The cry of the cuckoo or the bleat of the lamb is invested for him with a rich, mysterious melancholy. The true essence of the sentiment of lake scenery is compressed into the verses descriptive of the lake under Helvellyn :— Here sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere. The a darkened mirror as one monotonous Burns loved to walk under the lea of a wood when a gale was blowing, and to listen to the melancholy murmur of the leaves. And, indeed, the most impres sive natural sounds are associated with the same vein of feeling. The moan of the wind and dash of the rain at night, suggestive of tempests blowing far out at sea and across desolate moorlands; the "scream of the maddened beach dragged down by the wave;" the murmur of multitudinous torrents in a mountain valley, rising and falling with every gust of wind, are the most familiar instances; and those whose love of nature is the warmest will generally enjoy them in proportion to their sadness. Coleridge chose to deny, in spite of the general testimony of the poets, that there was anything intrinsically melancholy in the song of the nightingale. If, however, he was right, it only follows that a nightingale becomes impressive simply because the accident of his sing ing by night adds a factitious melancholy, and therefore gives a specific charm to his note. To me, I confess, there is something still more impressive in the unmusical scream of a sea-bird off a rocky coast. When nature speaks audibly it is almost always in plaintive notes, and the thoughtless exultation of singing birds in spring is but a solitary exception, and they The everlasting freshness of the universe, remind me generally of animated musical the perpetual triumph of life over decay, boxes. There is a kind of impertinence is the final meaning of the great spectacle in their ostentatious proclamation of do- of nature, and the most forcible stimulus mestic felicity. to doing our part in the struggle. Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, This is, perhaps, a barbarous sentiment, and a final qualification must be added. As some have valued natural scenes in proportion to their misanthropic savagery, others can see in them nothing but an embodiment of sentimental gloom. But this is even a grosser misinterpretation of PART OF AN nature's sadness. The undertone is From Fraser's Magazine. AMERICAN MISSIONS IN TURKEY. ARTICLE ON RELIGIONS OF TURKEY. always plaintive, but the dominant har- THE Armenian Protestants form a mony rather suggests stern and inspirit-marked exception to the general corruption ing energy. Nothing can be more alien and debasement of the Eastern Christian to fresh breezes and mountain torrents than the muddy melancholy of jaded appetite. We may, if we please, see nature in sects the germ of a reform that may yet purify and regenerate the whole. Less than thirty years old as a legally recognized practi communion, this little body has grown at a the Greek patriarch indicated, was it only rate which in Christian history has had no amongst the Armenians that the reformed precedent since apostolic times. Fifty tenets made way. The orthodox pale years ago there was not an evangelical na- | also contributed its quota — considerable, tive Christian in Turkey: they now num- though smaller than that of the Gregoriber about thirty thousand, with a regularly ans-to the roll of converts, who either organized and self-supporting church sys- formed separate congregations, or, where tem, served by native pastors, who in char- too few to do this, joined harmoniously acter and instruction may be fairly said to with their Armenian fellow-proselytes. A excel any other native clergy in the East. year later, in 1850, the influence of Sir The movement of which this is so far the Stratford Canning induced the governresult began in 1832, when the agents of ment to recognize the new sect as a disthe American Board of Foreign Missions, tinct community, with complete indepenwho had for nearly ten years before vainly dence of the two patriarchates, and a striven to gain a footing amongst the special vakeel, or civil àgent, to represent it Greeks and Jews of the Levant littoral, at the Porte. As will be inferred from turned their attention to the Armenians. what precedes, the form of church governThough fully imbued with the orthodox ment in the new body is congregationalism, faith in the power of mere printed Scrip- but several "evangelical unions ture to work miracles in the way of con- cally group the whole into as many presversion, they wisely supplemented the dis-byteries, and the missionaries, though tribution of Bibles, Testaments, and tracts claiming no authority, have still an influin the vernacular, by opening schools in ential voice in their affairs. The latest Constantinople, Brousa, Smyrna, Beyrout, available statistics of the community east and elsewhere; and, without offensive of the Bosphorus report seventy-four sepefforts at proselytism, attracted hearers to arate churches, with more than two hunsimple expositions of what may be called dred out stations, ministering, as has been catholic Christian doctrine. The result said, to nearly thirty thousand registered showed the wisdom of these tactics. The