Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/22

Rh ation from the consequences which have ensued and which are still perceptible. They aid in appreciating the attitude of the Russian Church, as chief exponent and representative of the Greek communion, towards other Christian denominations; and they also help to explain the dissensions which, in Russia, have arisen within its bosom.

The natural bent of the Greek mind was to speculative inquiry; it was more active and acute, more lively and less practical, easily swayed by and interested in scholastic disquisition and controversy, fond of argument for argument's sake, skilled in disputation, nice in definitions and distinctions. The East was the home and fountainhead of science and literature; the cultivation of letters was there carried to a far greater extent and held in higher estimation than in the West. The Greeks were vain of their superior learning and more polite culture; they looked down with supercilious contempt upon the outer world as mere barbarians; they felt pride in their inheritance of the wisdom and intellect of ancient Greece, and gloried in their language, formed and fashioned by sages and philosophers, as the only competent vehicle of elevated refined thought; in it Christ taught, the apostles and early fathers preached and wrote; the first heads of the Church were Greek, and the name of pope was Greek. The Eastern Church rejoiced in its direct affiliation with apostolic times, in its careful preservation of traditions, and was convinced of its especial right to be considered the true heir and successor of Christ.

Intellectual and moral progress in the East was, however, stifled by political and spiritual despotism when the seat of empire was established at Constantinople, and the Church came under the immediate protection and control of the State. With Christian emperors on the