THE GREEK CHURCH.
In the dark ages of Christianity, when the zeal and purity of the early
professors and martyrs of the new creed had died away; when Constantine,
anxious to fix his throne on a permanent basis, entered into an alliance
with priests and bishops, not satisfied with the humble position assigned
them in the Church, only by courtesy at that time to be called
Apostolical; there was a revival of an old abuse, or rather, of a Pagan
principle--the alliance of Church and State. Dr. Arnold, the truest
Churchman in modern times, believed that the national conversions to
Christianity, which then became the fashion, were productive of immense
evil. This is the opinion long held by Dissenters, and latterly by an
increasing number of independent inquirers. If so, Constantine was an
arch-heretic; for surely, when Christ had taught that His kingdom was not
of this world, it was heresy to disbelieve it, and, in the very teeth of
such a declaration, to introduce an ecclesiastical system founded upon
compulsion, ignoring altogether the Divine power of Christianity, and
assuming that it could only be maintained by the sword and pay of the
State.
Constantine's empire has vanished, but his Church remains; and it speaks
to us, as Dean Stanley says, in the only living voice which has come down
to us from the Apostolic Church: the State Churches of Europe, including
even the pretentious one at Rome, are but its children. It is the
pattern and model for them all. Greek was the original tongue of the
early Christians. It was at Antioch, a Greek city, the birthplace of
Ignatius, of Chrysostom, of John of Damascus, that they were first called
by the name which now denotes the noblest form of human development. In
the Old World or the New, the Councils to which Churchmen in all ages
have referred, as of equal, or almost of equal, authority with the Bible,
were Eastern. In them the Pope of Rome was considered but as a Bishop in
the midst of his equals. The great fathers of the Church wrote in Greek.
Dean Stanley says, the earliest fathers of the Western Church, Clemens,
Irenaeus, Hermas, Hippolytus, did the same. St. Mark first preached his
Gospel at Alexandria. St. John established a school at Ephesus, and
Polycarp at Smyrna. The very word theology, as Dean Stanley remarks,
arose from the peculiar questions agitated in the East. If there be such
a thing as apostolical succession, the Greek Church has it. To this day,
the English Church owes much to the East; the direction for holding of
Easter is of Alexandrian origin, and on every Sunday, in the "Kyrie
Eleison," the "Gloria in Excelsis," in part of the "Te Deum," and the
prayer of St. Chrysostom, English Churchmen borrow from the service of
the Church of Constantine. In Queen Elizabeth's time it was enacted that
the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were
equally judges of heresy as the High Court of Parliament with the assent
of the English clergy in their Convocation. No wonder, in these days,
when Churchmen are prone to rely on Church claims rather than on Bible
teaching--when, of little faith, and timid as to the future, they trust
rather to hazy traditions than to living truths--no wonder the Greek
Church has become to them an object of special reverence; that they long
to form a union with it. Though proud of its superiority, it regards
them as little better than Roman Catholics--Roman Catholics as a Greek
once said to the writer, without the Pope.
The oldest creed we have is Greek. The pious forgeries of our Church
historians are enough to make a candid inquirer a thorough sceptic as to
all they say; but we may still give some credit to Eusebius of Caesarea,
the father of ecclesiastical history. He tells us he read his creed
before the Council of Nicaea. It was the same, he said, that he had
learnt in his childhood from his predecessors, during the time that he
was a catechumen, and at his baptism; and which he had taught for many
years as a presbyter and bishop. It had been approved of by the Emperor
Constantine, and would have been carried had not there appeared a
probability of its being accepted by Arius and his partisans--a
consummation which, in the opinion of the majority, would have had a
disastrous effect, would have promoted union, would have saved many from
the sin of schism, would have allowed the energies of the Church to have
been directed to the conversion of the world rather than to internal
squabbles, would have relieved Constantine from the stain and guilt and
shame of having recourse to the sword to repress religious opinion. The
Council of Nicaea cared for none of these things; all they wanted was
victory, and so the earliest Christian creed was rejected by the Church.
It was as follows:--
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things, both
visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God,
God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten Son, the
Firstborn of every creature, begotten of the Father before all
worlds, by whom also all things were made; Who, for our salvation,
was incarnate, and lived amongst men, and suffered and rose again on
the third day, and ascended to the Father; and shall come in glory to
judge the quick and the dead; and I believe in one Holy Ghost.
Believing each of them to be, and to have existed, the Father only,
only the Father and the Son, only the Son and the Holy Ghost, only
the Holy Ghost."
Instead of this, but on it, the Nicene Creed was framed, and this creed
is still the bond of union in all the Churches of the East. We have
corrupted it, and as Dean Stanley remarks, "every time we recite the
creed in its present altered form, we have departed from the intention of
the fathers of Nicaea, and incurred deprecation and excommunication at
the hands of the fathers of Ephesus." In the heart of London the Greeks
have a place of worship. You feel interested as you enter. In the
tongue in which you hear the Gospel there read, the Gospel was first
proclaimed. Peter, Paul, John, spoke just such language as that you
hear. Ever since the Master left the earth has Sunday after Sunday, and
year after year, this Greek Church met in Syria in remembrance of Him.