Protestants, and supporting relatively more jealousy of the Armenian clergy was not and better schools than any other so-called at first excited; and while the free circu- Christian communion in the country. Allation of the translated Scriptures was for though as yet the smallest of the nona time unopposed, the schools also rapidly Mussulman sects of the empire, such a filled with similar clerical sanction. The body- the growth of less than forty years movement, however, soon attained propor-- promises to be one of the most potent tions which alarmed not merely the Arme- factors in both its religious and social renian but also the Greek patriarch, and both generation. The comparative simplicity accordingly joined their influence to crush of its creed and worship, and the generthe dangerous revolution. Several of the ally high standard of morality among its native teachers, and other agents employed members, have done much already to give by the missionaries, were arrested and ex- Mohammedan observers juster views of iled by these dignitaries, and a violent per- what Christianity really is, and to abate secution, by the free use of anathema and the contempt inspired by the corrupt and excommunication, was directed against all spurious types of it with which only who accepted the evangelical heresy. The they have hitherto been familiar. The usual result followed. The very condem- movement of which these are only some nation of the new doctrines provoked in- of the results is largely indebted to the quiry respecting them, and the wave of fostering care of the British embassy, but missionary success spread in Asia to Ain- for the energetic protection of which it tab, Aleppo, Kharpout, Sivas, Trebizond, would probably have been strangled in its Erzeroum, Diarbekir, Cæsarea, and other birth; but its success is primarily, and in parts, with, it might be, only a few converts a much greater degree, due to the Ameriat each station, but every one of which be- can missionaries, whose "marvellous comcame a source whence the reforming leaven bination of piety and common sense," worked out into wider fields. By 1849 the coupled with a zeal that in many instances movement had obtained such a measure has been nothing less than apostolic, has of success as warranted the missionaries done more for the regeneration not alone in organizing a network of "churches" of the Armenians, but of the empire genunder native pastors specially educated for the work and supported by their congregations. Nor, as the joint opposition of The Earl of Shaftesbury in the House of Lords, March 10, 1854. erally, than the efforts of all other mission | inhabit the Tyari country - the chief agents combined. The Nestorians, a remnant of the ancient Syrian Church, rank next-though at a long remove to this infant body of reformed Armenians in the simplicity and purity of their creed and ritual. They derive their name from Nestorius, a native of Antioch and patriarch of Constantinople, who was excommunicated by the third general council of Ephesus in 431, for, amongst other alleged heresies, refusing to the Virgin Mary the title of Mother of God, and for holding not only to two natures but to two persons in Christ. He himself denied both charges, but his rival and enemy, Cyril of Alexandria, by refusing to wait till the friends of the accused prelate reached Ephesus, converted the council into a packed tribunal, and Nestorius was condemned unheard. He was banished first to Arabia Petræa, then to Libya, and finally died in the Thebaid. His cause, however, having been ardently espoused by the famous school of Edessa and by several of the Syrian bishops, took shape in a new sect, which before the end of the century had so multiplied as to appoint the patriarch of Seleucia and to become the dominant Christian community in Persia. Between the fifth and eleventh centuries zealous missionaries spread the tenets of the sect through Syria, Arabia, Egypt, India, China, and Tartary, in the last of which the reigning prince, whose fame as Prester John has so long amused the credulity of Europe, is said to have accepted not merely baptism but ordination at their hands. Meanwhile the wave of Moslem conquest rolled east and north, submerging all rival creeds in its course, till finally, about 1400, Tamerlane trampled out nearly all remains of Nestorian Christianity in Persia, and this once great community gradually dwindled to the poor proportions in which it now survives in eastern Kurdistan and on the plains of the Tigris beyond Mosul, with a variously estimated total of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand members.