Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/501

 APPENDIX IV 455 Orthodox Church in the empire, as soon as the Hellenic influence triumphed over the Asiatic, had passed away. Since the days of Cyril and Methodius, the great apostles of the ninth century, the Church could show few conversions and few serious attempts at conversion. That the Church should be orthodox was apparently enough. There was no attempt to enlarge its area. Christianity appeared to be regarded by one party as the best system of philosophy, and by the other, much as the Jew regarded his religion, as a sacred treasure to be kept for his own use and not to be offered to outside unbelievers. His religion in the later centuries never really moved the Greek to engage in missions. Except in regard to personal conduct, to almsgiving, kindness to his fellow- members of the Orthodox Church, and personal and commercial morality, he was incapable of religious sentiment. Something due to his race, something to his traditions, and something to his theological training, made Christianity, except as a philosophical system, sit lightly upon him and failed to make it a powerful national force. Then, as now, the Greek members of the Orthodox Church could not sympathise with or even comprehend the religious sentiment which has led the men of the West, whether acknowledging the jurisdiction of Eome or not, to undertake great movements, or even war, in defence of an object whose only recommendation was that it had right on its side. In spite of the fact that in the empire and throughout Asia Minor nationality and religion were, as indeed they are to this day, always confounded or regarded as synonymous terms, Ortho- dox Christianity was unable to add a powerful religious sentiment to the defence of the empire. As a force inducing them to resist the encroachments of Islam, like that which influenced our fathers against Spain or the Ironsides against Charles, I doubt whether it was ever of much value. We have seen a patriarch writing apparently with great satisfaction that the Church was allowed to retain its liberty under Turkish rule. Throughout the long centuries of struggle against Islam, there were many Christians who transferred themselves to the jurisdiction of the sultans in order that they might live in peace. The individual aspect of Christianity was regarded, not the national. It is when the influence of the Church upon the spirit of the population of the empire is compared with that of Mahometanism upon the Turkish hordes that its weakness as a dynamic force is most plainly seen. Mahometanism, like Christianity in Western lands and in Eussia, is a missionary faith. Islam as a fighter's religion, with its fatalism, its rewards of the most sensual pleasures