And this holds true not only of the Orthodox Church but of all the other schismatic churches as well. They would, all of them, retain their peculiar rites and customs; they would hear the same language in the liturgy that has been consecrated by long centuries of use. The Copts would retain the presanctified liturgy of St. Mark and continue to use the venerable Alexandrine rite in the Coptic language. The Jacobites would celebrate the sacred mysteries in Syriac according to the age-old ritual of St. James. The adherents of the Orthodox Church would still hear their strange chant echoing “backwards and forwards through the gleaming inconostasis, while the deacon waves his ripidion over the holy gifts and the clouds of incense are borne through the royal doors. Still the people would crowd up for the antidoron and the kolybas, dive for the cross at the holy lights, kiss each other on Easter Day and dance for the Forerunner’s birth, while the psalms from the Holy Mountain would still sound across the Ægean Sea.”[349] It is because the venerable eastern rituals and liturgies, in their several ancient languages, represent some of the most sacred traditions of the Church that Pope Leo XIII in his noted encyclical _Orientalium Dignitas Ecclesiarum_ praises them so highly and applies to the bride of Christ the words of the Psalmist: “The queen”--the Church--“stood on Thy right hand in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety.”[350] As I observed, during my travels in the Near East, the frightful ravages that schism has everywhere caused, and noted the growing tendency of many to return to “the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God,”[351] I repeated with ever renewed fervor the supplication in St. Basil’s liturgy: Πãνσον τα σχίσματα των ἐκκλησιῶν--“Grant that Church schisms may cease.” And never did I in fancy more frequently hear reëchoed the touching words of Our Saviour before his passion: “I pray ... that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us.”[352] CHAPTER XIV NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS _Here thou behold’st_ _Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,_ _Araxes and the Caspian Lake; thence on_ _As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,_ _And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay_ _And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth;_ _Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall_ _Several days’ journey, built by Ninus old,_ _Of that first golden monarchy the seat,_ _And seat of Salmanassar, whose success_ _Israel in long captivity still mourns._ MILTON, “Paradise Regained.”