* They are a simple, patient, and laborious race, who have suffered much from their barbarous Kurdish neighbors and from the misrule of the authorities on both sides of the frontier. Those of them who Gibbon says three hundred thousand, but later estimates reduce this computation by nearly one-half. In addition, however, to these Turco-Persian Nestorians, a strong colony of the sect, reckoned at one hundred thousand, has long been settled on the coast of Malabar. centre of their population- are, however, but little more civilized than the nominally Mussulman tribes around them, and, when they can, avenge their wrongs by reprisals as savage as the raids that provoke them. The hierarchy of the sect consists of a patriarch (who bears the title of Mar Shimoon, and resides at Asheetha, near Julamerk), eighteen metropolitans and bishops, and an unlimited number of archdeacons, priests, and deacons. The incomes of the whole of these are miserably small. That of the patriarch is derived from a poll tax of about 3d. a head on the adult males of his own diocese, and a tithe of the "first-fruits " presented yearly by the people to their respective churches throughout the patriarchate; besides which he sometimes commutes for money fines the much-dreaded sentence of excommunication, with which serious offences against either Church or State are generally punished. The metropolitans and bishops levy a similar tax, and at harvest time receive small voluntary gifts in kind; while the three lower grades who alone may marry are dependent on trifling fees and labor help in cultivating patches of ground. The office of patriarch is hereditary in one family, and both its incumbent and the metropolitans and bishops are rigorously prohibited from tasting animal food. As regards the precise doctrines of the sect there is, in the absence of any standard confession of faith, considerable difference of statement among writers on the subject.* It may be broadly said, however, that while they hold the duality of both the nature and person of Christ they reject the filioque, and abjure auricular confession, image worship, belief in purgatory, and most of the other distinguishing dogmas of the Romish Church. They have, however, many rigid fasts, pray to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and attach great efficacy to the sign of the cross. They had anciently seven sacraments, but many of these have fallen into disuse. The eucharist is administered to adults in both kinds, and is regarded with none of the mysterious sacredness of the mass. Their church services also are very simple, and the liturgy, though written and read in ancient Dr. Badger's learned and elaborate work, "The Nestorians and their Ritual," is perhaps the most au thoritative exposition of both the dogmas and church services of the sect. † 1, Ordination; 2, baptism; 3, the eucharist; 4, marriage; 5, the oil of unction; 6, the holy leaven; and 7, the sign of the cross. Syriac, is explained by the priest in the vernacular, a dialect of the old national tongue. And, finally, caring little for councils or canons, they hold to the Bible as the ultimate rule in both faith and morals. both of which were printed for the first time at the mission press from type modelled from the best Syrian manuscripts. Many thousand copies of other elementary works were also printed and circulated, and schools were opened in Oroomiah and all the larger villages of the plain and the adjoining hill country, the object here again being less to proselytize than to educate the young and civilize the adult population. A personal visit to Oroomiah some years ago enables me to testify that in both directions the result has well repaid the zeal and labor employed. Later at Mosul, Mardin, and Diarbekir I witnessed similar fruits of the excellent judgment with which other agents of the same board have labored among the Chaldeans and Syrian-Jacobites of the middle and upper Tigris valley, seeking there also, by This primitive simplicity of doctrine and ritual has not, however, saved the sect from the common misfortune of internal dissension and schism. In 1551 a dispute about the election of a patriarch split it into two factions, the weaker of which transferred its allegiance to Rome, to which a small colony of the sect settled in Cyprus had already been gained over more than a century earlier. It was not, however, till 1681, when the bishop of Diarbekir, having quarrelled with his patriarch, similarly seceded and was consecrated by the pope patriarch of the "Chaldean Church," that the schism assumed the definite shape it has since maintained. This name the force mainly of education, rather to "Chaldean" is often erroneously applied reform than to "convert," and, although to the whole Nestorian community, though here opposed by the papal missionaries — properly belonging only to these papal whose devotion and energy also compel proselytes from the parent sect. Dr. admiration exerting a marked and most Badger reckons the total number of these salutary influence on both the religious and Papal Nestorians at twenty thousand, scat- social life of the people. tered over a large surface of country, extending from Diarbekir to the Persian frontier, and from the southern Tyari country to Baghdad. It was not till 1845 that they were recognized by the Porte as a separate community, but in that year their primate, with the aid of the French embassy, obtained a firman acknowledging him as patriarch of the new sect. Their official relations with the government are, however, still carried on through the United Armenian patriarch at Constantinople. Besides the patriarchate, their hierarchy comprises eight bishoprics, and their lower clergy, like that of the orthodox Nestorians, includes the three orders of archdeacons, priests, and deacons, the