nominally for the recovery of the patients, but really to put prayer to a test. This is simply tempting God. Had Professor Tyndall seriously wished to know the value of prayer, he could know it from the assurance of God Himself revealed in Holy Scripture and in the tradition of mankind; and if he would not hear the voice of God thus revealed, it is not likely he would recognize it in such Brahminical jugglery as this. Besides, God will not be moved to signify His will to captious incredulousness. "You ask for a sign," said our blessed Lord to the Pharisee, “but a sign you shall not get unless the sign of Jonas." 2d. The test is based on a false supposition, namely, that God will always grant in answer to prayer the specific favor prayed for. 3d. How could it be known that prayers were not offered up also for the patients who were treated in the hospital before the special ward was set apart for the prayer test? They may not be public prayers; they may not be as many; but they may be more efficacious. The power of prayer does not proceed on the principle of mechanics, that a system of levers will do more work than one. The humble prayer of one may avail more before God than the united prayers of a thousand. Then, if the percentage of recoveries turned out to be higher in the special ward than it was before, would Professor Tyndall, we wonder, believe in prayer on the strength of his own test? Perhaps the light of science may reveal to him, in the meantime, some new physiological law that brought about the high percentage of cures. We ask, may not the result of the prayer-test possibly be this: If the percentage of cures under the test happened to be lower than usual, prayer was found out to be useless? If it turned out to be higher, it was owing to a complicity of physiological causes and circumstances, but not to prayer? In the first event, the result told against prayer; in the second event, it did not tell for it. IN THE RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH. N the year 1839 there was, in the heart of the Oxford movement, a dear friend of Mr. Newman's, a brother of Lord Selborne, recently Lord Chancellor of England, who had ardently embraced the notion of a Christendom broken into three unequal portions, not absolutely severed from each other, yet very imperfectly united. These were the Roman, Greek and Anglican Churches. To the mind of Mr. Palmer, then a Fellow of Magdalen College, there was something particularly attractive in the quaint, antique, poetic and oriental forms of the Russian Church. He saw in it a multitude of long-established types and symbols, sacramental in their nature because consecrated to the service of religion, and teeming with instruction in the mysteries of the faith. He desired to be admitted into communion with this vast GrecoRussian society, and before leaving England he fortified himself with documents from the hands of Dr. Routh, the head of Magdalen College, and placed himself in communication with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Such a proceeding may at the present moment appear to be the result of a singular delusion; but that also it appeared to Mr. Palmer himself as time went on, for in 1855 he was received into the Catholic Church, and repudiated for ever the supposed catholicity of the English Convocation and the Russian Synod alike. He had for some years been cruising about in Anglican waters for the discovery of "signs of catholicity," and had fancied he found even there what the people of England certainly could not find, an apostolical succession, the real presence, an altar and a priesthood; how much more, therefore, would his imagination find the Russian waters full of these catholic signs of the presence of Christ and the saints, the living sacraments, the covenanted gifts of Grace. It was in this frame of mind that the young Oxford examiner found himself in St. Petersburg, in the midst of a church-going population. Very different was their mode of attendance from that of Protestant or Catholic. It was not with the Protestant bustle and eagerness for the instruction of preachers, nor with the Catholic devotion in the adoration of the Host, but rather in distinct and innumerable acts of reverence, prayer and praise, towards saints, angels or icons. A great deal had to be done. Scarcely a limb was at rest, pious gesticulations were abundant, there were bowings and crossings, icons were kissed, the ground was touched, sometimes audibly thumped with the forehead, and wax lights were set up to burn, while soft and most peculiar music filled the air and soothed the thoughts. There was neatness around and magnificence; the people seemed to be in earnest, they all confessed and communicated once a year, and many of the more devout four times, once at each of the four fasts. It was not, therefore, without pleasure that Mr. Palmer listened to that sweet and solemn singing of the Hospodi pomi lui (Kyrie eleison) in the Church of the Ascension, and saw the splendid pictures lit up, while the sharp treble voices of the boys mixed with the deeper tones of the older singers of the congregation. It is a question, he said, of association of ideas, and rites that are very different may by custom be alike hallowed to the mind and the means of bringing it into happy intercourse with the Eternal Spirit. There is something unique in the richness and softness of the music in some of the Russian Ambassadors' chapels and churches at which the Emperor or members of the Imperial family are present. Five and twenty years ago the music in the Russian Ambassadors' chapel at Rome-we think it was in the Corso-was remarkable for its sweetness and peculiar character, unlike anything we had ever heard before. Lady Bloomfield tells us in her diary of February 1st, 1846: "I went to a private rehearsal of the choir of the Emperor's chapel, and I was surprised and delighted with the beauty of the music, which certainly exceeded any I had ever heard. I only regretted that the music was performed in too small a room for the voices to be sufficiently appreciated; the effect would have been so much grander had I been at a greater distance from the choir. There were about eighty-six voices altogether, which was not the full complement; but with his usual magnificence, the Emperor sent 12 of the finest voices to Rome, that on her arrival there the Empress might have her own choir. