Then, too, there is ever before them the terror-inspiring specter of Fragistan--Europe--which portends disasters innumerable. It is the horrid old phantom of the land of mists and shadows which has been haunting the East since the Trojan War--which reappeared with all its horrid accompaniments of rapine and death during the invasion of Alexander the Great and still again during the repeated and long-continued campaigns of the Crusaders. These days of unalterable woe have so seared the hearts and memories of the peoples of Western Asia that, like the Trojans who feared the Greeks even when bearing gifts, they have an inborn distrust of the Feringees,[332] of their Churches, their schools, their laws, their governments. It is because the Holy See is so thoroughly cognizant of all the fears and jealousies and animosities of the divers Eastern Churches and because she fully realizes the importance which they severally attach to their _millet_ that she has always been so prudent and considerate in her dealings with them and so disposed to conciliate them and remove everything that might excite suspicion or distrust. Always yearning for a return of the misguided children who so long ago left her fold, she is ever ready to make any reasonable concession, so long as it does not affect the deposit of faith of which she is the divinely appointed custodian. Hence it is that, in her eagerness to further the cause of the reunion for which she has always so ardently longed, she has, in her supreme wisdom, ever been ready to allow each Church and each _millet_ to retain its own laws and customs, rites and liturgy, language and hierarchy. And it is because of this wise and benevolent policy that recent years have witnessed the return to Rome of so many thousands of Eastern schismatics--often whole dioceses at a time--to the venerable Mother Church from which they had been lured by heresy and schism in the long ago. So far, then, as the Eastern Churches mentioned are concerned, it would appear from the foregoing pages that the day is not very distant when, in great measure, heresy shall be adjured and schism healed. THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES Just as it is not true to speak of an Eastern Church, so it is still less true to speak of an Orthodox Church. For, whereas the Eastern Churches we have considered are only seven in number, the Orthodox Churches are no fewer than sixteen. But in their origin a very marked difference is to be noted between the Orthodox and other Churches of the East.