will be overturned, the patriarch will become a mere primate among the other metropolitans of the nation, and the patriarchate be reduced to a simply honorary dignity like that of the Western patriarchs of Venice and Lisbon. If the Czar becomes the master of European Turkey, the same result will take place, with this only exception, that the See of Constantinople will become the primatial see of the Russian empire, and the Russian hierarchy will take the place of the effete Byzantine clergy, which they are far more worthy, from their learning and strict morality, to occupy. What is to be the political and ecclesiastical destiny of the East, and Russia, its gigantic infant, who can foretell, without prophetic gifts? If the Russian emperors prove that they are destined and are worthy to begin anew and to fulfil the grand design of Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, Pulcheria, and Irene, by creating a thoroughly Christian empire of the East, we shall rejoice to see them enthroned in Constantinople. If they are destined to restore the cross to the dome of St. Sophia, and to renovate the ancient glory of that temple, desecrated by Christian infamy more than by the Moslem crescent, we shall exult in their achievement. If new Chrysostoms and Gregories shall rise up to efface the dishonor of their predecessors, we will forget the past, and give them the homage due to true and worthy successors of the saints. We have no desire to see the Church of Constantinople degraded, or the Eastern Church humiliated. The Oriental Church is orthodox and catholic in its faith, and its several great rites are fully sanctioned and protected by the Holy See. The heresies which are found among a portion of its clergy are personal heresies, and have never been established by any great synod, or incorporated into their received doctrinal standards. We do not condemn the great body of its people of even formal schism, but rather compassionate them as suffering from a state of schism which has been forced on them by a designing and unworthy faction, and is perpetuated in great part through misunderstanding, prejudice, and national antipathies. The causes and grounds of this unnatural state must necessarily come up among them very soon for a more thorough investigation. Study, thought, discussion, and contact with Western Catholicism, as well as Western Protestantism and rationalism, will compel them to place themselves face to face with their own hereditary and traditional dogmas; and either to be consistent with themselves, and submit to the supremacy of the Roman See, or to give up their orthodoxy and open the doors to a religious revolution. We cannot deny that the latter alternative is possible, although we are sure that Dr. Pusey, and men like-minded with him, would deplore it as a great calamity. We trust it will be otherwise. The Easter morning of resurrection, which {16} we are now celebrating, dawned for us in _the East_.