042 The Greek Church. ' [Dec. 



of the landscape ; and beauty and defence were alike combined in the 

 location of these powerful brotherhoods. 



The monks are still of two classes, the caloyer or priest, and the lay- 

 brother. The caloyer's round of devotion is severe. He spends life in read- 

 ing the psalter and making genuflections and prostrations, which must be 

 gone through, to the number of three hundred in every twenty-four hours. 

 He thus fills up the first two hours of the night, and the first two after 

 midnight. At four in the morning he has matins till the dawn. The 

 day is spent in toiling over the never-ending psalter. The laybrothers 

 do the drudgery of the convent — buy, sell, plough, and reap. But few 

 of those convents have been suffered by the Turks to be rich. The 

 twenty convents of Mount Athos pay but 1000 dollars a month, or 

 2,300/. a-year to the Sultan. 



There is one redeeming feature in the Greek discipline. The secu- 

 lar, or parish clergy, are permitted to marry, with only the restriction 

 that the priest shall marry but once, and then not a widow. This may 

 have preserved the priesthood from the total alienation which exists 

 between the clergy and laity of the Romish church ; and from the 

 fierce eagerness of spiritual subserviency which has made the Romish 

 clergy in every land rather subjects of the Pope than of the king. The 

 oppression of the Turks was sevei-e; but this, and we thank God for 

 his deliverance of a Christian people, is at an end. By various contri- 

 vances they contrived to lay claim to the chief church revenues. 



The revenue of the patriarch, who resides in Constantinople, is 

 made up in a considerable degree of the property of archbishops and 

 bishops dying childless. The contributions of the people are occasion- 

 ally given on his election. The bishops are supported by some endow- 

 ments, and by offerings of the visitations twice a-year. The general 

 government of the church is in the four patriarchs of Constantinople, 

 Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandri.i; the first having the supremacy. 

 He is elected by the majority of votes of the metropolitan and neigh- 

 bouring bishops, and receives his institution from the Sultan, to whom 

 he makes presents, generally, to the value of 20,000 or 30,000 dollai-s; 

 a sura which sometimes precipitates the unfortunate prelate's death, as 

 the Sultan sliall feel inclined for anotlier presentation fee. The patriarch 

 nominates his brother patriarchs, they being subsequently balloted for 

 by the bishops, and instituted by the Sultan. But the IMaronites, Jaco- 

 bites, and Copts, have each a patriarch of their own. 



The Russian Greek church is freed from many of the grosser obser-' 

 vances of the Hellenic church ; Peter the Great having subjected the 

 discipline, monasteries, and priesthood to a general reform. 



The prospects of Greece are now brightened. Whatever may have 

 been the purposes of Russia in the interference with the affairs of 

 Greece, her conquest of the Turks has extinguished the supremacy 

 of a horrid, bloody, and rapacious system. The eyes, and we will 

 hope the benevolence of Christendom, will be turned upon this land, so 

 famous of old for i^s glories, and in later ages for its misfortunes. With 

 our literature, let us send the great enlightener, the Bible ; and Greece, 

 which has been by almost the visible hand of Providence, torn from the 

 jaws of the IMahomedan wild beast, may be once again holy and pure ; 

 the seat of genius, and the still more illustrious throne of unstained 

 Christianity. 



