of which we can never speak the name, or remember the afflictions, or revolve the history, without homage, sorrow, and hope; that the soil, with every hill and valley and sea-shore sacred to the Christian heart, and the object of promises, on which we fully rely, yet which transcend all that earth has seen of blessing, power, and splendour,—the land of which Inspiration has pronounced: “Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time” (Isaiah, lx. 20); that Palestine, towards which every man, Christian or Jew, looks, as the prophet in the days of the captivity looked in his prayer, should be still desolate; that even Jerusalem, whose very dust is dear to us, should be known as scarcely more than the haunt of obscure superstition, and the squabbles of Greek and Latin monks,—is among the most surprising facts of human annals.

We are by no means sanguine as to the _effect_ of the war, into which Russia has provoked the Powers of Europe. It is an impulse which may pass away—a “wind which bloweth where it listeth, and we hear but the sound thereof”—a form of ambitious frenzy, starting up from the imperial couch, and, in the first moment of exhaustion, sinking back within its curtains. But, notwithstanding all those possibilities, to chide the eagerness of human anticipation, nothing is more evident than that the war has some features which distinguish it from all the wars since the fall of the Greek Empire. It is remarkable that its first quarrel was in Jerusalem, and the express contest was for the possession of the most venerated spot in Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre. Whether this quarrel was sincere or a pretence—whether to restore injured rights or to cover a determination of wrongs—is a matter of no moment in presence of the fact that thus began the Russian war. Another obvious fact is, that though there have been expeditions to the Levant within the century, as the march of Napoleon into Syria, and the later assaults on Acre, this is the first war, since the Crusades, which ever poured the weight of the great armies and navies of England and France on the East, which ever planted a solid step on the lands under the Mahommedan rule, which ever exhibited European strength, arts, discipline, and treasure, in their actual and distinct character, to the eye of the Mahommedan. If the European forces should be withdrawn to-morrow, there can be no doubt of their having thrown a new light on the mind of the Mahommedan world. The old generation must soon pass away, and a large portion of its prejudices must pass away with it. The new generation may respect its memory, and act as the pallbearers in its obsequies, but they will not go down into its grave. Already the Turk is becoming associated with the Englishman and the Frenchman; the English discipline of the Contingent must leave its impressions, even when the Contingent shall be broken up. The pay, the punctuality, the good order, and the gallantry of the service, cannot be forgotten; and the man will be cast into a mould, manlier and more capable of progress than any Turk, since the tribe, with the “black banner” before them, descended from the slopes of the Himalaya. The Christians of the Ottoman Empire have obtained new privileges already by this war. Measures are on foot for making their testimony available in the courts of justice. They are to have the right of bearing arms in the Ottoman service—a highly important innovation, and leading to every privilege; and there can be no doubt that the Ottoman government must acknowledge its old power of oppression to be at an end, or that any attempt at persecution or violence to its Christian subjects would be under penalty of provoking resistance from its Christian allies. All those results have their origin in the war, and those are in their nature progressive. Privilege begets privilege, and the next quarter of a century, whether in the struggles of war or the activity of peace, will place the Christians of the East in a position higher than their most sanguine speculation could have contemplated before the war on the Euxine.

Views of this order give additional value to that interesting subject, the character of the Christian Church in the East. It becomes important to know how far that Church is capable of assisting the progress, aiding the energies, or even conforming to the character of a people on the eve of renovation; whether it is to continue the swamp that it has been for the four centuries since the capture of Constantinople, or to be the fount flowing with the waters of national life; whether it is to be regarded as a monument of dreary ceremonial, encumbering the soil with its weight, and of doctrines incompatible with the gospel, or as only waiting to be freed from the barbarian accumulations of antiquity, to show the world an architecture worthy of its apostolic founders, and fit for the reception of enlightened mankind.

The Greek Church has, beyond all question, high claims to the consideration of Christendom as the mother of all the churches,—founded by the Apostles, governed by the last of the Apostles,—the Church of the first Christian empire, and for the first four centuries exhibiting the most illustrious examples of virtue and ability, of patience under trial, and of piety in the propagation of the faith. In the Church of proconsular Asia was the arena in which the strength of revelation was first tried against all the power of imperial heathenism, the severer combats than against the lions of Numidia. To that province was sent the message to the “Angels of the Seven Churches;” in its neighbouring Byzantium was erected the central Church, the spiritual sun, which spread its light through the East and West, through the shores and forests of the North, and through the mountains and wildernesses of the South,—the Church which, resisting the image-worship of the Western nations, and the mysterious mythology of the East, continued for fifteen hundred years the Ark of Christianity.

The subject has been frequently touched on in the rapid publications of our time, but with an inaccuracy of detail, and an obscurity of view, which fully justifies the attempt to rectify the one, and to clear up the other.

