"ghostly counsel and advice," but he is not told to give abject obedience to this direction. How different from such teaching as this! "The priest is Jesus Christ, who speaks to you and hears you. With what respect would you receive the counsel of an angel! The priest by his office is above the angels. He is with regard to you the extension of Jesus Christ."*

Self-government in reliance on God, with dutiful use of that which the Church dispenses, the Word of God and His holy Sacraments-that is the Anglican ideal. The Roman leaves out the self-government; the ultraProtestant, to use Dean Hook's phrase, leaves out the grace of the Sacraments. And have not we our characteristic failure? Do we not too often forget that self-government ought to mean a stricter carefulness and wariness, lest in ignorance we wander from the way, lest in wilfulness we let liberty become licence, lest while we rejoice in the fewness of the restraints laid upon us we forget to be loyally obedient to those commands there

are?

Such, then, seem to be the leading principles of the English Prayer-book, viewed in the three aspects in which it most concerns us, first and principally as a manual for public worship, secondly as a guide for our private devotions, and thirdly as containing those rules of a "Christian and virtuous life," which the Church of England lays upon her sons. Her ideal of worship is congregational and Scriptural, Catholic and primitive; she teaches us to place the glory of God before us as the supreme end, both of our devotional exercises and of active life; she bids us embrace within the scope of our intercessions the whole world and all classes of men; she prays earnestly for the reunion of Christendom; she would fain cultivate in us a type of religion that is at

* Avis Spirituels, p. 159 (10th edition, Paris, 1873).

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once humble and confident, penitential and eucharistic, chastened and fervent. And when she speaks with the authority of a mother laying command upon her children, she looks upon them not as infants whom she dare not leave alone lest they fall into mischief, but as sons who are growing up towards spiritual manhood in Christ, and are therefore to be guided into reasonable self-governing freedom, in reliance on the aid of God the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. And so, to quote the closing words of the latest written preface to the Prayer-book, “We have good hope that what is (in that Book) presented, and hath been by the Convocations of both Provinces with great diligence examined and approved, will be also well accepted and approved by all sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England."

P

VIII.

Relations with the Eastern

Churches

BY A. C. HEADLAM, B.D.

IN

N the formation of our religious opinions one of the main elements must always be the predominant religious systems with which we are acquainted. For many it may very likely, for some it must be the case that they never really have the actual experience necessary for even a moderately correct opinion. We are naturally attracted or repelled by what we are acquainted with, or by what is obvious. Now what may be true of individuals in many various ways is, to a certain extent, true on a larger scale of all Western Christians. There are certain facts which are clear, definite, and obvious. There is the existence of the Church of Rome, with the claims that it makes. There is the existence of all the varied Protestant bodies, both Continental and English-speaking. There is, for us, the existence of the Anglican Church, which, to some, in its position of a via media, may seem to combine the merits of both sides, to many appears as a somewhat amorphous, incoherent body which, because it carries no view to an extreme, seems halting and illogical. Yet these are not the whole facts of Christianity. There is another Church, or rather

EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

211

group of Churches, not very obvious to us in England, almost unknown to the majority, which yet from any careful inquirer into the character of Christianity must demand considerable attention, namely, the Eastern Churches. They are important both for their numbers and for their historical position. Eastern Christianity numbers probably 100,000,000 adherents, and embraces one of the most rapidly increasing races in the world, the Russian; while the Eastern Churches claim, and it is a claim which must at any rate be examined, to preserve unchanged the traditions of the apostolic Church, without any of the violent alterations which have undoubtedly characterised characterised Western Western Christianity. In examining, therefore, into the credentials and character of Anglicanism, it is reasonable to ask what are the bearings of Eastern Christianity upon its claims, and what are and have been its relations to the Churches of the East.

Eastern Christianity consists of two main divisions— the Orthodox Eastern Church, and the heretical or separated communities. The latter include the Armenians, who have never accepted, and possibly reject, the decisions of the Fourth General Council; the Copts of Egypt, the Jacobites of Northern Syria, and the Abyssinians, all of whom are definitely Monophysite in their creed; and the Nestorians of the mountains north of Mesopotamia, who are the remains of a Church, once large and important, which never accepted the decrees of the Third General Council. None of these bodies are very numerous; they are not remarkable for any great spiritual or theological power; and they are interesting chiefly as historical survivals, perhaps bearing witness in their isolated existence to a period before they separated, namely, to the early part of the fifth century, but by the very fact of their heresy clearly imperfect in their

traditions. We may use their historical evidence, if with some caution; we may sympathise with the tenacity with which they have preserved their creed, in spite of the centuries of persecution to which they have been exposed; we may do all in our power to help them; but to seek direct reunion with them until they are reconciled to the Eastern Church from which they have separated, or, at any rate, until they have cleared themselves from the charge of heresy, would be to violate just those fundamental beliefs which are accepted explicitly or implicitly by all orthodox Christians, Protestant and Catholic alike. We may be impatient at what seem to us now, and perhaps have become in reality, only verbal differences; but such impatience would only be productive ultimately of greater difficulties. It would help to stereotype rather than check division.

The orthodox Eastern Church is very different. Its size, at any rate, is imposing. It consists of the Four Eastern Patriarchates—Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem-of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus; of the national Churches of free Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Roumania, and Russia; and of 9,000,000 of orthodox Christians in the Austrian Empire. In creed, in rites, in discipline and traditions. all these Churches are almost absolutely identical. Their unity is complete; but owing to differences of history, of tone, and temper a broad distinction may be made between the Greek and Russian portions. Most of the Greeks are still subject to Turkish rule; all of them have been; and they have suffered much through misrule, misgovernment, and want of liberty. Their Church is Greek in language and character, exhibiting very strongly the characteristics of the nation. The Russian Church is also national, with all the strength and weakness that that The so-called Bulgarian schism may for our purpose be ignored.

*