Mahometan went to Jerusalem, and strove to temporize as well as he could betwixt the angry Churches. His great difficulty was to avert the rage which the Greeks would be likely to feel when they came to know that the firman was. not to be read; and the nature of his little stratagem showed that, although he was a benighted Moslem, he had some insight into the great ruling principle of ecclesiastical questions. His plan was to inflict a bitter disappointment upon the Latins in the presence of the Greek priesthood, for he imagined that in their delight at witnessing the mortification of their rivals, the Greeks might be made to overlook the great question of the public reading of the firman. So, as soon as the ceremonial visits had been exchanged, Afif Bey, with a suite of the local Effendis, met the three Patriarchs, Greek, Latin, and Arminian, in the Church of the Resurrection just in front of the Holy Sepulchre itself, and under the great dome, and there he made an oration 'upon the desire of his Majesty the Sultan to gratify all 'classes of his subjects,' and when M. Basily and the Greek Patriarch, and the Russian Archimandrite were becoming impatient for the public reading of the firman which was to give to their Church the whole of the Christian sanctuaries of Jerusalem, the Bey invited all the disputants to meet him in the Church of the Virgin near Gethsemane. There he read an order of the Sultan for permitting the Latins to celebrate a mass once a year, but then, to the great joy of the Greeks, and to the horror of their rivals, he went on to read words commanding that the altar and its ornaments should remain undisturbed. 'No sooner,' says the official account, were these words uttered, than 'the Latin, who had come to receive their triumph over the 'Orientals, broke out into loud exclamations of the impos'sibility of celebrating mass upon a schismatic slab of 'marble, with a covering of silk and gold instead of plain 'linen, among schismatic vases, and before a crucifix which 'has the feet separated instead of one nailed over the 'other.' Under cover of the storm thus raised, Afif Bey perhaps thought for a moment that he had secured his

escape, and for awhile he seems to have actually disentangled himself from the Churches, and to have succeeded in gaining his quarters.

"But when the delight of witnessing the discomfiture of the Latins had in some degree subsided, the Greeks perceived that, after all the main promise had been evaded. The firman had not been read. M. Basily, the Russian Consul-General, called on Afif Bey, and required that the reading of the firman should take place. At first the Bey affected not to know what firman was meant, but afterward he said he had no copy of it; and at length, being then at the end of his strategems, he acknowledged that he had no instructions to read it. Thereupon M. Basily sent off Prince Garan to Jaffa to convey these tidings to Constantinople in any Arab vessel that could be found, and then hurrying to the Pasha of Jerusalem, he demanded to have a special council assembled, with himself and the Greek Patriarch in attendance, in order that Russia and the Orthodox Church might know once for all whether the firman had been sent or not; but when the meeting was gathered, Hafiz Pasha only made a smooth speech on the 'well known benevolence of his Majesty toward all classes 'of his subjects, and that was all that could be said.'* So the Greeks, though they had been soothed for a moment by the discomfiture of their Latin adversaries in the Church of the Virgin, could not any longer fail to see that their rivals were in the ascendent, and it soon turned out that the promise to evade the delivery of the keys was not to be faithfully kept.

"The pressure of France was applied with increasing force, and it produced its effect. In the month of December, 1852, the silver star was brought with much pomp from the coast. Some of the Moslem Effendis went down to Jaffa to escort it, and others rode out a good way on the road that they might bring it into Jerusalem with triumph; and on Wednesday, the 22nd of the same month, the Latin Correspondence,'

Consul Finn to Earl of Malmesbury, October 27, 1852. part i., p. 44.

Patriarch, with joy and a great ceremony, replaced the glittering star in the sanctuary of Bethlehem, and at the same time the key of the great door of the church, together with the keys of the sacred manger, was handed over to the Latins."*

The Russian Government was right therefore in viewing this conflict as a religious one, and declared truthfully that it took up arms in defense of the national religion. The Russians evidently believed this to be true, and the Russian soldiers were fired with religious enthusiasm in addition to their love of country.

These are dangerous elements to cope with, especially when an army thus excited is scientifically directed, and supplied with every weapon of destruction known to modern war. This was sufficiently shown by the wonderful defense of Sebastopol. But it was declared that the Russian Government imposed upon the people, and without cause maddened them with a fanaticism whose only purpose was to stimulate them for the conflict.

Consul Finn to Earl of Malmesbury, Dec. 28, 1852; but see Mr. Pisani's note, p. 106.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE EASTERN WAR.

The idea was contemptuously scouted that the struggle was in any sense to be regarded as a religious war. But notwithstanding these confident assertions, the facts in the case, as they will appear to any candid observer who will view the present in the light thrown over it from the past, will disclose a religious aspect to this contest as clearly marked as its commercial phase, and even more important. Russia is guilty of no falsehood when she asserts that the war was directed against her national faith. Such were not the motives of England; as stated in a preceding chapter, she was swayed by commercial considerations almost exclusively, holding herself indifferent alike to the Greek Church, Romanism, or Mohammedanism; or rather choosing, as she has deliberately avowed, that the power of the Papacy should be revived in Europe under France, than that Russia should not be humbled.

The real character of the war can not be fully understood without a careful study of its religious bearings, and of the present religious aspect of Europe, and this investigation should include at least the outline of the history of the Greek and Latin Churches. Whoever undertakes to explain "the Eastern Question" without giving a prominent position to the relations of these churches to each other, will only deceive himself and others. It belongs in part to the quarrel of the Ages between the East and the West.

The history and character of the Greek Church are com. paratively little known to the mass of the American people. Far removed from the theater of its life, we have had little occasion to study its nature or its movements.

With Protestantism and Romanism only before our eyes, it has scarcely occurred to us that there is still another branch of the original Church which has not only been an important actor in the history of the past, but occupies a prominent place in the present, and must from its numbers and power influence largely the future. We have, and with good reason, been chiefly interested in the movements of the Roman Catholic Church, whose emissaries swarm around us, intent here as elsewhere, upon schemes for the overthrow of all power which stands opposed to Rome. We have been fully employed in defending our institutions, our liberties and the faith of our fathers, from the Jesuits and priests that fill our land with their intrigues, and little thought has been bestowed upon the Greek Church, and little has been known of it aside from the facts communicated by our missionaries, who have come in contact with it at Constantinople and at Athens.

These, however, are but fragments, and deeply corrupted ones, of the ancient body, while it is the Russian Church, fifty millions strong, which has taken its place among the great religious Powers of earth, and which is now in reality the Greek Church. Its character must be studied not at Constantinople, nor at Athens, but at home; for the policy of the Russian Church will in the end give direction and character to all. Because there has been persecution at Constantinople and Athens, it is ungenerous and deceptive to assume that the Russian Church is actuated by a similar spirit, and so endeavor to arouse against her the hatred of the world. Let the Church of Russia be judged by its

acts.

A majority of readers will probably be better prepared to understand this portion of our subject, if their attention is first directed to some prominent facts in the history of the Greek and Latin Churches, and the Eastern and Western