IT was amusing to read, some time ago, Mr. Cuninghame Graham’s complacent reflection upon Western civilisation. Fresh from a sojourn among the Moslems of Morocco, he said that they possessed many excellent qualities, but their genius for lying had not been developed. “As liars,” he said, “they could not compare with the Westerns.”

According to this vivacious observer, the saying ex Oriente lux may have as its companion a by-word, out of the West, Falsehood. This is certainly true when certain Westerns, unfortunately by no means few in number, take upon themselves the self-imposed task of writing on the East. There is often a certain Gargantuan sublimity about the fictions of the Occident which commands at least the homage of our wonder. But we marvel still more at the ostrich-like voracity with which these monstrosities are bolted by the “well informed public.” As Credo quia impossibile seems to be the favourite watchword of many Englishmen, when Russia is concerned, so Baron Münchausen, who seems to have come to life again, with additional deformities, under the alias “E.B. Lanin,” naturally selected my country as the field of his sickening romances. The clever French saying “a beau conter qui vient de loin” ought to be put instead of his initials.

It is not of Munchausen, however, that I am writing, but of a much more distinguished writer, who possesses the somewhat rare capacity of occasionally speaking the truth. I refer to Monsignor Vanutelli, a Roman ecclesiastic of some eminence, who recently travelled all the way from Odessa to St. Petersburg in order to persuade the Russian nation to submit to the yoke of the Bishop of Rome. It was a wild goose errand, no doubt. But, after all, it was not much more mad than the visit which my ingenuous friend, Mr. Stead, paid to the Vatican to convert the Pope to the Salvation Army. Vanutelli did not convert Russia, but he could not help making certain discoveries, which I am glad to place on record for the benefit of those who have never been in my great country, or who have been too blinded by prejudice to recognise the most obvious facts. If you remember that the following sentences were penned by an emissary from Rome, a high ecclesiastic of the Papal hierarchy, whose one dream was to subdue Russia to the Roman See, you will appreciate their significance:—

“Nowhere,” Padre Vanutelli says, “is the title of ‘Holy’ so true an expression of the reality as in speaking of Russia. In that country Christianity is not simply tolerated or permitted; but it is official and dominant and bound up in the very heart of the people. . . . In Russia, Orthodoxy (Pravoslavie) forms as it were the very essence of their being, their highest ideal in the past as in the future, and their greatest glory in the present.

“I cannot understand how it is that so many persons who visit Russia, write about it afterwards without alluding to the main characteristic of the people. Without an appreciation of their religious aspect any description of Russia must be only incomplete. The Christian idea is predominant everywhere, and nowhere does Christ reign to such an extent as in Russia.”

Still it is satisfactory to find evidence so strong voluntarily tendered by a witness so distinguished, and who is so obviously free from any partiality for the system which he so honestly describes. It is not surprising that this cultivated visitor should have found his longing to annex Russia to the Holy See increase with every additional visit to its cities. To have to admit that the most Christian nation in Europe most unanimously repudiated the authority of the Bishop, who aspires to be universal shepherd of the Christian fold, was so bitter a pang to this Roman observer that he endeavours to assuage the poignancy of his grief by reflecting that the schism of the Russians was due solely to political considerations, and never was formally sanctioned by the people or by the Church. Of course not. You cannot sanction, formally or otherwise what does not exist. There is no schism in Russia. The schism is elsewhere. But as Monsignor Vanutelli comes from that “elsewhere” it would be difficult for him to admit the Orthodoxy of our Church. To escape from the dilemma in which he was placed by the spectacle of the most Christian nation repudiating most strenuously the authority of the Pope, he clings more and more desperately to his theory that but for political considerations the Russian would all become Romans. To give some kind of a substance to this fantastic delusion, Monsignor Vanutelli prints what he professes to be a report of his conversation with Mr. Pobedonostzeff, but which is one of the biggest canards I ever met with, even in this country, and which indicates that nothing is too absurd for Western credulity. Thus the Procurator of the Holy Synod—the same, by-the-bye, who is sometimes described by way of oratorical embellishment as the great Inquisitor of the Greek Orthodox Church—is made to say:—

“There is no doubt that the Russian Church would unite herself to the See of Rome without the smallest difficulty, ‘if such union were desired by the Government.’”

