while censing it and the sacred book and host which repose on it, with fragrant incense. The curtain drawn across the bēma,-sanctuary, or Holy of Holies,-answers to the altar rails in an English church. In a Greek church a regular wall with folding doors, called, from the pictures or icons which decorate it, the iconostasis, takes the place of the Armenian curtain. In a Latin church the side cells I have mentioned would be side chapels, but in an Armenian church there is, as a rule, but one altar, though, unlike the Greek, their religion allows of more than one. The ambon, or pulpit from which the prophecy, epistle and gospel, is read, is in the nave, to one side or other of the bēma, or centrally placed under the dome. Sermons also are preached from it, but do not form so integral and customary a part of the religious service as with us. The women are separated from the men, and keep themselves behind a railing in the narthex, or up in galleries if there be any. In Tiflis, however, and Calcutta, and in large towns generally, where they are not kept out of the way as in Turkey, they often stand or sit miscellaneously along with the men. In India, there are seats in Armenian churches as in English, but in Armenia never. All alike stand, or, if fatigued, squat on the floor. The walls are sometimes covered with sacred pictures, and, as in the Greek Church, images are forbidden. Before each picture burn candles and lamps; and most private devotion consists, as in Greece and Russia, in swaying oneself to and fro in prayer, with frequent prostrations on the pavement before these holy pictures. From an almost forgotten work (Smith and Dwight, "Missionary Research in Armenia"), I quote the following description of the celebration of High Mass in the church of the monastery of Edschmiadzin. As having myself witnessed the function, I can vouch that their account is just, while at the same time it is unprejudiced by that lack of sympathy with the doctrine and arrangements of an Eastern church, which disfigures much of their book, and shows that they had not left their Methodism behind them in America.

"The dressing of the officiating bishop was the first important part of the Mass, and a distinct prayer or meditation is said for every article of dress put on. But the ceremony being private, we witnessed only the chanting, which was performed at the same time in the church. He then entered in a splendid flowing mantle of heavy gold cloth, with a broad upright collar stiff with gold, and a mitre of the same rich materials, ornamented in front and behind with a sun of brilliants set in gold. Having washed his hands before all, read a summary confession of his sins, and received absolution pronounced by an assistant, he retired again to the sacristy to prepare the wine and the bread for consecration. A little wine, not mixed with water as in the Latin Church, is poured into a chalice; a thin cake of bread, not leavened as in the Greek Church, and stamped with various sacred symbols and letters, is placed on a small silver plate nicely fitted to the top of the cup. Each part of the ceremony has its appropriate prayer with the burning of incense; but a curtain drawn before

the sacristy veiled the whole from our view. The time taken up was long, and during it the congregation were entertained by nothing but the monotonous chanting of a large company of deacons and clerks.

"At length the Bishop, leaving the elements behind, came forward with a pompous procession and the burning of incense, and proceeded in a circuitous course through the congregation to the great altar. After a series of prayers, a deacon read the lesson of the day from the gospel and the Nicene Creed; and then, with the whole body of assistants, went for the elements. They were brought carefully veiled, accompanied by several pictures, and followed by a procession. The Bishop, whose mitre had in the meantime been removed by an assistant, took them and prayed: 'Accept this offering from us, and perfect it for the mystery of the body and blood of Thine only-begotton Son; grant that this bread and this cup may be a means of the remission of sin to those who taste.' The congregation being in the meantime exhorted to salute and kiss each other for the appearance of Christ, a deacon, taking the salutation from the Bishop, went and saluted the Catholicos, and from him the ceremony passed through the whole congregation, each one bowing this way and that over the other's shoulder, as if to kiss him.

eat.

