Part 13

The Church acknowledges no _purgatory_. But it holds an “intermediate state of the departed;” the spirits of the wicked remaining in a place of sorrow and comparative suffering, and those of the virtuous in a place of rest and comparative happiness; and both thus remaining until the Resurrection. But it admits “prayer for the dead;” not for the redemption of the spirit from a place of _purification_ or partial penalty, but from a consideration of the Divine mercy. In those doctrines it makes some approach to Protestantism, though in praying for the dead it obviously goes beyond the only authority to which we can look for the condition of man after death—namely, Scripture.

In its ritual, the Church more nearly approaches Rome. It acknowledges as Sacraments, Marriage, Confirmation, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Penance, in addition to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Baptism is administered by trine immersion.

Infants are baptised on the eighth day.

Chrism, or anointing with holy oil, which is regarded as confirmation, is administered soon after baptism.

The Lord’s Supper is administered under both forms, the bread and the wine, to both priest and laity. But the Church holds transubstantiation, or, in the words of the Confession, “when the priest consecrates the elements, the very substance of the bread and wine is transformed into the substance of the true body and blood of Christ.”

The ceremonial of the consecration is worth remarking, as it seems to have been taken in some degree as the model for the modern innovations in the English Ritual. The elements are first carried round the church _on the head of the deacon_; then the priest prays that the Almighty may convert them into the substance of the body and blood. He then prays to the Holy Spirit for His gift. He then prays to Jesus Christ, as sitting on the right hand of the Father, and yet invisibly present, to impart to the receivers “His immaculate body and precious blood.” Still, there are some distinctions in the Eastern and Western practice. The _same_ degree of worship is not offered to the Host as in the Romish Church. It is not carried in procession, nor is it offered to public adoration, nor is there any festival in its honour. It is carried to the sick, but the priests do not prostrate themselves before it. All this ceremonial the Eastern Church pretends to justify on the ground of antiquity, where it was not to be found in the purest and most primitive centuries. The Protestant looks to the original solemnisation, and takes his practice from Scripture. What common sense can believe that Jesus of Nazareth gave His actual body to be eaten before His eyes, or that the Apostles, while at supper, believed that they were eating flesh and drinking blood, and this without a sign of repulsion and reluctance, or without even a remonstrance or an inquiry? The words, “This do in _remembrance_ of me,” are a sufficient declaration that neither His flesh nor His blood was to remain on _earth_; for remembrance implied departure. And that the _remembrance_ was the express purpose, is distinctly declared in the words, “As oft as ye eat this _bread_ and drink this _cup_, ye do show the Lord’s death _till He come_;”—thus extinguishing at once transubstantiation, and the more diluted doctrine of the “Real presence.” St Paul (A.D. 59) describes the Sacrament as still the _bread_ and the _cup_ (1st Corinthians, xi. 26), the popular dishonour of which would involve dishonour to the body and blood of which they were the _representatives_. And he further states, that when the “Real presence” shall have come, the representation shall pass away; as in the instance of the Jewish sacrifices, which represented the offering of Christ, but when the _real offering_ was come, the representation naturally passed away, the Temple was overthrown, and sacrifice was no more. And this was the language of the great Apostle of the Gentiles upwards of a quarter of a century _after_ the Crucifixion. If St Paul believed in Transubstantiation, it is impossible to doubt that he would have scrupulously avoided any mention of the “bread and the cup,” particularly on an occasion when he was warning the dissolute and disputatious Corinthians of the danger of _disrespect_ to the Sacrament.

The Greek Church holds the doctrine of Penance, Absolution by the priest, and Auricular Confession, as a consequence of the doctrine of Absolution, “the priest not knowing _what_ to absolve until he knows the state of the penitent.” Absolution and Confession are held to be of the highest importance, and of the most general application. They have been termed “the axle on which the globe of ecclesiastical polity turns;” and beyond question they have been the most extensive sources of power and revenue to both the Greek faith and the Roman.

CEREMONIAL.

The Ritual of the Eastern Church is even more laborious than that of the Roman, both churches in this point straying from the simplicity of Scripture. The elaborate ritual of the Jewish dispensation was for a Divine purpose—the separation of the people from Heathenism; but when that purpose ceased with the cessation of the national privileges and the coming of Christianity, ceremonial perished, as being unnecessary to a religion whose laws were to be “written in the heart,” and as inconsistent with the nature of a religion which was yet to be _universal_. Christ came to redeem mankind, not only from the yoke of sin, but the yoke of ceremonial. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” was the language, not merely of help to human nature, but of relief from the weight of ordinances. Christianity has _no ceremonial_, and but two rites, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It has _forms_, for forms are essential to _order_, but it prescribes no _system_ of worship, no locality, and no _labour_ of devotion.

