EASTERN CHUECHES. 



277 



from one common original. It is indeed ex- 

 traordinary that the same nation should have 

 spread themselves to so wide an extent as to 

 take in almost a fourth part of the circumfer- 

 ence of the globe." The natives are of amia- 

 ble and hospitable but fickle disposition. Theft 

 is common, as it was in Cook's time. They 

 at first opposed the missionaries, but finally 

 became resigned to their presence, and em- 

 braced Christianity (1863-'65). On the de- 

 parture of the missionaries they forgot their 

 teachings, and no trace of the missionaries' 

 work now remains ; the people are absolute- 

 ly without religion of any kind. Their num- 

 bers, once ample, have been reduced by the 

 agencies of civilization to 67 men, 39 women, 

 and 44 children, 150 in all; with the pros- 

 pect, as in the case of all other Polynesian 

 tribes, of early extinction. Some years ago 

 500 were deported to Tahiti as laborers. The 

 missionaries took away 300 of them on leaving 

 in 1865. They sold the mission property to a 

 firm, the Maison Brander, which has devoted 

 the greater part of the island to pasturage, 

 owning, in 1883, 10,000 sheep, that yielded 18 

 tons of wool a year, and 400 cattle. The na- 

 tives raise poultry, which thrives remarkably 

 well. This remnant of people still choose a 

 chief of their own number by trials of strength 

 and courage, which now, as in their more for- 

 tunate times, they recognize as the only sub- 

 stantial proof of superiority. 



The origin of the extraordinary remains on 

 Easter Island must be ascribed to an epoch 

 prior to that of its occupancy by the Polyne- 

 sian race, the immigration and dispersion of 

 which among the Pacific islands took place 

 " certainly not later than the first century of 

 the present era " (A. Fornander, in " The Poly- 

 nesian Race "), and possibly much earlier than 

 this. Evidence is lacking to show that any 

 architectural or sculptural works of the kind 

 described have been made by any Polynesian 

 people, though such works remain in several 

 parts of Polynesia. Their objects were ap- 

 parently religious and monumental ; but it is 

 probable that further researches, like those of 

 Adolf Bastian ("Die heilige Sage der Poly- 

 nesier" and other important monographs), 

 will throw more light upon the origin of these 

 monuments of a prehistoric civilization. 



EASTERN CHURCHES. I. The Russian Orthodox 

 Church. The Russian Orthodox Greek Church 

 includes fifty-nine dioceses, which are adminis- 

 tered by sixty-one episcopal officers, of whom 

 three are metropolitans, seventeen archbishops, 

 and the rest bishops and assistant bishops or 

 vicars. The white or secular clergy number 

 111,000. The church-buildings consist of 636 

 cathedrals, 41,047 churches, and 13,877 chap- 

 els and houses of prayer. The monastic estab- 

 lishments comprise 385 male convents, housing 

 10,113 monks, and 167 female convents, main- 

 taining 18,830 nuns. The convents and church- 

 es together support 94 hospitals, while the con- 

 vents support 51, and the churches 619 homes 



for invalids and aged persons. The education- 

 al institutions include four theological acade- 

 mies, with 950 students; 53 seminaries, with 

 14,800 students; 185 schools, with 28,288 pu- 

 pils; 4,401 parochial schools, with 104,781 pu- 

 pils; and 11 schools for daughters of clergy- 

 men, with 1,003 pupils. Libraries, of which 

 172 were founded in 1883, are provided in con- 

 nection with 16,434 churches. About a mill- 

 ion rubles were spent during 1883 upon build- 

 ings for religious, charitable, and educational 

 purposes, and the Holy Synod had under con- 

 trol more than 30,000,000 rubles, which had 

 been raised for various educational, publishing, 

 and benevolent objects. The gifts of all the 

 convents and churches for the year amounted 

 to about 12,000,000 rubles. This money was 

 spent in the ornamentation of churches and 

 convents, the maintenance of the Holy Sepul- 

 chre, the propagation of Christianity among the 

 pagans, the support of Orthodox people in Pal- 

 estine, and assistance to Orthodox clergymen in 

 the Caucasus and in Poland. The entire budg- 

 et of the Russian Church for 1883 amounted to 

 18,800,931 rubles, of which sum the Holy Synod 

 spent of its own means more than 6,000,000, 

 while the rest was supplied from the imperial 

 treasury. In the matter of assistance to sister 

 churches in the East, the Church in 1883 paid 

 to the Patriarch of Constantinople about 20,- 

 000 rubles, to the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and 

 Alexandria 1,270 rubles each, and to the Patri- 

 arch of Antioch 1,500 rubles. Many Orthodox 

 churches and convents in outlying countries 

 have been provided by the Holy Synod with sa- 

 cred paraphernalia and money, and several theo- 

 logical schools are supported by Russia in some 

 of those countries. More than 500,000 rubles 

 have been contributed for building an Ortho- 

 dox cathedral in the Schipka Pass of the Bal- 

 kan Mountains. The Russian Missionary So- 

 ciety is supported by more than 7,000 members, 

 has branches in about thirty dioceses, returned 

 a capital in 1883 of 722,057 rubles, and an ex- 

 penditure for the year of 164,000 rubles, and 

 enrolled 1,252 Japanese converts to Christianity. 

 The Russian Missionary Society and the Rus- 

 sian Orthodox Brotherhoods together returned 

 in 1883 10,812 converts to the Orthodox faith, 

 of whom 4,796 were from paganism, 3,295 

 from the Raskolnik sect, 1,027 from Roman 

 Catholicism, 700 from Protestantism, 572 from 

 Judaism, 410 from Mohammedanism, and 11 

 from the Armenian church. The Orthodox 

 Brotherhood consists of more than thirty socie- 

 ties, established for moral, religious, and educa- 

 tional purposes, one of which is the translation 

 of the Bible and religious books into languages 

 of the non-Russian tribes of the empire. 



II. The (Ecumenical Patriarchate. The relations 

 between the Greek Church as represented in 

 the (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople 

 and the Porte were disturbed during much of 

 the year by questions growing out of the pro- 

 posed application in the empire of a scheme of 

 judicial reorganization and reforms the opera- 