"The consecration followed. In performing this, the Bishop blessed the bread by making over it the sign of the cross, gave thanks by looking upward, brake it by picking out a crumb, and repeated the transubstantiating words, 'Take, eat, this is my body,' lifting it at the same time above his head for the congregation to worship, instead of giving it to them to The ceremony for the wine was similar. The whole was performed privately, with the back of the officiator towards the congregation, and not a word or sign intended for them to hear or see, except the elevation of the elements. Prayers for the efficacy of the Mass to be applied to the communicants, to all believers, whether living or dead, and especially to any for whom a particular remembrance had been requested, followed. Then the Bishop, having first dipped the bread in the wine, took it between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, and holding the cup also between the palms of his hands turned to the congregation and cried, 'Holy, holy, let us with holiness taste of the honoured body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which, descending from heaven, is divided among us This is life, hope, resurrection, propitiation, and remission of sins.' Turn ing, he replaced the elements on the altar, and a splendid curtain, large enough to veil the whole front of the sanctuary, being drawn, prevented us from witnessing what followed, except the chanting of the assistants in a semicircle before the altar. But according to the Canon, he had first to break the bread into four parts, and kiss it with weeping; and then, after sundry prayers and supplications, to eat the bread and drink the wine with fear and trembling, saying, 'May Thy incorruptible body be life unto me and Thy holy blood a propitiation and remission of sins.' The curtain being then withdrawn, a deacon cried, 'Approach with fear and faith, and with holi

ness commune'; and as the Bishop turned round with the elements, the clerks on the part of the people cried, 'Our God and our Lord has appeared unto us; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.' Eight or ten women came forward and communed; and bits of unconsecrated bread were distributed, as is customary also in the Greek Church, among the rest of the congregation, as they dispersed."

The Armenian Liturgy is immediately derived from the Greek Liturgy of Cæsarea; Saint Gregory the Illuminator, as we saw, was educated at Cæsarea, and returned thither for episcopal ordination at the hands of the Greek bishop, Leontius. The Cæsarean Liturgy immediately descended from the Greek Liturgy of St. James, which was in the main older, according to Dr. Neale, than A.D. 200. From the Greek Liturgy of St. James flowed also, but along another line of descent, the Syriac Liturgy of St. James, the archetype of the prayers offered up by Christians all over Syria and Mesopotamia. From the Greek Liturgy of Cæsarea flowed beside the Armenian,-in part, at least,-that of St. Chrysostom, which in the use of the Orthodox Greek Church has supplanted all other forms of divine service.

The Armenians are by the Greek and Latin Churches esteemed heretics, because they do not clearly distinguish in their Credo between the Divine and the human natures of Christ. The following is the clause of their creed: "We believe that one of the three Persons, God the Word, was begotten of His Father before all worlds: that in time He descended into the mother of God, the Virgin Mary; that He took from her blood and united it with His Godhead; that He abode nine months in the womb of the most pure Virgin; and that He was perfect God and perfect man, in spirit, in intellect, and in body: one person, one aspect, and united by one nature." These admissions that the Virgin's human blood was mixed with the Godhead, and that all Christ's faculties were conjoined in a single nature, and the further article that Christ's body, conjoined with His Godhead, lay in the grave, constitute the heresy of Monophysitism. So great an authority, however, upon what constitutes orthodoxy, as the late Dr. Neale, considers that though the words quoted are suspicious, yet the Armenians did not mean to express an heretical thought. He is therefore ready to admit them within the pale of orthodoxy.

The Armenians, like the Greeks and Latins, have seven sacraments. Baptism involves trine immersion of the child, and is immediately followed by Confirmation (or anointing all over by the priest with chrism, or holy oil blessed by the bishop) and also by,-what is strange to us, though general in the Eastern Churches, the administration of the Eucharist. The priest administers it by dipping his finger in the chalice wherein the bread has been steeped in the wine, moistening therewith the child's lips. Protestants commonly attribute a mystical value to Baptism, and believe that an unbaptized child goes direct to hell. If Baptism really be,-what it is according to this view,-an opus operatum, efficacious towards the individual's

salvation without any accompanying conscious spiritual change on his part, why should not the chrism and consecrated elements have a similar efficacy? Herein the Eastern Churches are only logical; and the Protestants in this, as in many other points in which they differ from the Christianity of the earlier centuries, strain at a gnat after swallowing the camel. With the chrism are believed to descend on the child the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit; and in Armenia a mere priest is instrumental to it, whereas in the English Church only a bishop, though he is so, not by anointing with oil, but by mere laying of his hands on the young person's head.

The Eucharist is, among the Armenians, given to the laity in both kinds, as in the English Church. In the Latin, as you know, sacerdotal pretension withholds it in one kind from laymen. The Armenians use pure wine, without water, and steep the bread in it, using unleavened bread, where we in England use ordinary bread. The words of institution "Take, eat," etc., along with an accompanying invocation to the Holy Spirit, are believed to transubstantiate the elements. Penitence is another sacrament; and auricular confession, according to an anciently prescribed form and catalogue of offences, is in vogue. Fasting is general and rigorous among Armenians as among Greeks, not even eggs, butter, milk, or cheese being allowed during the frequent and lengthy fasts. Ordination of priests, Marriage, and Extreme Unction are the remaining sacraments, which are administered much as in the Greek Communion.