The Greek Church abounds in Fastings, and those of the severest order. Besides the Lent of the Western Church, it has three seasons of public abstinence within the year—one from St Whitsuntide to St Peter’s Day, one from the 6th to the 15th of August, and one during the _forty days_ before Christmas. In the monasteries, to this number is superadded one for the first fourteen days of September, in honour of the “Exaltation of the Holy Cross;” and those unnatural and unnecessary abstinences are practised, in general, with extreme severity, even to the rejection of all fish. On the other hand, the festivals of their saints are literally _feasts_; thus producing, in the one instance, hazard to health, and in the other, hazard to morals. These feasts, however, and their attendant levities, have the presumed character of religion; and the saint of the day is especially invoked as an intercessor, equally in contradiction to common sense and the Gospel,—the first telling us the folly of appealing to beings of whom we cannot possibly know whether they can hear or answer prayer, and the second, declaring that there is but one intercessor between God and man, Jesus Christ.

Image-worship is held in abhorrence by the Eastern Church, yet it pays the same species of adoration to pictures; on the idea, that while images represent the inventions of man, pictures represent some real existence; or that, in the words of St Paul, “An idol is nothing in the world” (1st Corinthians, viii. 4), while a picture is the _adumbration_ of some true transaction,—as the existence of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints, &c. But, for the purpose of preserving their devotion as pure as possible, they make those pictures generally the most unattractive possible. With the higher orders the picture may serve only as a stimulant to devotion, but, with the peasantry, the adoration is probably complete.

The Greek priests of the higher order generally exhibit a reluctance to acknowledge the reality of this worship, this “pinakolatria,” if we must coin a word for it. They acknowledge the popular homage, but excuse it on the ground of respect for memorable names; as in common life we preserve the pictures of memorable persons, and value those of our departed friends. But the Eastern homage goes wholly beyond this grateful observance. _We_ do not make genuflections to the pictures of our great men, nor pray to those of our friends, nor send those pictures to assist women in the sufferings of childbirth, nor place them on the beds of the dying, nor believe them to work miracles.

In fact, this worship of resemblances, whether pictures or images, is one of the most general, and yet most _improbable_, delusions in the world. To imagine that the statue which we carve, or the picture which we paint, the actual work of our hands, is gifted with powers above the man who has made it; or can have a holiness which he has not, or faculties of which he is unconscious, or a _spirit_ which he can approach only with homage,—is an absurdity which tasks the utmost credulity of man. Or if he be willing to try the effect of this contempt, he may fling the statue from its pedestal, or take down the picture from its shrine, with the most perfect impunity. And yet, what millions have worshipped the statue and the picture, and worship them still!

In the first ages of Christianity, worship was exclusively given to the God of the Gospel; the objects of heathen adoration were an abhorrence, and the ceremonial of the temples a theme of perpetual scorn. At length, however, the influence of heathenism returned; Christian corruption adopted its emblems, and the images of Christ and the Virgin were surrounded by the sicklier devotees or more fanatical formalists of the Church. Then came miracles. The perils of the Greek Empire required supernatural protectors; and the Greek, unused to arms, and trembling at Saracen invasion, gladly committed the hazardous trust of defending his battlements to the saint in his hands. The city of Edessa was thus _saved_! by the sight of a napkin, marked with the face of Jesus. These cheap defences finally failed, and Mahomet was lord of the Empire; but the passion for the picture still lived among the serfs of the Caliph; and while Europe, looking on the remote danger with secure contempt, multiplied her idols, Greece, under her Arab scourge, cherished her pictures as the source of her consolation.

The chief treasure of her mythology, the Veron Eikon, or true resemblance, was a picture of our Lord, supposed to bear His impression from having wiped His face on Calvary. This He gave to a woman, who gave it to the Emperor Tiberius, whom it cured of the gout! But as the napkin was triple-folded, it carried _three_ impressions, which were impartially divided among the faithful; one being sent to Constantinople, another to Paris, and the third being already in the hands of that rather hazardous guardian of relics, Tiberius. The Veron Eikon has seen a great deal of service since, and its last exploit was its attempt to rout the French column advancing to Rome in 1796, an attempt in which it unhappily failed. Such is the history of the most authentic, renowned, and sacred relic of the Greek and Popish world. The historian[13] gives the hymn of Byzantium to the Veronica (for they changed it into a female, and the female into a saint) in the sixth century. “How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendour the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven condescends this day to visit us by His venerable image. He who is seated on the Cherubim visits us this day by a picture; which the FATHER has delineated with His immaculate hand, which He has formed in an ineffable manner, and which _we_ sanctify by adoring it with faith and love.” Such is idolatry everywhere at this hour!