In many things the Church of Constantine was less assuming than that of
Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth. Where in our Prayer-book we have, "I
absolve thee," the Greeks say, "The Lord absolve thee." Where the
English Church says, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," the Greek more humbly
and Scripturally offers up a prayer for the Divine blessing. In other
ways also they differ: they have no organs; the congregation stands all
the time of service; their baptism consists of three immersions, and
laying on of hands; they administer extreme unction, offer prayers for
the dead, and allow infant communion; they have no organized hierarchy;
their clergy are married, and their laity have a considerable amount of
power. They pride themselves on their orthodoxy, and are very bitter
against the doctrine of the double procession--that is, that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
And now let us go to London Wall, of which the Pope, or head, is the Rev.
Narcissus Morphinos, a gentleman really courteous and sincere, and
indefatigable in the performance of his sacred duties. Of all the
chapels in London, surely this in London Wall is the most unique. As we
enter we face a recess, before which lamps are burning; in that recess is
a crucifix with a lamp burning over it. In this recess is a door which
is partly open, and between the door and the crucifix officiates the
priest at a small table. He wears a very rich cassock, and occasionally
has on his head a primitive-looking sort of hat, without a brim, and very
big. I fancy there are no poor Greeks in London. On our right is a
recess, in which are ladies elegantly dressed. On our left is a pulpit
very rarely used, and a table at which two clerks are seated. They seem
to have the performance of the service very much to themselves. There is
a choir in one of the side galleries. In his recess, before the altar,
the priest is engaged in praying and taking the sacrament; but every now
and then he comes out. A side door opens, and a lad in a white surplice,
holding an enormous lighted taper, appears. Then the priest comes from
the altar, and stands on the steps. It may be to swing the censer, or to
bring out the Gospels bound in silver, which almost all present come
forward to kiss; or it may be, in the course of the service, some one
wishes to communicate. Then, while the clerks are reading, the doors of
the altar are opened, and the priest appears with a cup in his hand,
which the communicant comes forward to receive. (The cup, it must be
observed, contains bread and wine.) Again the priest comes forward with
the crucifix, to which all bow; and last of all he comes forward and says
a few simple words of edification to his faithful flock, in number, I
should fancy, from two to three hundred. And this reminds us we have not
yet stated where they are. Well, they are exactly opposite the altar,
before which there is a vacant space well carpeted, and into which, on
one or two occasions in the course of the service, the priest descends.
The seats are beautifully carved, and are something like those in our
cathedral stalls. Each worshipper is well fenced in by himself; and, as
he stands all the time, he will find the sides very convenient for
resting his arms on. Each seat is beautifully finished, as the reader
can well imagine when he is told that the carving of each seat cost about
eight pounds about fifteen years ago, when the chapel was first opened.
There are no sittings appropriated to particular individuals, any person
coming takes the first he finds vacant. All expenses are paid by the
men, chiefly merchants in Finsbury Square, who subscribe on an average
for the cost of the service about twenty-five pounds a year. Two
gentlemen contributed eighty, and one as much as two hundred pounds, a
year. The annual income of the church is stated to be 1660_l._, and of
this 50_l._ or 60_l._ has to be paid to an English church over the way--a
grievance which the Greeks, as well they may, feel deeply. There is
another Greek church in London, that of the Russian Embassy,--that of
course being much smaller. It cannot, I should fancy, surpass in
neatness and finish this in London Wall. The Greek Church, Dean Stanley
tells us, has always been unfriendly to the arts. You would not think
so; the building seems just what it should be--handsome, ecclesiastical
in appearance, and yet plain. On the screen, behind which is the altar,
are paintings of the "Last Supper," "The Virgin and her Child," and a few
others, intended to denote to the eye of the worshipper the great fact
the worship has to commemorate. Pictures are used but as symbols, as
even words themselves are, of ideas needed for human salvation.
The Greek Church protests against anything in the way of doctrine not
found in the Bible. Surely it cannot claim the same sanction for its
rites and ceremonies. As each worshipper entered he made the sign of the
cross on his forehead and his shoulders and breast. This ceremony was
repeated several times in the course of the service, the priest on more
than one occasion doing the same; indeed, this seems to be the only way
in which the laity join in the service. They utter no responses, they
declare with one voice no creed, they raise no sacred chant or song;
otherwise, they stand as it were motionless and apart; everything is done
for them by the officiating priest. He comes between them and God. They
speak through him and by him; without him they cannot worship the Father
in heaven. Such is the theory of worship current in the Greek Church.
Thus was it when the Imperial purple was worn by Constantine fifteen
hundred years ago; thus it is in the reign of Queen Victoria, thus it
will be, we may predict, for the Greek Church is jealous of every iota of
its creed, _in secula seculorum_.
Well does a living writer remark, "Such as the Greek Church became on the
extinction of Paganism, such, or nearly such, she seems to be now. Her
missionary work has been narrow, her moral influence and control at home
small, and though she has preserved a rigid continuity of doctrinal form,
the principle of an ever-expanding and all-absorbing vitality has been
wanting; in great cities her prelates have too frequently been the slaves
of wealth and power, of courtly intrigue and political faction; in the
desert her monks have become dreamy and unpractical anchorites. No lands
reclaimed, no centres of agriculture and civilization created, no
literature preserved, no schools founded, no human beings raised to a
higher sphere of social action and duty, are to be set down to the
account of the Greek Church. She is a fragment of old Byzantine
civilization, as rigid and angular as the mosaics that still adorn and
seem to frown down from the walls of her churches."