uniform. Its adaptation for its intended purpose is exquisite. So far as that purpose is concerned, it cannot be improved. It works to admiration. In such a case, the probability certainly is, that the maker will not think of introducing any change; seeing in a structure thus faultless every alteration would be for the worse. The machine, therefore, would be kept going on as at the first, to the continued satisfaction of the inventor and artificer, and the delight and wonder of all who have the opportunity of examining it. Thus far all is clear. But suppose now further, that circumstances should occur, in which the continuance of the regular movements of the said machine exposed a human life to danger; and that, by simply stopping or changing one of those movements for but a few seconds, that life could be saved; and yet more, that it is in the power of the maker and owner, with perfect ease, to stop or to change that movement, and to do so, without in the slightest degree injuring his machine, or even at all interfering with, and impeding the chief purpose of its construction: if, in these circumstances, we knew the maker and owner to be a man of unusual sensibility and benevolence, or even of no more than ordinary humanity, should we not feel it by far too feeble an expression, to say that it was likely he would stop to change the movement? Should we not think we insulted himself, and maligned his character, if we pronounced his doing so less than certain? If, merely because he was enamoured of the beauty and regularity of a mechanical motion, he were to refuse interference, and allow life to perish; what should we think of the man's heart, and what too of his head? Should we not look upon him with equal detestation for his cruelty, and contempt for his childish imbecility? setting him down at once as a heartless monster, and as a senseless fool? And if thus you would think of the fellow-man who could act such a part, what is to be thought of the God, who, when a world's salvation was in the question-involving, not the safety of a human life merely, or of hundreds and thousands of such lives, but the eternal wellbeing of millions of immortal souls-should allow that world to perish, for want of evidence of his willingness to save it, rather than allow the order of the material creation to be, in a single moment, interfered with? and that too, although not the slightest injury was, by such interfereuce, to be done to the system? For surely by no one will it be held an injury, to be made subservient to a purpose incomparably transcending in importance any or all of those which, by its uninterrupted regularity, it is effecting.

"Excepting in one particular, the cases I have thus been comparing are closely analogous. The particular in which they differ is this: that in the case of the mechanician, the evil was not by him anticipated, nor, consequently, the need for his interference; whereas, in the case of the divine Creator and Ruler, all was in full anticipation; and the occasional deviations from the order of the physical creation entered as essentially into the all-perfect plan of his moral administration, as the laws by which that order was fixed entered into the constitution of the physical creation itself. But such a difference there necessarily is between everything human and everything divine; between the purposes and plans of a creature who

'knoweth not what a day may bring forth,' and the purposes and plans of 'Him who 'knoweth the end from the beginning.' It evidently does not, in the least degree, affect the principle of the analogy, or invalidate the force of the conclusion deduced from it."

We cannot conclude these remarks without alluding to the fact that the researches of modern science are rapidly exploding the prejudices which pantheism, on the one hand, and a blind devotion to the supremacy of laws on the other, have created and upheld against all extraordinary interventions of God. The appearances of our globe are said to be utterly inexplicable upon any hypothesis which does not recognise the fact that the plan of creation was so framed from the beginning as to include, at successive periods, the direct agency of the Deity. The earth proclaims, from her hills, and dales, her rocks, mountains, and caverns, that she was not originally made and placed in subjection to laws which themselves have subsequently brought her to her present posture. She has not developed herself into her present form, nor peopled herself with her present inhabitants. That science which, at its early dawn, was hailed as the handmaid of infidelity and scepticism, and which may yet have a controversy with the records of our faith not entirely adjusted, has turned the whole strength of its resources against the fundamental principle of rationalism. It has broken the charm which our limited experience had made so powerful against miracles, and has presented the physical government of God in a light which positively turns analogy in favour of the supernatural. The geologist begins with miracles; every epoch in his science repeats the number, and the whole earth to his mind is vocal with the name. He finds their history wherever he turns, and he would as soon think of doubting the testimony of sense as the inference which the phenomena bear upon their face. Future generations will wonder that in the nineteenth century men gravely disputed whether God could interpose, in the direct exercise of His power, in the world He has made. The miracle, a century hence, will be made as credible as any common fact. Let the earth be explored; let its physical history be traced, and a mighty voice will come to us, from the tombs of its perished races, testifying, in a thousand instances, to the miraculous hand of God. Geology and the Bible must kiss and embrace each other, and this youngest daughter of science, will be found, like the eastern magi, bringing her votive offerings to the cradle of the Prince of Peace. The earth can never turn traitor to its God, and its stones have already begun to cry out against those who attempted to extract from them a lesson of infidelity or atheism.

ART. IV.-Pharmakides and the Ecclesiastical Independence

of Greece.

Ο Συνοδικός Τόμος, ἢ Περὶ ̓Αληθείας. By Professor Pharmakides, Athens.

THE ecclesiastical revolution by which that part of the Greek Church at present included in the Hellenic kingdom has, within our own day, shaken off the yoke of subjection to the patriarch of Constantinople, is one of the most significant occurrences of this eventful period. As an evidence of advancement, and a triumph of enlightened policy, we cannot but consider it worthy of attention; while its results may prove most important in their bearing upon the final success of the efforts now made for the evangelisation of the East.