Such grotesque assertions do not deserve long refutations. But any and every Russian is qualified to declare that neither Mr. Pobedonostzeff nor any Greek Orthodox could ever express such monstrous views as those, not even for the sake of sarcastic response or bitter irony. Greek Orthodoxy is the soul of our Government and the great link between the Government and the people. But devotion to our faith is immeasurably superior to any wordly consideration. Russia is more of a Church than a State, more of a religion than a nationality. In fact, our religion is our nationality. We are first Greek Orthodox, and then Slavs or Russians. Hence the absurdity of all these missions to subjugate us to Rome, as a detail of an arrangement between Ministers at St. Petersburg and Cardinals at the Vatican. Russians are not only— as even Padre Vanutelli says—“intensely religious,” but they are fervently conservative in the matter of Greek Orthodoxy. Our tenacity is proverbial, and there are millions of us who know how to die, without phrases and self-advertisements, rather than betray our Orthodox faith.

Besides, as there can be no other head of the Christian Church but Jesus Christ, the Bishop of Rome is obviously schismatic and heretic. If there were some of us who doubted it before the dogma of infallibility, no one can doubt it to-day. The promulgation of that decree of the Vatican Council made manifest the schismatical and heretical condition of the Roman Church. Nor can any Russian Orthodox even discuss the possibility of any union with Rome until Rome has repudiated her heresies and corruptions, abjured the dogma of Papal infallibility, and returned to the Primitive Orthodox Catholic faith, from which she has degenerated to her present deplorable condition. It is the fashion in some quarters to speak of Russia as despotic, merely because the form of our Government is autocratic. This is not a political article, and I am not going to discuss the rationality, the basis, or the real character of this autocracy, but whatever may be the truth or falsehood of this accusation in the political sphere, in the wider field of the Church, Russia stands forth as the defender of liberty against the arbitrary pretensions of the Roman Curia. In view of the ceaseless efforts of the Pope to reduce all Christendom to the slavish submission that is implied in the famous Ignatius Loyala’s formula “ac cadaver”—the obedience to the Italian priest who says, “I am the Church, and the head of the Church”; “I am the tradition, and the interpreter of tradition.”Englishmen who love liberty may well rejoice that there exists in Eastern Europe a nation, which Monsignor Vanutelli describes as the greatest, the strongest, and the most solid Power in the world; where the largest portion of the реорle are profoundly attached to the Government, which represents to them their nationality in all its strength and glory; whose people have not been touched by the revolutionary principles which are wrecking by degrees all the kingdoms of Europe. Even Monsignor Vanutelli can see that Russia has a great mission before her; first, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, and with it, Mohammedanism; secondly, the crushing of the revolutionary spirit which is invading all other European countries; and thirdly, the arresting of the extension of Jewish influence, which is making ever-increasing progress elsewhere.

Russia is the champion of the most sacred of human liberties, as against the autocratic Pope who is incessantly endeavouring to enslave the conscience and the intellect of mankind. Our autocratic Tzar, wielding with the effective decisiveness of a single will the combined forces of a hundred millions of Orthodox believers, precisely protects that liberty.

Monsignor Vanutelli’s mission serves, at least, to remind us how useful may be the influence which the Russian Orthodox Church may exercise in Western Christendom. As the recent Conference of Lucerne has reminded Europe, there are other than Roman Ultramontanes in Western Catholicism, and with these others the Russian Church may, I hope, with God’s help, establish a hearty and deep sympathy and understanding. It is twenty years since the Old Catholic movement gave rise to high hopes of a return to primitive Christianity on the part of the rational Catholics of the West. Conferences were held year after year at Bonn and elsewhere for the purpose of promoting the re-union of Christendom, down to the year 1876. In 1877, however, the crusade for the liberation of Greek Orthodox Bulgaria transferred our energies to another field of action, and theological conferences were thus interrupted. After the war the heart of the Russian people was grieved by the spectacle of the betrayal of the Orthodox brethren south of the Balkans—a betrayal which we traced to the Roman influence of Austria and the Semitic hatred of Disraeli. It was not until last year that the Conference reassembled with most hopeful results. The following description of the Conference, of those who constituted it, I take from the recent discourse of Bishop Reinkens:—“It was an International Conference, because the Old Catholics of different nations were officially represented: Italy, by Count Campello, late Canon of St Peter at Rome, who presides over the few communities in Italy; Spain (where there are about three thousand Old Catholics), by Senor Cabrera, Bishop-elect, but not yet consecrated; France (where the number is most insignificant, I will not enter here into the reasons why), by Pere Hyacinthe, late a celebrated Carmelite preacher, whose family name is Loyson; Holland, by Archbishop Gul van Thiel, President of the Seminary, and several incumbents; Austria, by the Old Catholic Vicar-Bishop M. Cech, from Vienna—in Austria the Old Catholic communities are recognised by the State as public religious associations—he is only Vicar-Bishop because hitherto the capital is wanting for maintaining a Bishop; Switzerland, as a matter of course, by its Bishop, Dr. Herzog, and a great number of clergy and laity; Germany, by myself and many clergymen and delegates. That was the International Old Catholic Congress.

