The Religious Life of LondonRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Religion
The Religious Life of London
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
London (England) -- Religion; Religious thought -- England -- London
The annual income of the church is stated to be 1660_l._, and of
this 50_l._ or 60_l._ has to be paid to an English church over the way—a
grievance which the Greeks, as well they may, feel deeply. There is
another Greek church in London, that of the Russian Embassy,—that of
course being much smaller. It cannot, I should fancy, surpass in
neatness and finish this in London Wall. The Greek Church, Dean Stanley
tells us, has always been unfriendly to the arts. You would not think
so; the building seems just what it should be—handsome, ecclesiastical in
appearance, and yet plain. On the screen, behind which is the altar, are
paintings of the “Last Supper,” “The Virgin and her Child,” and a few
others, intended to denote to the eye of the worshipper the great fact
the worship has to commemorate. Pictures are used but as symbols, as
even words themselves are, of ideas needed for human salvation.
The Greek Church protests against anything in the way of doctrine not
found in the Bible. Surely it cannot claim the same sanction for its
rites and ceremonies. As each worshipper entered he made the sign of the
cross on his forehead and his shoulders and breast. This ceremony was
repeated several times in the course of the service, the priest on more
than one occasion doing the same; indeed, this seems to be the only way
in which the laity join in the service. They utter no responses, they
declare with one voice no creed, they raise no sacred chant or song;
otherwise, they stand as it were motionless and apart; everything is done
for them by the officiating priest. He comes between them and God. They
speak through him and by him; without him they cannot worship the Father
in heaven. Such is the theory of worship current in the Greek Church.
Thus was it when the Imperial purple was worn by Constantine fifteen
hundred years ago; thus it is in the reign of Queen Victoria, thus it
will be, we may predict, for the Greek Church is jealous of every iota of
its creed, _in secula seculorum_.
Well does a living writer remark, “Such as the Greek Church became on the
extinction of Paganism, such, or nearly such, she seems to be now. Her
missionary work has been narrow, her moral influence and control at home
small, and though she has preserved a rigid continuity of doctrinal form,
the principle of an ever-expanding and all-absorbing vitality has been
wanting; in great cities her prelates have too frequently been the slaves
of wealth and power, of courtly intrigue and political faction; in the
desert her monks have become dreamy and unpractical anchorites. No lands
reclaimed, no centres of agriculture and civilization created, no
literature preserved, no schools founded, no human beings raised to a
higher sphere of social action and duty, are to be set down to the
account of the Greek Church. She is a fragment of old Byzantine
civilization, as rigid and angular as the mosaics that still adorn and
seem to frown down from the walls of her churches.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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