The “_sign_ of the Cross” is universal, and almost perpetual. The Cross itself is frequently addressed in prayer, and in language applicable only to the Divine Being. A quotation from Stourdza, a man of intelligence and learning, in his defence of the Greek Church, will show to what an extent this mysticism can be carried.

“The Cross is the representative of the structure of man. It seems to have been formed expressly for man, and its punishment explicitly to serve as the emblem of his misery and his grandeur. Standing erect, looking down on all surrounding things, the arms extended as if to embrace the immense space of which it appears the King; the feet fixed in this valley of tears, the brow crowned with thorns, signs of the cares which surround man even to the tomb. Behold the Man! _Ecce homo_—behold the adorable attitude of the God-man upon the earth. The more we contemplate, the more we must feel that it is only by the punishment of the Cross that Jesus Christ could express in Himself all the woes and all the transgressions of man, expiate them, ransom them, and exhibit collectively the human race under one form alone.”

The use of tapers and torches in daylight services is defended, not on the Popish principle of emblematising the Holy Spirit, but on the more plausible ground of imitating the primitive ages, when the Christians met only before daylight and in caverns. Both are equally presumptuous, as unauthorised by Scripture; and both equally profane, as palpably adopted from heathenism.

The services of the Greek Church are wearisomely long; they are in _Hellenic_, and therefore almost wholly unintelligible to the people, and they are intolerably laborious to the priest; the whole body of the services occupying twenty folio volumes, with an additional volume of directions!—a study to which the time of the priest is almost wholly confined, not for its knowledge, but for its manipulation; the selection of the services appropriate to the day, which change every day, and even in the course of the day. The Liturgy, so called, is limited to a small portion of those labours, namely, the Communion.

Ambition in a priesthood and ignorance in a people always produce superstition; the priest eager to extend his authority, and the people unable to detect the imposture. The natural results are, the Legend and the pretended Miracle. These practices in the Greek Church take a colouring from the picturesque region and the romantic fancy of the people. Every island, and perhaps every hill and valley, has its sacred spot, to which the population approach in long processions on any remarkable public circumstance, whether of Nature or the Calendar. To appease an epidemic, to still an earthquake, to make the skies propitious after a drought, or to call down the peculiar aid of the Virgin, who usurps, in the Greek mind, the whole power of _intercession_, and thus effectively possesses the sceptre of Omnipotence, summons the multitude in all their pageantry.

The services of the Church being performed in a tongue comparatively obsolete, and being recited by the priest habitually in a tone of mystery, which renders them scarcely audible, if they were understood, leave the people in almost total ignorance of their meaning, and of course indifferent to all but the forms of devotion. Like the priest of Rome, the Greek priest is the presumed _mediator_, not the leader of the popular devotion; his prayers are _for_, not _with_, the people. Thus his performance of the service is supposed to answer its purpose, whether audible or whispered. One portion of his duty, however, addresses itself to the general ear,—the reading of the “Lives of the Saints,” entitled “The Tablet of the United Worthies,” a record of 365 lives; all equal to gorge the most ravenous credulity. Greece, once the land of invention, is now the land of imposture; the original talent of the soil is now exhausted on dreary fiction. Still believing in magic, charms, the influence of dreams, and the inspiration of the “genius loci,” they are prepared to welcome every folly of fanaticism, and submit to every artifice of superstition.

GOVERNMENT.

The four Patriarchs, of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, are the religious rulers of the Greek Church; the three latter being, in a certain degree, subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople, without whose consent nothing of general importance can be effected. This Patriarch is elected by the votes of the neighbouring bishops; but he must be presented to the Sultan for institution; and as nothing is done in Turkey without a present, the fee on this occasion amounts to 20,000 or 30,000 dollars, the Sultan still retaining the power of deposition, banishment, or even of death. The Patriarch possesses the considerable privilege of naming his brother patriarchs, but the rescript of the Sultan is still necessary for their confirmation, and even to that of every bishop who may be appointed by the Patriarch. Thus the Greek Church exhibits none of the “supremacy” of the Roman. It has since the reign of Constantine claimed no “temporal sovereignty,” and it has thus in some measure been freed from the intrigues, violences, and crimes, which form so large a part of the history of priestly ambition.

Another important prevention of those evils was the marriage of the parochial priesthood. In the earlier periods of this Church, marriage was _commanded_ to the priest, and was considered so necessary to his office that on the death of his wife he must give up his parish. Even now, notwithstanding the example of Rome, the _secular_ clergy are permitted to marry, though only once. The _regular_ clergy (monks) are not permitted to marry, on the absurd principle that their lives are an offering for the popular sins, and that celibacy belongs to holiness. The marriage of the priesthood had the natural effect of rendering them loyal, by the connection of their children with the country, of preventing the irregularities to which constrained celibacy inevitably gives rise, and of preventing that ambition for the influence of their class which naturally exhibits itself in great bodies who have no tie but to the head of their order. _Constrained_ celibacy is, in fact, a conspiracy against human nature, which always transpires in a conspiracy against human Allegiance.