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the voices, and their gradual swelling and decreasing was very striking. . . . The finest voices come from White Russia; but whenever any one throughout the Empire has an unusually rich voice he is engaged, and certainly I never heard such voices-from the deepest diapason bass to the highest tenor. Bartniansky's music is very impressive. The words are Slavonic; and those which are sung during the administration of the Holy Communion are in the following sense: 'Let us not approach Thee, O Lord, in this Thy holy Sacrament, like the traitor Judas, who betrayed Thee with a kiss; but as the thief upon the cross, let us, with deep humility and unfeigned sorrow, confess our sinfulness, and cry, Lord, remember "The singing in churches here," says Mr. Palmer in another stage of his visit, "is certainly very pleasing, suited to the sense of the words, moving and devout. ... Where there is a choir of singers, some parts of the services are sung to music 1 Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life, vol. i. pp. 179–181. arranged in parts. This music, which is based upon that of the books, is not printed. It has much in it borrowed from the Italian. Some time ago a certain first-rate Italian singer, being in the kapella or practicing-room of the choir of the Winter Palace, was moved to tears by what they were singing when she came in, though she did not know a word of Russ, nor was told till afterwards that what she heard was part of the office for the dead. The singings for the Resurrection at Easter inspire the whole congregation with the most lively joy; it is impossible not to feel transported; the responses to the priest's announcement, 'Christ is risen!' are made with an indescribable buzz or hum (cum fremitu) running over the whole church. Fortununatoff's mother had a great wish to die in Easter week, and this is a popular feeling." But here we must offer excuses to our readers if we appear to be tricking out an effete schism in attractive colors or endeavoring to recommend the system bequeathed to men by Photius, and repaired for a brief period only at the council of Lyons in 1274. Five hundred bishops were then present, and a great number of inferior prelates. At the close of the fourth session, the Pope, with gushing tears, intoned the Credo in Latin, which being done, the former Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanus, began it in Greek, and the "filioque" was chanted twice over. That happy reunion was not destined to endure, and for many ages the sectarians of the Greek and Russian Churches have ranged themselves under the Patriarch of Constantinople, or the Patriarch resident at Moscow, or the Emperor of Russia himself. Cut off from the centre of unity, and refusing to the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter his due honor and obedience, this vast body is deprived of innumerable blessings and left comparatively barren and desolate where it might have abounded in the gifts of grace. Nothing that we may say to show that it still lives, that it is still a Christian organism, that it has in it much that is venerable and lovely, must be interpreted as meaning anything more than that it may be restored and partake fully of the benedictions which belong to the earthly Eden and the Garden of the Lord. It is necessary to state this very distinctly, so that all misinterpretation may be avoided, because Mr. Palmer, whose steps we are about to follow, was possessed of other ideas, and was travelling in Russia in the belief that he was in the midst of Catholics and that he had become one himself by the ministrations and sacraments of the Anglican Church. We shall rejoice, however, as he rejoiced, at every token of good, every gleam of Catholic beauty we can discover around us in the far North, and hope that the dream of reunion in which he indulged will ultimately be realized. The rule of the old Patriarchs has gone by, and their power has gradually been accumulated into the hands of the Tsars. They had obtained considerable political influence, and Peter the Great, being jealous of this, omitted to appoint a successor to the Patriarch of Moscow in 1700. The interregnum lasted for 21 years, and then the Patriarchate was formally abolished and the “ Holy Synod” took its place. Since that time the control and regulation of the Russian Church have been committed to its keeping. Peter obtained from the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Constantinople and Alexandria, assembled in council, a recognition of this new arrangement and of the right of the Russian Sovereign to a complete protectorate over the Church of the country. It is he who nominates all the members of the Holy Synod, Archbishops, Bishops, and Archimandrites, with their lay assessors, and the supremacy of the Tsar has been established without any breach of communion with the "Orthodox Greek Church."1 But the national Church is not, by this means, so secularized as to cease to be dogmatic. It still plumes itself upon its points of faith. You enter the magnificent chapel of a foundling hospital, and you find a great number of children, singing all together the Creed in the "grace" before their dinner, and producing a volume of the sweetest sound. You desire exact information respecting their tenets, and you are referred immediately to "The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church, A.D. 1643," "The Confession of Dositheus or the Eighteen Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, A.D. 1672," and the " Longer Catechism of the Russian Church, prepared by Philaret, revised and approved by the Most Holy Synod, A.D. 1839.”2 A year or two before Mr. Palmer visited St. Petersburg, Mr. Blackmore translated from the Russ "The full Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Church" (of Russia), and English travellers now have not the least difficulty in obtaining information on the subject of the teaching of the Russian clergy. They profess to stand on the ground of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the tradition of the undivided Church, from which they maintain that the Eastern Church has never swerved-an assertion which, of course, the Latins altogether dispute. Their faith is not dead. An officer observed to Mr. Palmer that they have an unspeakable consolation in their belief that the Blessed Sacrament is really Christ's Body and Blood. Religious books do not abound among them, but Mr. Palmer has given, in his Appendix, a list of as many as forty-four such works, besides the Synodal Collection of Fathers, translated into Russ, which are sold in St. Petersburg and Moscow. But there 1 The Russian Empire, by S. B. Boulton, 1882, pp. 43-44. |