From the fourth century, the subtle spirit of the Greeks began to exercise itself in those questions of Scripture, which, being confessedly above the range of the human faculties, are to be received on the authority of Scripture alone, as the objects of faith, and not of experience. The Arian, Nestorian, and Eutychian heresies began to disturb the world. The great Council of Nice (A.D. 325), an assemblage of 318 bishops, declared the voice of the Church against the doctrine of Arius; yet the heresy continued for some ages to distract the empire. When these disputes had worn themselves out, another source of disturbance exhibited itself in the Civil claims of the rival Sees of Rome and Constantinople. The Bishop of Rome demanded the Supremacy for the sitter in the ancient capital of empire; the Bishop of Constantinople demanded it for the sitter in the capital of the actual empire. But the contest was unequal. The Bishop of the West had no imperial figure to thwart his authority; the Bishop of the East stood directly under the shadow of the imperial figure. The former was the lord of the faith to the half-civilised and superstitious millions of the barbarian settlers in Europe; the latter was surrounded with as many heresies as episcopates, with keen inquiries and doubtful fidelity, with philosophy envenomed into scepticism, and with four Patriarchs, sometimes denying his doctrine, and always envying his authority.

The contest continued through two centuries, treated by the warlike emperors with contempt, and regarded by the feeble emperors with alarm. At length it was decided by Justinian, one of those characters who form epochs in history. It is only by such epochs that we can mark the progress of those unvarying years and casual trains of events which form the stream of Time. Remote history is like the remote landscape; we judge of the country only by its mountain-tops. History has done but narrow justice to this restorer of the Roman empire. It has measured his imperial strength on the scale of his personal weakness; but the true estimate of the governor of kingdoms is by what he has done on the throne. Monarchs are _actors_, with their kingdom for a stage, and the world for their audience. When they throw off the royal robe and the buskin, they are but men; but who has a right to follow them behind the scenes? In the reign of Justinian was reunited the dislocated empire. Italy and Northern Africa were conjoined. The barbarian kingdoms of Europe were reduced into submission, the celebrated Code was established which formed the body of law to Europe for nearly ten centuries, and which exists as the civil law to this day. The noblest temple of Europe (until the sixteenth century), the Santa Sophia, was built by him, and he held the sceptre with undiminished authority to the end of a reign of thirty-nine years, and a life of eighty-three!

The sole imperial weakness of Justinian was his theology; he loved to mingle in the turbid discussions of the time. In one of those discussions, to conciliate the verdict of the Roman bishop, he conferred on him the title of “Head of the Universal Church,”—a title which no man could be guiltless in either bestowing or accepting, the title belonging to Him alone who earned it on Calvary; the bestowal was a usurpation, and the adoption a crime. From this transaction, and from the year 533, the Papacy dates its assumed supremacy over the Universal Church.

The separation of the Greek and the Latin Churches was near at hand. In the seventh century Rome had adopted image-worship. In the eighth century the Emperor Leo proclaimed it an abomination, and ordered that all images should be taken from the altars. The Pope (Gregory II.) answered the command by a challenge. His answer was an Anathema. “You accuse,” said his letter, “the Catholics of idolatry: in this you betray your own impiety. You assault us, tyrant, with a carnal and military hand; we can only implore Christ that he will _send you a devil_ for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. Are you ignorant that the Popes are the bands of union, the mediators of peace between the East and the West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility, and they _revere as a God on earth_ the Apostle St Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. The remote kingdoms of the earth present their homage to Christ _and His viceregent_.” A war followed; Gregory sent out his “pastoral letters” through the West. The imperial troops were beaten in Italy by the peasant insurrection. A battle was fought on the banks of the Po, with such slaughter of the Greeks, that for a succession of years the people refused to eat of the fish. Rome was broken off from the empire. The imperial sovereignty of the West was at an end, after a dominion of seven centuries; and image-worship was established as the religion of the Popedom.

The schism of the churches was now begun. But the question had changed from doctrine, which the growing ignorance of the age was unable to discuss, to jurisdiction, a discussion which at once excited the ambition and fed the animosity of a time of _darkness_. The bitterness of the contest was increased in the ninth century by the elevation of Photius to the see of Constantinople.

This remarkable man was the solitary light of his age in the East. He was a layman, who had passed through the highest offices of the State, and a scholar who has left the monument of his scholarship to posterity in his celebrated _Bibliotheca_. To place him in the bishopric, the emperor deposed its former possessor, who appealed to Rome. The pope ordered his restoration; the emperor repeated his refusal.

It would be as idle to trace, as it would be difficult to disentangle, the perplexities of a quarrel which continued for centuries. But the consummation was now at hand. The Pope (Leo IX.), and the Patriarch, Cerularius, had excommunicated each other. A conference of pretended conciliation was held in Constantinople with the papal legates. It ended in new claims, met by new resistance: the legates, at last, went solemnly to the church of Santa Sophia, publicly read the letters of excommunication, placed the document of anathema on the high altar, and then departed from Constantinople! Thus in 1054 was completed the Schism, which had been commenced in arrogant ambition, and continued in priestly rancour; which had scandalised Christendom, and libelled Christianity; and which, in Asia, was punished by the conquests and conversions of Mahommedanism, and in Europe by the increased power, the darker superstition, and the sterner severities of Rome.

From this period we may state the doctrines and practices of the Greek Church, as an independent community.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is established. But the Holy Spirit is assumed to _proceed_ from the Father only; in this point differing from the Popish and the Protestant Churches. This difference was the subject of long controversy between the East and the West, but, with the usual fate of ancient disputation, leaving both parties more confident in their own opinions.

On the doctrine of Redemption, its language is that of Scripture; Christ is acknowledged to be the Regenerator of our fallen nature. Justification by Faith includes the works which prove the sincerity of the faith, without which “faith is dead.”

Regeneration is regarded as _essential_, but this Church admits of no _Indulgences_; on this point differing totally from the practices of Rome.