Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/317

Rh the Orthodox Church in its Russian branch, with the Russian Liturgy and the rule of the Russian Holy Synod, without. We shall come back to the way in which uniformity in Russia is procured, the abominable persecution of the Ruthenian Church, the crushing out of the Georgian Church, the harrying of the Armenians. As for the preaching of the Orthodox faith in other lands, one has only to look for the places where the Russian Government wants a sphere of influence, there is the Orthodox Russian faith preached. Russia, for instance, has great interests in Persia. A port on the Persian Gulf would suit her admirably; she would like to, and if the other Powers let her, probably will, some day swallow Persia whole. Meanwhile, Persia is getting more and more under her sphere of influence; she has the railway, and the Persian Christians (Nestorians) are being persuaded to join the Russian Church. She has interests in Syria and Palestine. A belt of Russian territory stretching from the Caucasus by Tiflis to the Mediterranean by Jaffa would be the very thing. It would cut the Mohammedan world in two, greatly hasten the day on which the Russian eagle is to fly over Constantinople, and it would secure Jerusalem, the Holy City of all Christendom, for the Czar. So the Russian Church is infinitely active in Syria and the Holy Land. She has two objects—to convert all Christians there to the Orthodox faith, and to make that faith synonymous with the Russian national Church. It is by this second object that she falls foul of the Œcumenical Patriarch. The halcyon days when the two Patriarchates (Antioch and Jerusalem) and the metropolitan sees, abbacies, and good places generally were perquisites kept for Phanariote Greeks, are over. Here, as everywhere, Russia takes up the cause of the native population against the Phanar, and the Phanar, which ignored the complaints of the wretched Syrians, cannot ignore Russia. So Russia has an anti-Greek candidate for all these places now, and her candidate gets them.

That is not all. Orthodox Syria and Palestine are already almost Russian colonies. There is a Russian Imperial Palestine Society under the Czar's special protection, that commands enormous resources and that spends them to cover the land