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.