“The greater part of the Eastern Church, which never was subject to the Bishop of Rome, sent us venerable representatives. The subjects of the Pope of Rome used to call the Eastern Independent Catholics of the ancient Church schismatics, though these have never recognised the Bishop of Rome as their head, consequently have never fallen away from him. There are upwards of a hundred million Christians representing the ancient Eastern Church. Thus about five million Greeks were represented by the learned and pious Archbishop Nikiphoros of Patras, who was also officially commissioned by the Metropolitan of Athens. Then the five million Armenians offered us their sympathy through the learned Professor Isaak, from Jerusalem, equally commissioned by his Metropolitan. The great Russian Church, part of the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, sent us as friends of our cause the clever and worthy Presbyter Yanysheff, who rules forty Court-churches within episcopal jurisdiction, and was more than twenty years President of the Spiritual Academy at St. Petersburg, and Lieut.-General Kireeff, who was Adjutant to the late Grand Duke Constantine—a man of many-sided culture and particularly prominent in theological learning: beside these, several archpriests, among these Archpriest Maltzeff, of the Russian Embassy Chapel at Berlin, and Dr Kasansky, from Finland.

“Furthermore, the Anglican Church, which warmly sympathises with us, was worthily represented by the Biblical scholar and lover of peace, Bishop Wordsworth, of Salisbury, and by the Rev. R. S. Oldham, officially deputed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of England. This Anglican Church has (if we include its colonies and the American Episcopate) upwards of two hundred Bishops, who claim the name of Catholics, as they think that they possess the Apostolic Succession. Also Lord Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin, was present, with Canon Meyrick. Even the independent Bishop of one hundred thousand Christians in the State of Hayti had sent Dr. Jannier, attache of the Haytian Legation, from London.

“Now, all these had come instigated by brotherly sympathy, because they knew that our mind was bent on peace and not on strife. We Old Catholics stand on the rock of truth. Before all we are not afraid of any hostile power, undeviatingly trusting in God.

“Now, this Congress (which took a grand course within three days, so that they who took part in it declared that those days were among the most beautiful of their life) has passed a resolution in the following terms:—

“‘Acknowledging that there are in the Roman Church at present still a great number of Catholic-minded people, we nevertheless declare that the now prevailing Ultramontane system officially dogmatised in the Vatican Council cannot claim the honorary predicate of ‘Catholic,’ as used by the ancient Church, and that it rather belongs to those who profess the universal belief of the ancient undivided Church.’

“In passing this resolution the representatives of the sympathising Churches also took part.”

I wish I had space to reproduce the whole of the eloquent discourse in which Bishop Reinkens demonstrates conclusively that the Ultramontane heresy, now dominant at Rome, is not entitled to be considered Catholic; whatever else it may be, Catholic it is not. It is the Orthodox who stand in the ancient ways. Roman doctrine and Roman practice are full of startling innovations and daring novelties. Of these Bishop Reinkens gives several illustrations. He says:—

