WHAT a small part of Christendom is Methodism, twenty-eight millions out of four hundred and eighty. At least as small is the proportion of Presbyterians and Anglicans, and not much larger is Lutheranism with its forty millions, and these are the leading forms of Protestantism. How we measure the universe with a yard-stick! With many the circle of interest is the limit of their home, or at most the boundary of their parish. This is not, however, always owing to narrowness of spirit, but to narrowness of view. Many a child looks out from its home, and leaning on the gate stares at the distant hills and innocently wonders what is beyond. Many a Christian not conversant with Church history, except to elevate into mythology the names of Luther and Wesley, looks out at the remote past of mediæval history, or at the dim but massive outlines of Oriental Christianity, and wonders what is beyond those mountains. It is well to know that behind those mountains are living men and women like ourselves, with like conflicts and like sources of strength, acquainted with the same Christian truth, living for the same heaven and feeling the thrill that comes to every Christian heart from the sound of that precious name, the talisman of earth's woes, Jesus.

Out of that Eastern obscurity one man at least comes to us with overtures of peace. We meet and greet his message with joy, and in true Wesleyan fashion we say, "If thy heart be as mine, give me thy hand." Cyrillus Lucaris-that is, Cyril, son of Lucar -was born about 1570 in the Island of Crete. He bore a name honoured in Eastern history by the distinguished lives of Cyril of Jerusalem, who died in 386; Cyril of Alexandria, who died in 444, and the eminent missionary to the Slavs, Cyril of the Ninth Century. In 1593 he was ordained a priest of the Greek Church,

He

and afterwards made an Archimandrite.
He soon became rector in the Russian
Seminary of Ostrog in Volhynia.
thus for a short time had connection with
the "Holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic
Church of Russia," which has similar
relations to the "Holy Orthodox Catholic
Apostolic Oriental Church" of Turkey,
and to that of Greece, as exist between
American, British and Canadian Meth-
odism, these three Churches being one in
faith and historical antecedents, but sepa-
rate in organization.

In 1595, Cyril went as Exarch to Poland to oppose the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The policy of the latter was that, by alliance with Oriental Churches, Protestantism, which was then in its infancy, might be crushed beneath the upper and the nether millstone of Latin and Greek prelacy. But the Russian Church had no liking for the alliance. Since the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 declared the equality of the See of Constantinople with that of Rome; since the Latin Church tampered at Toledo in 589 with the Nicene Creed by the Filioque addition; since the learned Photius in the ninth century boldly combated the theology and claims of the Western Church; since the two sections of Christendom had taken with such fervour and frequency to anathematize each other; since the Union Council of Florence, in 1439, served only by misunderstanding and recriminations to increase the spirit of disunion and occasioned the cruel murder of three Eastern Patriarchs on their return home by their co-religionists; since Russia has persisted, then as ever since, in persecuting the Roman

Catholics of Poland, forcing them to an attitude of hatred and exasperation, there was little heed given in Cyril's time to Western overtures for union between the Greek and Latin Churches, no more indeed than is given to-day to the pious letters of Leo XIII. sent Eastward to restore the unity of the Church.

That Cyril, in 1595, opposed the advances of the Latin Church was a circumstance that sealed his doom, by making him an object of Jesuit intrigue which shadowed him to his death. In 1602, he was elected Patriarch of Alexandria, and in 1621 he was elevated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the highest office in Eastern Christendom.

In his Western travels he had frequent interviews with the Calvinistic Reformers of Switzerland and Germany. This increased the activity of Jesuit intrigue at Constantinople, which was so successful that in 1623 he was banished to the Island of Rhodes, but he was soon reinstated, through the mediation of the British Ambassador, whose presence at the court of the Sultan was then, as it has been ever since, one of the best guarantees of toleration and protection of the persecuted, whether Armenians or Americans, whether Nestorian Christians or missionaries of the American Board. England's peremptory demand was met, and Cyril was replaced in the high position in which his Catholic spirit could have the grandest field of operations, the Patriarchate of Constantinople. He resumed his study of Calvinistic theology, and his correspondence with leading Protestant theologians in the West, and in 1629 he wrote his Confession in Latin, and in 1631 in Greek. It was published in both languages in Geneva in 1633.

