ments, decided that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. To this decision the Eastern church has never submitted; not so much because it disliked the new doctrine, as for the reason that it would not yield to the dictation of a rival power. It does not appear that the Greek church has anywhere denied the essential equality of the Son with the Father; the Nicene creed settled the doctrine of the person of Christ; and indeed, the famous filioque clause was not inserted with reference to that doctrine, but as part of a certain unintelligible theory respecting the Third person in the Trinity. Those who would convict the Greek church of looseness in doctrinal matters, may say that in the Arian controversy, at a much earlier date, it took sides against Athanasius. But how could this be, since Athanasius has been, up to the present day, one of the four great fathers in the calendar of that church? Greek Christians have never disputed, and still abide by, the decisions of the council which condemned the Arian heresy. If the Eastern bishops favored Arius at all, it was not because they liked his theory, but for the sake of differing from the bishop of Rome, who led the opposition to him. It was from this same jealousy, as we are driven to believe, that other contentions about doctrine and forms of worship arose, in process of time. When the Latin church decided that only unleavened bread should be used at the Eucharist, the Greek church decided to use leavened bread and diluted wine. The see of Rome decreed that no priest ought to have a wife; whereupon the see of Constantinople decreed that priests must be married men. When the Occidentals began to worship images and pictures indiscriminately, the Orientals determined to have pictures only as objects of religious worship. The Greek

1 Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Athanasius, and Gregory Nazianzen are the Greek fathers; to whom a fifth, Cyril of Alexandria, is sometimes added. A famous representation of the four may be seen at Venice, in the church of St. Mark.

2 Only the parish priests are required to marry; nor are they allowed to marry a second time. Among the bishops, and other higher orders of the priesthood, celibacy is enjoined.

We give here the final adjustment of the matter. During the controversy on this subject, the two churches changed ground more than once.

cross differs in form from the Roman, having all its arms of the same length; a difference which the traveller is often reminded of in the construction of Russian churches. Papal avarice invented the doctrine of purgatory, and hence no Greek Christian will ever believe it. Rome took the Scriptures from the common people, and therefore the Eastern church, thanks to the spirit of rivalry, leaves the Bible in the hands of the masses. Such are a specimen, if not a summary, of the questions in doctrine and religious practice, which have been debated between the Latins and the Greeks.2 The various phases of the warfare, and the details of its nature, need not be given here. Each reader may find them, scattered throughout the pages of Neander, Gibbon, and Mosheim. These differences were not the cause, so much as the effect, of the separation of the Greeks from the Latins. They were the ripening fruits of an alienation which had germinated ages before. We must not suppose that great scholars, and orators, and military captains, and the sovereigns of empires, were foolish enough to spend their lives in settling such questions as these. Their contentions had a deeper source; a cause which gives dignity to the long-continued struggle. These straws, tossed to and fro and against each other, did not originate the mighty currents in which they floated; and while we keep in view the real sources of the conflict, we can watch its progress without losing our respect for the combatants.

The division of the early church into two parties, began in the antipathy of races. It seems to be a natural law, that the various tribes of men may not blend save within certain limits. Commerce and literature have overborne this law

1 It is proper to state here, that other causes combined with the ecclesiastical jealousy, in producing the above named differences. Nearly all the innovations of the Romish Church were made subsequent to the decisions of the council of Constantinople, in the year 754. This was the last council in which both the Eastern and Western party were represented, to whose decrees the Greek church submits. The council called next after this was partial to the Latins; and the Greeks, in denying the authority of this and following councils in the West, may, with some show of reason, plead their schismatic character.

2 The Latins and Greeks differ respecting the theory of transubstantiation ; though the precise nature of the difference is uncertain.

somewhat, in modern times; but it still makes itself felt in various ways. May we not regard it as one of those wise. provisions of the Creator, by which he counteracts the centralizing tendency of lust of power, and scatters the human family abroad into all parts of the earth? It is very difficult for a Frenchman and Englishman, even at this day, to understand each other. The two nations have lived side by side for ages. They maintain a constant intercourse. Their political interests have often been identical. They have formed alliances, joined banners in the day of battle, and exchanged royal courtesies. Still they are heterogeneous. It is not easy for them to preserve friendly relations. AngloSaxon blood and Gallic blood are not yet sympathetic; and we may doubt if they ever will be. The genius of France differs from that of England. It is a demand of nature that the two people should have, in some respects, different customs, different governments, and different forms of worship. It is not likely that the Millennium will make them, in all respects, exactly similar. The wisest agreement they can ever come to, on these subordinate points, is to agree to differ. Now it was this want of national sympathy, as it seems to us, that lay at the bottom of the strife between Greek and Latin Christianity. If Constantine, after rebuilding Byzantium, had cast a line which should separate his Asiatic from his European subjects, that line would have fallen far West of his new capital. The Roman spirit had withdrawn from the East, tempted by the mines and virgin soil of Britain, Spain and Germany. It cared but little for the exhausted provinces beyond the Adriatic.