“The whole Roman Church is at present overgrown with the worship of the Sacred Heart. Frenchmen have consecrated France to the Sacred Heart, and Pius IX has consecrated the whole world to the same. This worship is based on a new revelation which an invalid nun, Mary Margaret Alacoque, pretended to have had in the seventeenth century at Paray-le-Monial (+1690). The Jesuits supported the pretended revelation, and promoted the worship. The details of the visions of the seemingly insane nun violate the religious feeling, particularly the manner how the hearts of the nun and of the Lord got into relation to each other. The worship of the Sacred Heart I liked very much, when a child, because I did not understand it; I fancied it simply meant the love of the Lord, the heart being a symbol of His infinite love, and so I had a particular devotion to Him Who is Love itself, all alone to myself, and felt edified. Only later on I perceived my error. I only touch on the matter in general terms. That nun, then, fancied, under the influence of a Jesuit Father Confessor, the relation of her soul to the Lord was that of an affianced bride—this is always the case in nunneries—merged into mystic relations, and on June 16th, 1675 (then a Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi), she believed, while fervently praying, that the Saviour appeared to her for the third time, and placed open before her His material heart, pointing to it with the words: ‘Do you see My heart, how it is inflamed by love to mankind?’ &c. And then she had (so she relates) received the order to found a devotion to His heart on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. In this foundation she was assisted by the victorious Jesuits, the Popes having for a long time opposed it. The object of the worship is the material heart of Jesus; indeed, it is, as Dr. Leitner writes (with Episcopal approbation): ‘The nearest and immediate, direct and proper object,’ what also Martin, Bishop of Paderborn, 1876, most emphatically asserts; he said: ‘The bodily heart as a part of Jesus’ most holy manhood.’ Now it was in the ancient Church strictly forbidden, in worshipping the Lord, to divide His human and divine nature; it was most expressively prohibited by the Church to worship the Lord, as it were, in parts. And now they do not hesitate, firstly, in worshipping, to divide the human nature from the divine, then even to separate the human body from the soul, and at last the heart from the human body for the purpose of a special worship! There the excuse is of no avail, that the heart is to be considered as living, in connection with humanity and divinity, for the worship refers to the special part of the body. That is not Catholic, as everyone is fully aware of who knows Christian antiquity and knows what then was Catholic. Just as little Catholic are the devotions and festivals of the Scapulary and Rosary, of ‘Mary in the snow,’ and many others which are traced back to pretended revelations.”

Rome goes on binding heavy burdens upon the shoulders of her slaves. The Orthodox Church, true to her great traditions, maintains only that to be the true faith which was taught by the Holy Scripture as explained by the seven Ecumenical Councils. The Old Catholics, objecting to the innovations of the Vatican, bring themselves at once into sympathetic contact with the Orthodox Church. What is it that divides Christendom? What are the barriers which stand between the Eastern and Western Churches? They are briefly four:—

1. The procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father as affirmed by the Orthodox Church, is asserted by the Roman to proceed also from the Son. This is due to the interpolation of the words Filioque in the Creed.
2. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
3. The dogma of Papal Infallibility.
4. The doctrine of Indulgences.

On the last three the Old Catholics are entirely at one with the Orthodox Churches of the East. The Old Catholics have also recognised that the Filioque is an interpolation. There are, therefore, no insurmountable barriers remaining between them and us. The Swiss Old Catholics have struck the Filioque out of their Creed, and all the Old Catholics everywhere regard as binding upon all believers the decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.

Allow me to reproduce some of the views expressed by my brother, Alexander Kireeff, in his last pamphlet, on the subject entitled, Union with the Old Catholics.

“Men,” he says, “who never thought deeply on the essence of religion, which they consider in a rationalistic manner, as a scientific formula, or a collection of scholastic sayings, cannot understand, of course, all the difficulties a believer has to surmount, when about to change his customary tenets. They cannot imagine the inward struggle he has to undergo before he renounces his past. One of the most impartial investigators of the Eastern Church, Professor Katenbusch, of Giessen, says, for instance, that it would be very hard for the West to renounce Filioque, as it has almost become a question of honour, in which it is not possible to give in. The Old Catholics have, nevertheless, given way on this point too, and recite the Creed, without Filioque. The same fate has met the other dogmatic differences, which exist no more, so that there remain now but a few secondary canonical differences that could be easily settled, as well as some views inherited by the Old Catholics from Rome, such as casuistical interpretations and distinctions characteristic of mediaeval scholasticism, as for instance in the question on the communion of the heterodox.

“One would have thought that we might thank God for such a result; the identity of dogmatic doctrine being the only safe ground for further development in the direction of truth and the religious union for which our Church daily prays. But there are still men, on our side, who refuse to believe facts and positive declarations, and who involuntarily remind one of the too famous Public Prosecutor, Touquier Tinville, who condemned Marie Antoinette and the Girondins to death, and whose favourite words about his victims were, ‘If their crime has not been committed, it might have been’ (‘s’il ne l’а pas fait, il en est capable’).”

