The Religious Life of London. James Ewing Ritchie
whose merits preponderate to life, and those whose merits and demerits are equal are delayed until the day of atonement. The first ten days of their new year are ten days of repentance, during which the Israelites are to repent and confess their sins, pray to the Almighty to write them down in the book of life, and grant them a happy new year. On the seventh day every one has a branch of willow procured under the superintendence of the officers of the synagogue, and all repair there with branches in their hands. The last of these days is the Day of Atonement, and is religiously kept by every Jew. On the 15th is the Feast of Tabernacles, on which the Jews are expected to live in booths, but in this country the rule is not strictly observed. In April is the most important of all the festivals – that of the Passover and of unleavened bread, when the doors of the house are left open for all, even the very poorest of the poor. In June is held the feast of Pentecost, to commemorate the giving of the law. The synagogues on that occasion are decorated with flowers, and in their houses the tables and floors are also dressed with flowers, sweet briar, and other fragrant herbs. A conscientious Jew must have a life of intense labour and self-denial, nor can he evade his duties nor impose them on another. How welcome to them of old must have been the Master’s kindly words, “Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find peace unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” To appreciate these words aright you must fancy yourself a Jew, weighed down to the earth by the daily routine of painful ceremonial and the rigid requirements of inelastic law.
CHAPTER IV.
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, Irenæus, 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 Nicæa, 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 Cæsarea, the father of ecclesiastical history. He tells us he read his creed before the Council of Nicæa. 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 Nicæa 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 Nicæa, 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