The Armenian doctrine as to the last judgment is based on John v. 28– 29 and Matt. xxv. 46. They pray for the dead, that their sins may be remitted, but have no purgatory or system of indulgences.

The hierarchy consists of bishop, priest, and deacon. Bishops are either archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, or vartabeds, i.e., doctors. The priests who are ordained for cures of souls must be married when ordained, but may not marry a second time. They dress in white, and cannot become vartabeds or bishops. The higher clergy-bishops, vartabeds, archimandrites, etc.-dress in black, with huge peaked cowls, and are under vows of celibacy. They live chiefly in monasteries. The order of vartabedsteachers-is noticeable. They enjoy the episcopal prerogatives of approv ing of articles of faith, of preaching in church (the ordinary clergy cannot preach in the East-only bishops do so), of judging and deciding suits and disputes. They are often more learned than the bishops, who are so left nothing to do but to confer holy orders. Galanus, a Vatican missionary in Armenia of the early seventeenth century, remarks, that for the lay Armenian mind the Vartabed represented the person of Christ, who was called Rabbi, or Master. He admits that they had done more than any other class to keep alive Christian faith and learning among the victims of Ottoman oppression, yet he condemns the institution as an innovation in the Church, and quotes the Second Epistle to Timothy iv. 3, 4 against it: "For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but after their own lusts they shall heap to themselves teachers, having

itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall turn aside unto fables." It is intelligible that even the Uniat monks of Venice, though they are in communion with the Latin Church, yet cherish no very friendly memory of this Vatican propagandist, Galanus.

In the time of the Crusades an unsuccessful effort was already being I made to incorporate the Armenians in the Latin Church. In the 5th century, the Golden Age of Armenian literature, not a single Latin Father of the Church had been translated into Armenian ; but from the time of the Crusades onwards most of the works they translate at all are translated from 1 Latin. Thus we find the works of St. Bernard and of St. Thomas Aquinas and of other medieval schoolmen. In 1307 the Catholicos of the Armenians at the Council of Sis induced the Armenian King of Cilicia to recognise the Pope; and Boniface the VIII. sent to the king a banner to fight the Saracens withal. Then grew up a legend about the Armenian Church analogous to that of the donation of Constantine, representing that the earliest Armenian and Georgian patriarchs had received their power of loosing and binding on earth from the Pope Sylvester early in the fourth century. The anxiety of Rome to gain the submission to herself of the Armenian National Church found expression in many forged documents, of which I select the following from Galanus as a specimen.

"EPISTLE OF LOVE AND CONCORD BETWEEN CONSTANTINE, SILVESTER, AND TIRIDATES; TRANSLATED AT ROME AT THE ASKING OF THE REV. LORD LEONARD ABEL, BISHOP OF THE CITY OF SIDON. "By the will and power of the Consubstantial Holy Trinity of Father incomprehensible, of His only-born Son, our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, and our Liberator the Holy Ghost. This is the will, based on God and unchangeable, indited by command of Augustus, the great Constantine, ever victorious, King of kings, Emperor of the world of Rome, and of the Romans; who, by power of the true God and glorious cross, governs the entire world from the limits of the vast ocean to the rising sun. Also by the command of the great Pontifex of the Romans, successor of Peter and Paul and of the Apostles, holder of the keys of heaven, to bind all nations and loose in heaven, and presiding over the whole Church of Christ. Summoned by the Holy Spirit the king of the Armenians Johannes, called also Tiridates, and with him the witness to Christ and active confessor Grigorius, illuminator of those in East and North, our well-loved brothers in Christ, these good friends of our lofty primacy, most trustworthy leaders and sharers of our high counsel—these have come hither, to behold our city of Rome, mistress of the West and East, inheritor of the holy and chief Apostles, and to visit their Vicar the venerable Pope, and the glorious prince lately converted to the Christian faith, and the great Empress Helena. Wherefore with due pomp we went out to meet the Lord of Ararat and his band of compatriots, and, having first interchanged greetings with him, we entered the Church of the Holy