Catholics are thus Orthodox believers of the Western ritual¹, and it is most satisfactory to notice that two important steps have been taken to promote the formal and actual recognition of this fact. A most influential committee has been constituted in Russia by the Holy Synod to study the religious ties between the Old Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The other step, of great importance, is the founding of a quarterly international review as the direct outcome of the Lucerne Conference. The Revue Internationale de Theologie, which is edited at Berne by the Rector of the University, Dr. E. Michaud, was established by the Congress in order that it might be a kind of tribune which will continue and spread its beneficent action. Its object will be “to make known the principles and doctrines of the Old Catholic Church,” and “to facilitate the union of the Christian Churches, elucidating the questions which divide them.”

Professor Michaud has amongst his contributors many distinguished scholars, as, for instance:—Germany: Dr. Berthold, Dr. Beyschlag, Dr. Friedrich, Dr. Langen, Dr. Lossen, Dr. Nippold, Dr. Reinkens, Dr. Reusch, Dr. von Schulte, Dr. Weber; America: Dr. Hale, Dr. Nevin; England: Rev. Lias, Mr. John E. B. Mayor, Rev. Meyrick, Dr. Wordsworth; France: M. Frank Puaux, M. Hyacinthe Loyson; Greece: Dr. Kalogueras; Holland: M. van Santen, M. van Thiel; India: Professor Isaac; Italy: Dr. Cichitti; Russia: MM. Basarov, Belayeff, Kireeff, Maltzew; Switzerland: Dr. Herzog, Dr. Thurlings, Dr. Weibel, Dr. Woker, Dr. Lauchert, secretaire de la Rédaction, &c., &c. The Revue is to be the rallying point of all those who hold as Christian belief what was defined by Viscount de Lerins:—

“Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.”

Published at sixteen francs a year, I venture to hope that it may be accessible to a large number of readers, and that it may succeed in rousing fresh hope and in giving new courage to the undaunted outposts of Orthodoxy entrenched in the heart of the Roman heresy.

How much need there is for the Orthodox everywhere to join hands against the overweening intolerance of the Papal despotism! May I make one more quotation from the discourse of Bishop Reinkens in illustration of the ruthlessness with which the Roman heresy is thrust upon the Catholics of the West. Charity and love are no longer accorded the first place in the Roman system. Everything must give place to obedience, and obedience that must be rendered as by a corpse! “Ac cadaver!” That watchword will yet be the epitaph on the grave of the Church that adopted it as its rallying cry. Bishop Reinkens says:—

“Ignatius teaches that obedience to the spiritual superior is ‘the cardinal virtue which implants in the mind and preserves all other virtues.’ it is the sum total of all virtue.’ And this doctrine, directly contradictory to Holy Scripture and the ancient Church, has since the Vatican Council, been transferred to the relation of the faithful to the Pope, to whom all owe a cadaverous obedience. But that this is now in the Roman Church not only theory, but sad earnest, for this purpose I will select from the thousands of instances since 1870 only one, reminding you of the heartrending Church proceedings against the great sufferer and confessor, Amalie von Lasaulx, known under the name of Sister Augustine and Superior in the civil hospital at Bauer, related to Baron von Hume, leader of the Parliamentary Centre party. She was a shining exemplar of the perfection of love which is the fulfilment of the law. In the wars in Schleswig Holstein and in Bohemia she astonished all around her by her works of love. She was admired far and wide. The late Empress Augusta loved her exceedingly, and came repeatedly to see her who had achieved such great things with a self-abnegation rarely to be found. In those wars her health had been shaken and the illness contracted which led to her death. While she now, ill herself, tended a houseful of wounded French prisoners in Bonn, there fell like a thunderbolt into her religious life the news of the inexorable way in which the new Vatican dogmas were forced upon the faithful. And soon the question was placed before her, whether she was willing to interpolate the newly-invented fundamental articles into her old creed which had inspirited her to do the works of love. Her conscience forbade it. Then her spiritual superiors placed the cadaverous obedience above the ‘Mistress Love’ (Domina Charitas); and by dint of this obedience she was to submit herself to the absolute superior in Rome, the Pope, with all his new divine prerogatives. Knowledge and conscience, faith and her religious disposition forbade it to her, and therefore she could not ‘slaughter’ her free will. Then to her spiritual superiors all the praise of her works of love dwindled away, her worth was gone. With cruel abuse she, the superior, was deposed, and she who was sick unto death, she who had sacrificed everything, would have been thrown out into the street, if the doctor of the hospital, himself a Roman Catholic, had not with the whole weight of his authority opposed it. So she was graciously allowed to die in another house in Vallendar. And here the threat was communicated to her that, if she did not submit herself before death, her habit, in which she had so eminently practised love, would be torn from her body immediately after death. They have kept their word. Without a monastic habit she was put in a coffin, and this coffin, without any ecclesiastical benediction and escort, handed over to a boatman, who, single-handed, rowed the corpse to Weissenthurm (near Neuwied), where the family-vault of the Lasaulx is. There now stood the coffin on the bank of the Rhine, before a public-house quite lonely and deserted, only children were playing round it, when the noble friend of the deceased, who remained faithful to her in the disgrace heaped on her, the Princess of Wied (nee Princess of Nassau) arrived, after having gone in vain to Vallendar. She had the coffin opened in order to convince herself (as the deceased had wished her to do) whether they had carried out their threat. And so it was. She was stripped of her habit, and this was then taken away, in order to expel her from the Church after death.