Look at that Western type of mind: it was brawny, resolute, and grasping; caring but little for the elegances of life; even in its luxuries, masculine and wilful; its favorite amusement, the fights of gladiators. The Roman, of the age of Constantine and previous, was trained to the profession of arms; and he delighted in that profession, not only because it opened the shortest road to power, but because he had a natural fitness for it. He drank in the spirit of conquest from the maternal breast. He grew up with an iron

heart and will, and with thews and sinews to match them. Winter campaigns were his glory, pitched battles his pastime. Nothing but Ultima Thule could stay the flight of his victorious eagle. In its social form, the Western spirit was sullen and domineering. It had never been brow-beaten. It was accustomed to having its own way. It was stern and dictatorial. Opposition might easily provoke its wrath, but could never turn it from its purpose. The Latin literature of that day, so far as it represented the national spirit, had the same stately, warlike, and determined tone. Its patriotism was as narrow and pompous as in a more classic age. Toward other nations it was savage and overbearing. Mars was the divinity it worshipped, its inspiring genius and its patron god.

What sympathy could Oriental mind have with such a people as this? The Greek, of the age we are now considering, was in nearly everything the opposite of the Roman. The substratum of his character had less iron in it. He was not so practical and energetic as his Western neighbor. He was disinclined to martial pursuits, loving rather to lead an easy life, amid social refinements and pleasures. His culture was highly aesthetic. His tastes all bordered on effeminacy. Elegant leisure was his beau-ideal of good fortune. He loved to philosophize, dream, and imagine. Of course he was repelled as often as he looked Westward. He despised the rough martial Roman, as a barbarian who had no idea of elevated spiritual pleasures. He could never forget his country's history-classic Athens, voluptuous Corinth, stern Sparta; Homer, Plato, Thucydides; Parnassus, Delphi, and Helicon. Rome had nothing like this to boast of; or if she had, she was indebted to this for it. The language of the Greek Christians differed from that of the Latins. It was copious and flexible; adapted to the versatile, etherial genius of the Oriental; full of such capabilities as a Roman would never have occasion for. This antipathy was sharpened and kept alive by another fact:

1 "Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit." - Horace.

The Greeks were a conquered people. Their laws were given to them by a nation to whom they felt superior. The yoke of Rome galled their fastidious necks. To bow before a power which they had always regarded as barbarous, was too much for human nature. They felt somewhat as we might suppose a poet to feel at being placed under the control of a savage. Now, putting these things together-unlikeness of national spirit, a different culture and language, pride of history, and that hatred which the conquered always bear toward their conquerors-taking all this into the account, the contest between the Greek and Latin Christians ceases to surprise us. It was as natural as that Ireland should resist all attempts to bring it under the domination of the English church. This struggle has been political rather than religious, at least in its remoter causes. It has not been a contest between Protestantism and Catholicism, so much as between the victors and the vanquished. The union of the Eastern and Western churches, in the same external organization, was unnatural, the result of force rather than affinity. They might hold the same doctrine, as they did, and still do, substantially, but they could not work together with any harmony. They were constantly jostling each other. There was friction as long as there was coöperation. Tastes and measures were perpetually clashing. These misunderstandings go to show, that the idea of a visible catholic church is preposterous. Such an idea seems to be opposed to the providence of God. He has made human nature the same everywhere, in its main features; yet so that races, nations, and individuals often differ irreconcilably in things of minor importance. They are so much alike that one religion may answer for them all; and so much unlike, through the influence of secondary agencies, that they naturally practise that religion under a variety of forms. The Greek could not be a Latin, nor the Latin a Greek. They were not enough alike, even where they were truly regenerate, to work side by side in a single ecclesiastical harness, and adapt their piety, in all its phases, to the same unvarying model. If the attempt had never been made thus VOL. XV. No. 59.

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