RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD. THE ARMENIAN CHURCH. By F. C. CONYBEARE, M.A., Late Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxon. THE Armenians are at the present day, with the exception, perhaps, of the Jews, the most widely dispersed of all races. Wave after wave of invasion has broken over their country, and carried sword and fire into their valleys, with the result that famine has driven them forth in groups of ten and a hundred families at a time to seek sustenance among better-governed communities. I am afraid, also, that some of their emigrations have been caused by their own internal religious dissensions. Thus, owing to the Paulician heresy in the eighth and ninth centuries, thousands of them were removed to Bulgaria, with results momentous for the religious history of Europe. Centuries afterwards, the invasion of Tamerlane drove new colonies of them to take refuge in Poland and Russia; and Shah Abbas, the despot of Persia, transported thousands of them to Joulfa, near Ispahan, at a later date. In the age of Queen Elizabeth we find the north of India overrun by their merchants. The old cemetery at Agra is full of their tombs, dating back to the reign of Akbar, and in the eighteenth century they built churches in Calcutta and Madras, and set up printing presses; and in the south of India, in the last century, they lived in the best houses, built roads and bridges, and appropriated to themselves the sacred places of the early Nestorian Christians. In the fourteenth century they had churches in China; and to-day the greatest number of their refugees is to be found in the Dutch East Indies. The largest contributions in support of the patriotic paper which, appearing in London and Paris, has done so much in the last few years to let in light upon the persecutions to which the race is subjected in the Turkish Empire, proceed from Java. In England, we have colonies of them in Manchester and London; in France, in Paris and Marseilles; in Russia, in Moscow and Rostof on the Don. Everywhere they are traders; and in cities like Tiflis and Constantinople, the greater part of the shops are kept by them. The invasions which have devastated the country were invited by its geographical position. It has always been on the highway from East to West. It is an elevated plateau from three to five thousand feet above the sea, bordered on the north partly by the Black Sea from Trebizond to Batoom, partly by the land of Georgia; on the south, its mountains sink insensibly into the great plains of Mesopotamia. On the east, it approaches nearly to the Caspian Sea; on the west, it is limited by Cappadocia and the mountains to the east of the river Halys. In this plateau three great rivers take their rise-the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Aras or Araxes. Of these the latter is the most eastern; and in its basin, bordered on the north by the great range of the Anti-Caucasus, and on the south by the range of Ararat, lay the ancient cities of Erivan, Artaxata, and Edschmiadzin, the centres of the old Armenian religion and civilization. South of the Ararat range there is the vast lake of Van, on whose southeast shore, as we know from the cuneiform inscriptions found there, was once a great political centre. On the southern edge of Armenia lay the Syrian cities of Edessa and Samosata, fertile in ancient times of religious heresies and orthodoxies. Who the primitive inhabitants of this region really were, it is difficult to ascertain. Following the Biblical legend, the Armenians believe that it was the original home of the human race; and they still pretend that on the summit of Mount Ararat, overhanging their convent of Edschmiadzin, there lingers the ark of Noah. However, they will admit that this mountain has only borne the name of Ararat in recent times, and that its ancient name was Masis. The lonely majesty of this vast snowy summit, rising out of sunburnt plains, and limiting the horizon for hundreds of miles from whichever side you approach it, may well have given rise to the supposition that it is the mountain upon which the Ark rested. An American missionary, Mr. Eli Smith, who explored Armenia in the year 1828, has a passage of touching simplicity on this point. He says, "Two objections are made to the supposition that Scripture refers to this mountain, when it speaks of the mountains of Ararat. One is, that there are now no olivetrees in its vicinity, from which Noah's dove could have plucked the leaf. And it is true; so far as we can learn, that that tree exists neither in the valley of the Koor, nor of the Aras, nor anywhere nearer than Batoom, a distance of seven days' journey. But might not a dove make this journey in a day? or might not the climate have been warmer then than it is now?" The Armenians believe not only that this is the mountain on which the Ark rested after the flood, but that the ark still exists on the top; though rather from supernatural than from physical obstacles no one has yet been been able to visit it. "A devout Vartabed once tried to ascend the mountain. While yet far from the top drowsiness came upon him, and he awoke at the bottom in the very spot whence he had started. Another attempt resulted only in the same miraculous failure, whereupon he betook himself more fervently to prayer, and started the third time. Again he slept and awoke at the bottom. But now an angel stood before him with a fragment of the ark, as a token that his pious purpose was approved and his prayer answered, though he could never be allowed to reach the summit |