Monasticism forms a prominent feature of the system. The Greek convents are numerous, powerful, and in some instances opulent. Their inhabitants are divided into Caloyers (monks) and lay brethren. The lives of the former are comparatively indolent; of the latter, comparatively laborious. But the Caloyer has his peculiar round of irksome occupations. Matins begin at four in the morning, and last until dawn. The performance of the Liturgy is followed by reciting the life of some saint, and that is followed again by nine hymns, six of which are to the Virgin, and three to the saint of the day. In Lent, his task is wearisome: he must go through the whole Psalter every day, and perform the Metania, which consists in kissing the ground _three hundred_ times in the twenty-four hours. To this employment four hours of the night, of which two are immediately after midnight, are devoted. How any human understanding can conceive that this drudgery is connected with virtue, is productive of good to man, or is acceptable to his Creator, must be left to the reveries of the monk, and the recorded absurdities of human nature.

The lay brothers are the farmers, the shepherds, the tillers, and the traders of the convent. They are industrious, and so far they remove the stigma from the general uselessness of conventual life. Some of those communities are largely endowed. The monks of the well-known brotherhood of Mount Athos have twenty convents, and possess extensive lands. Their Turkish taxation is generally moderate, and indolence never had an easier form than in the shape of the Caloyer.

The state of the Russian Church would lead us too far into inquiry; but it has a history of its own, some remarkable peculiarities, and some prospects well worthy of examination. Those who feel an interest in the subject may be referred to Stourdza, _Considerations sur la Doctrine_, to King _On the Russian Church_, and to the brief but exact _Treatise on the Greek Church_ by the present learned Dean of Durham. The subject may well interest us, when it involves the religious welfare of the millions inhabiting the Eastern provinces of Europe, the Danubian provinces, the length of Asia Minor, a portion of Syria, Assyria, and Africa, and the sixty millions of Russia—an immense extent of human existence, which a few years may open to a purer faith, and which is already qualifying, by the effects of knowledge, suffering, and war, for the GOSPEL.

NICARAGUA AND THE FILIBUSTERS.

It is a fixed idea with the American people, that in due course of time they are to have the control of all the North American continent, and of the Island of Cuba; they consider this their “manifest destiny,” and any movement in that direction is looked on by them as a matter of course, and deserving of encouragement.

The popular name for the agency by which such a state of things is to be brought about is “filibusterism.” The word “filibuster” is a French and Spanish corruption of the English word freebooter, an appellation which, in former days, from its being frequently assumed by a certain class of men, who disliked the harsher name of pirate, became familiar to the inhabitants of the West India Islands and Central America; but as filibusterism is now used, it expresses the action of the American people, or a portion of the people, in the acquisition of territory which does not belong to them, unrestrained by the responsibilities of the American Government.

The sovereign people of the United States, and the United States Government, are two distinct bodies, influenced by different motives. The Government is obliged to maintain the appearance of keeping faith with other friendly powers, but at the same time is so anxious to gain popularity at home, that it does not take really effectual measures to check any popular movement, however illegal it may be, if favoured by the majority of the people.

The manner in which the State of Nicaragua has been reduced, or, it should rather be said, raised to her present position, by being occupied and governed by a large body of Americans, affords an instance of the truth of this statement.

For the last two years the American and English Governments have been exchanging diplomatic letters, arguing at great length on the abstract meaning of certain words of a treaty, by which either power was equally bound not to occupy, fortify, colonise, or take possession of, any part of Central America. In the mean time a party of American citizens, under command of a certain Colonel Walker, have virtually taken possession of, and do now govern the State of Nicaragua, one of the States specially mentioned in the treaty. When they first landed in Nicaragua, not ten months ago, they numbered only fifty-six men; but in as far as they had the good-will of the majority of the American people, they represented the nation as truly as General Pierce and his Cabinet. Colonel Walker was merely the practical exponent of a popular theory, and his success has been so rapid and decisive, and such is the position he now holds in Nicaragua, strengthened by daily accessions to his force from California and from the United States, that the Americanisation of Nicaragua may be almost considered an established fact.

Should the Americans in that country be able to maintain their position, of which, at present, there seems to be every probability, the successful filibustering of Nicaragua will be but the beginning; the end will be the occupation, by Americans, of all the Central American States, and, in due course of time, of Mexico and Cuba.