“The deeply-grieved Princess saw it; she told it me herself. Thereupon some friends and clergymen who had remained faithful to the old belief came from Bonn for the funeral. But relatives prevented the religious functions at the grave. The grave was, in the meaning of the Roman hierarchy, infamous because the heroine of Christian love could not appropriate the new perfection which attains its completion in the obedience of a corpse.”

We, Russians, are against such measures as these. We shall do what we can to help the Old Catholics wherever and whenever we can, though, except their love and learning, the Old Catholics can bring us nothing, nor can we offer them any worldly advantage. But this does not diminish their deep sympathy with us.

Even lately, at the Lucerne Congress, Professor Friedrich, the friend and fellow-worker of Dr. Dollinger, especially addressed us Orthodox and, amidst general and hearty cheers, he expressed the very strong desire of all the Old Catholics to enter into official communication with our Church.

On our side, these are the words of the Very Rev. Protopresbyter I. L. Yanischeff, addressed by him to the Old Catholics:—

“The Orthodox cannot help sympathising with the Old Catholics. The soil to the old undivided Church is their own soil; so much so that if it were proved to the Orthodox that thеу are guilty of contradiction on some one point with the old undivided Church, they would be the first to remove any such contradiction.”

My Brother Kireef says:—

“We often and justly repeat that we represent faithfully the ‘old Orthodoxy of the old faith established by Christ and the Church Universal, which has fixed its dogmas in the first centuries of our era at the Seven Ecumenical Councils. In this we are right, and we must continue to hold this view. The dogmas of the undivided Church precisely form those necessaria, without which unitas is impossible. This dogmatic Orthodoxy, necessarily combined with the Apostolic succession, forms the sign and condition and the only indispensable sign and condition, of Orthodoxy for any Church. This is consequently also the criterion wwe have to apply to the Old Catholics. The Filioque difficulty exists no more! It is quite settled and pigeon-holed. Where is Filioque to be found? Amongst the Romanists and the Anglicans, but no more among the Old Catholics, who have it neither in their Creed, nor in their Catechism. Why should we not be satisfied with taking note of this welcome fact? Have we any reason, nay, have we any right, to go further and to demand more? I think not!

“For no less than a thousand years we have jealousy kept and protected the holy truth confided to our care. Shall we bury it now, when circumstances urge us to reveal it in all its splendour, and to communicate it to other Christians?

“In our relations to the Old Catholics we have a chance to refute the absurd charges of narrowness, immobility, intolerance, and ‘Cesaro-Popery.’ But it is not only for our sake, but for the people’s sake, that we must do it. In raising our Orthodox banner before other nations and Churches we do not come as conquerors or oppressors, but as the friends and allies of regenerating Orthodoxy in the West. Is it possible for us, or have we the right of declining this great, holy part? Of course not! I heard sometimes the objection: ‘Is it worth while to trouble about the Old Catholics, who are so few in numbers, not exceeding 150,000?’

“These people evidently confound political questions with religiousness. They never consider the admirable and deep parable of the one lost sheep, in search of which the faithful Shepherd goes forth, and whose recovery gives Him even more joy than the safety of the others. Why? This only lost and regained sheep are the Old Catholics, and we Orthodox are destined to become the instrument of the great work of the kind and faithful Shepherd.”

Monsignor Vanutelli’s mission will at least have done some service by reminding us that our moral support, which Rome craves in vain, may be an invaluable reinforcement to the Old Catholics.

“О. K.” (OLGA NOVIKOFF.)

1. This view was also entertained by the great scholar, Dr. Overbeck, who is now a thorough Greek Orthodox, and is the editor of the Greek Orthodox Review, published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co.