A little delay here in outlining this creed may not be out of place. It illustrates how Protestant theology has impressed a large-souled, honest, brave man, brought up amid the antiquities and ceremonialism of Oriental faith. Cyril's creed is divided into eighteen chapters, with each doctrine supported by alleged scriptural authority. Eight chapters contain views held by his own Church, including the Trinity (with the procession of the Spirit in the conciliatory form of the Council of Florence, "procedens a Patre per Filium," not Filioque as at Toledo), the Divine Creation and Government, the Fall of Man, the Twofold Nature of Christ, Faith in General, and Baptismal Regeneration.

The remaining ten chapters are decidedly Protestant. Chapter X. asserts the supreme authority of Scriptures, denies the infallibility of the Church, rejects the Apocrypha as authoritative, and commends the free circulation of the Scriptures. Chapter XIII. asserts in the Protestant sense that man is justified by faith and

not by works. Chapter XIV. denies man's freedom of will before regeneration. Chapter III. accepts the Calvinistic doctrine of the divine decrees. Chapter XV. maintains that there are but two sacraments in opposition to the view of the Greek Church that there are seven. Chapter XVII. denies the doctrine of transub. stantiation, and teaches the Calvinistic view of a real but spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Chapter XVIII. denies the doctrine of Purgatory and Post-mortem Probation. In these ten chapters there is the abandonment of points which are largely common to Greek and Latin faith.

The difference between the Greek and the Latin Churches is one of degree rather than of substance, in which the latter has carried out its dogmatic conclusions much beyond the former. Both believe in the infallibility of the Church, but the Greek, like the Anglican, indig. nantly rejects the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, a dogma which has done more than all other influences in our times to estrange both Greek and Anglican from the Roman Catholic Church. Both Churches, we think, are violating the Second Commandment. The Latins pay homage to both pictures. and images; the Greeks,

ever since the Seventh Ecumenical Council, do not have anything to do with images, but give the most devout consideration to pictures. Both these Churches maintain an uncompromising prelacy, and the genuineness of the Greek succession is sometimes admitted by the Latins, but the condition of priests is very different. Greek priests, who are generally sons of priests, are required to marry, although not allowed a second marriage in the case of the death of the wife. The Latins, on the other hand, at different periods in different countries, have adopted

celibacy, which is now almost universal, the marriage of priests being still allowed only in some small Oriental communions which have made submission to Rome. Both Churches believe in Purgatory, but the materialistic views in eschatology so common in Romanism, and to some extent in Protestantism, are not regarded with favour in the Greek Church, which has more abstract views of the state of the departed, similar to those of Origen, the apostle of Restorationism. Both Churches make

tradition co-ordinate with Scripture, but the Greek Church in our times favours to a gratifying degree the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the circulation of the Word of God. Both Churches believe in transubstantiation and the seven sacraments, although the approach to the number seven was made much earlier in the West than in the East. Baptism is administered in the East by immersion. In the West, in general it is by sprinkling, though all the leading Churches, including the Anglican and Methodist, following the Latin, admit of either dipping, pouring or sprinkling.

From this analysis some observations readily suggest themselves. First, The Protestant element in Cyril's teaching had much to do in leading the Greek Church more into harmony with the Latin. When Cyril advocated Protestant doctrines, at once the Eastern conservative spirit was aroused and in a few years expressed itself strongly in opposition to what is called evangelical faith. Thus appeared in 1643 the most common Eastern Confession, viz.: that of Mogilas, which was first adopted by the Church of Russia at the Holy Synod of Kieff, and afterwards signed by the four great Eastern Patriarchs, viz., of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria.. In 1672 a similar symbol was drafted by Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem. In the same year, and in 1691, the Synod of Constantinople published creeds having the same object in view. Of these the Confession of Mogilas was most generally received. But all of them had one object in common, and that was to condemn Cyril and to mediate between Protestantism and the errors of Romanism. These creeds generally met the needs of the Orthodox Eastern Church until 1839, when the Catechism of Philaret appeared. This is the Patriarch whom Dean Stanley saw in Moscow in 1857, and whom he praised for his ability as a preacher and for his gentleness and dignified courtesy, associating his name, however, with a reactionary movement to medieval sanctity similar to that represented by Pusey in England.

Another observation suggested by the foregoing theological analysis is, that the first reaction from the errors of sacerdotalism,