44 



PEOFESSOE SIE W. M. EAMSAY^ D.C.L., ON 



track and must have passed in 1072 under Turkish rule. 

 Later it was fortified by a Christian people, and though the 

 relation between the two was not entirely friendly, there is no 

 reason to think that it was entirely hostile. The Sultans tried 

 as much as was in their power to maintain the Christian customs 

 and Christian people. The hostility shows itself inasmuch as 

 each part is defended by separate fortifications. A new town 

 was made to ■ defend this lower town, and in the south-west 

 corner is one of the old churches — now the Imperial Church, 

 the Orthodox Eastern Church. We feather from this evidence 

 that the Church was very much closer to the hearts of the 

 people than the Empire which was too far off. It was the Church 

 that stood so close to the people, and guided and taught them. 

 At the same time the price had to be paid, and a good deal of 

 the old character of the Orthodox Church was sacrificed as it 

 adapted itself to tlie character of the people. The power of 

 writing became as rare in the East as it was in the West in the 

 dark ages. Even in the fifth century when one bisliop attended 

 the Council held at Ephesus in 449, to determine tlie views of 

 the Universal Church, he was obliged to appeiid his mark, and 

 get his name penned by anotlier person, as he did not know his 

 letters ! When even a bishop cannot write his name, we 

 can gather what was the ignorance of the people. The 

 inscriptions on the churches are the work of an uneducated 

 people. 



I will just conclude by recalling to your minds the fact 

 that this church whose history we have been following in 

 two or three isolated moments, — this oriental church is not 

 completely dead or lost, it lives as a religion of slaves, and may 

 and will revive among the people as education is restored. 

 The deterioration is marked not only by the want of education, 

 and means of writing, but in the architecture. The church 

 architecture down to the Turkish conquest continued to be in 

 the good old style, the plans excellent, but the work carried out 

 hastily. There is no love shown bv the workman, he is building 

 a church, and that is all ; there is no love for making the church 

 as beautiful as possible. The later churches produce the 

 impression of a decade of slaves and an epoch of ignorance, 

 and gradually as yoLi get further into the period of slavery, the 

 Byzantine architecture really disappears, aud in modern times 

 there are only the churches of an enslaved race. 



