their own book of canons permits it in case of necessity. But why look for any manifestation of the learning, wisdom, or Christian principle which ought to characterize prelates from men who have bought their places for gold, and who sell every episcopal see to the highest bidder? The simony and bribery which have been openly and unblushingly practised by the ruling clerical faction of the Turkish empire since the time when the monk Simeon bought the patriarchal dignity from the sultan, make this page of ecclesiastical history one of the blackest and most infamous in character. As we might expect under such a system, virtuous and worthy men are put aside, and the episcopate and priesthood filled up from the creatures and servile followers of the ruling clique. Such men naturally disgrace their holy character by their immoral lives, and bring opprobrium on the Christian name. The history of the patriarchate of Constantinople, therefore, since the period of Gennadius and the first few successors who followed his worthy example, has been stained with blood and crime, and darkened by scenes of tragic infamy and horror. We will relate one of the most recent of these, as a sufficient proof and illustration of the heavy indictment we have made against the patriarchal clergy. At the time of the Greek revolution, the patriarch and principal clergy of Constantinople received orders from the sultan to use their power in suppressing all co-operation on the part of the Christians in Turkey with their brethren in Greece, and to denounce to the Ottoman government all who were suspected of conniving at the insurrection. Their political position no doubt required of them to remain passive in the matter, to refrain from positively aiding the revolutionists, and also to suppress all overt acts of the Christians under their jurisdiction against the government. Nevertheless, as a people unjustly enslaved by a barbarous, anti-Christian despotism, they owed nothing more to their masters than this exterior obedience to the letter of the law. They could not be expected to enter with a hearty and zealous sympathy into the measures of the government for suppressing the revolution; and, indeed, every genuine and noble sentiment of Christianity and patriotism forbade their doing so, and exacted of them a deep, interior sympathy with their cruelly oppressed brethren who were so nobly struggling to free their country from the hated yoke of the Moslem conqueror. The really high-minded Greeks of the empire did thus sympathize with their brethren. The ruling clergy, however, manifested a zeal for the interests of the Ottoman court so _outré_ and so scandalous that it not only outraged the feelings of their own subjects, but, as we shall see, aroused the suspicions of the tyrants before whom they so basely cringed, and brought destruction on their own heads. They accused a great number of Christians of complicity in the insurrection, seizing the opportunity