In the history of this branch of the Christian Church, we look in vain for any recent convulsion, similar to that which, in the sixteenth century, visited the western portion, and effected the separation of the purer elements from the mass in which they had hitherto been exerting merely a resistance to prevailing corruption. With less departure from the type of primitive Christianity than the Latin Church exhibits, we yet behold little tendency toward reformation. Not only have the same doctrines and practices prevailed for upwards of a thousand years, through the entire body of the Greek Church, but even the form of external unity (if we leave out of the account the insignificant successes of Romish proselytism) has only been partially disturbed in two instances, and these in great measure rendered necessary by political revolutions. It is to the more recent of these that we shall confine ourselves, after a cursory view of the well-known circumstances that led to the present attitude of the Russian Church.

From the year 1072, when the Patriarch John Xiphinus sent George as metropolitan to the court of the Czar Isyaslaff, the Russian Church continued for several centuries to be governed by a succession of prelates of the same rank, who, according to the vicissitudes of the empire, resided at Kieff, Vladimir, or Moscow. The fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the entire subjugation of the Eastern Christians that either preceded or followed it, induced a new and anomalous condition in the Russian Church. The metropolitans of Moscow, for nearly a century and a half after that calamitous event, continued to be elected by a synod of native bishops; but their nominations were not confirmed by the Patriarchs of Constantinople, whose spiritual authority they still acknowledged. This "irregularity in that subordination of the hierarchy, which is so necessary to the unity of the Catholic Church," while it is lamented, is also palliated by the native

ecclesiastical historians, who urge, as a partial excuse, the acquiescence of the patriarchs, and the troubled condition of the East.

It was evident that the new posture of affairs demanded a corresponding change in the relations of the Church. A patriarch of reduced consideration, and subject to an antiChristian ruler, was ill-qualified to govern the Church of Russia, a distant country of vast extent, and of daily growing importance. To the Czar Theodore is generally attributed the first entertainment of a plan to elevate the Metropolitan of Moscow to the highest rank in the Eastern Church, as a fifth patriarch, to occupy the place of the Bishop of Rome, who was regarded as having fallen away. It happened in the year 1586, that Joachim, Patriarch of Jerusalem, visited the imperial city of Moscow: but when consulted in reference to the czar's favourite scheme, his reply was, that a matter of such vital importance could only be decided by an œcumenical council, or a synod at which the four œcumenical patriarchs should be present. But the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah, who came in person in 1588, to beg assistance from the czar, either being of a more pliable disposition, or having previously consulted his colleagues of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, was less scrupulous; and while he refused Theodore's offer to transfer his own residence to the old capital Vladimir, he consented to elevate the metropolitan Job to the Patriarchate of all the Russias. The pompous ceremonial of the Greek Church was taxed to its utmost extent in order to grace the consecration; and to enhance its solemnity, the entire service for the Episcopalian ordination was repeated over the candidate, already a bishop, but now to be invested with supreme dignity. By this means, it was imagined that "the double portion of grace requisite for the chief pastor of the church" was secured to the patriarch elect. At the same time extraordinary precautions were taken by the Czar Theodore, lest the primate of Russia should in any way yield in point of rank to the consecrating prelate. Jeremiah and Job were seated on thrones of equal elevation in the Church; Job was instructed not to lay his crozier aside, unless Jeremiah did the same; and when, after the termination of a splendid pageant, the two patriarchs withdrew from the church, they issued from separate doors, lest either should be compelled to yield the precedence to the other.

The Russian Church, in this manner, became independent of the Greek Church of Constantinople; for the individual

*Mouravieff, History of the Church of Russia, p. 126.

† Ibid., p. 129.

act of the œcumenical patriarch was ratified by the other patriarchs of the Eastern Church (with the exception of the Patriarch of Alexandria, who had recently died), and by a full synod of metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops. The primate of Russia was assigned the fifth place in the hierarchy, much against the wishes of the Czar Theodore, who desired for him the third rank, only yielding to the pretensions of the Patriarch of Alexandria in his quality of Ecumenical Judge.* There were not wanting those who maintained that Jeremiah had been an unwilling instrument in the consecration, and that his return to Constantinople would have been impossible had he refused submission to the will of Theodore. Be this as it may, the unanimous consent of the Greek Church removed all objections to the validity of the consecration arising from this source, and ratified what might have been viewed as an unauthorised act on the part of Jeremiah.

For a century or more, the Russian Church continued to be governed by its patriarchs; but on the death of Adrian, the tenth dignitary, in the year 1700, Stephen Yavorsky was appointed guardian of the patriarchate, an office which he occupied twenty years. Peter the Great, who had ascended the imperial throne, and was now firmly seated upon it, became convinced by his success in the establishment of a senate, of the superior efficiency of a single executive body intrusted with political power. He determined to model the ecclesiastical government after the same pattern. Accordingly, in 1721, he created "the Most Holy Governing Synod," in place of the patriarch, inserting its name in those passages of the public litanies where his had been previously made the subject of prayer. This alteration of the established form of Church government was acquiesced in without a murmur by the devout of Russia, and was formally sanctioned, two years later, by the Patriarch of Constantiople, and the other heads of the Eastern Church. That prelate, who, by a singular coincidence, bore the name of Jeremiah, wrote in the following terms, respecting the Russian Synod, in a letter dated September 23, 1723:

"Our humility, by the grace and authority of the all-holy and life-giving Spirit, the sole author of governance, ratifies, confirms, and proclaims the Synod established in the great and holy kingdom of Russia, by the most pious and pacific autocrat, the holy king, etc., etc., the Lord, Lord Peter Alexævitch, emperor, beloved in the Holy Ghost, to be and to be styled 'our sister in Christ, the Holy and Sacred Synod,' by all pious and orthodox Christians, both clergy and laity, rulers and subjects, and by all official persons. And it has

The frivolous origin of this title is narrated at great length in a note to Mouravieff's History, pp. 390-391.