whole of whom are supported, like those of the parent church, by a small capitation tax, some trifling fees, and voluntary offerings in kind from their people. In connection with this sect, again, the excellent work of the American missionaries calls for special mention. In 1834 the Boston Board opened a station at Oroomiah, on the Persian side of the frontier, and two years later Mr. Perkins, the first agent, had so far mastered the then unwritten vernacular as to reduce it to writing. Ten years later he completed a translation of the New Testament into the vulgar dialect, to which, in 1854, he added a similar version of the Old Testament, From The Saturday Review. THE BISHOPS AT LAMBETH. We noticed an argument not long since to the effect that, if the Liberation Society did not make great haste in disestablishing the Church, the obnoxious body would grow past disestablishing from becoming so interesting. We apprehend that it is equally becoming terribly practical in a direct sort of way which must be pecul iarly irritating to the patriots who have so long been discounting their shares in its residue. Its latest act will, we fear, exhaust the patience of its enemies, for it is committing the high offence of taking an unusual amount of trouble in an almost unprecedented fashion for the more efficient transaction of its domestic concerns. Ramifying as it does by offshoots and affiliated bodies over every quarter of the globe, it has taken upon itself, just as if it were some Oddfellows society, to call together all the representatives of its governing class who cared to, or who could, come to London, to discuss neither the home nor the foreign policy of monarch or president, but, absolutely and without ambiguity, the means of strengthening and of extending its own institutions on its existing and recognized basis. Such very of its existence, we can but conclude that, although it has no claim to existence, yet the proof of that existence is in its presence. It seems like retailing truisms to insist upon the infinite variety of conditions under which the administrators of such a system are compelled to fulfil duties often differing in kind rather than in degree. But it is necessary to realize and work out, and not merely to apprehend, the fact, in order to grasp not only the reason why the Lambeth Conference has been convoked, but the process by which it can healthily fulfil its accruing duties. It is a trite remark with those who know how the House of Commons really transacts its affairs, that a large portion of its business totally unknown to the public, and incapable of measurement is whispered out by little knots of members up and down the lobbies. The same fact must, far more emphatically, stand true of a gathering of men brought together from the ends of the earth, not to sit on opposite sides of a floor and follow the whip, but every man for himself, with a like sense of responsibility, to advise and be advised. The best host is the man who most cleverly introduces his guests to each other; while, with such a body as the general Anglican Church, an introduction all round is well worth the expenditure of time and means necessary to compass the result. No bargain may then and there be struck between new acquaintances, but the process of friendlily shaking together imperceptibly begets confidence, and smooths the way to the future inception of profitable business. unheroic conduct is a sore trial to its sensational friends no less than to its melodramatic enemies. The Lambeth Conference declines either to be the author of any new Church or the confounder of an old one; while its contingent from the United States has come over with about as much desire to persuade the lordly prelates of the Establishment to seek the glorious liberty of the great republic in which all sects are equal and unrecognized, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has to send his advice to President Hayes to in clude the recommendation of an act of uniformity in his next message. We believe that the possible criticism on the proceedings of the conference may be, that they do not show results adequate to the trouble and expense at which its members must have been put in coming together. This shortcoming, if it exists, will to be sure be chiefly interesting to the persons directly concerned; but we fancy that the answer would be that, as in many other cases, the gauge of success counts quite as much in the proved possibility of the event as in the details which composed it. The Church of England in its widest sense is emphatically the representative of influence. It rules by influence, and influence moulds its rulings. It exists all over the world under the most varied internal conditions. In England it is an estate of the realm and a powerful factor in the daily life of the nation. In Scotland it reappears as a dissenting sect, comparatively scanty in numbers, but powerful by the social position of its members and the culture of its teachers. In Ireland it is to be found in the peculiarly Irish condition of a body virtually re-established (though Different parties in what agitators are with stinted revenues and diminished fond of terming our Zion are busy fore. pomp) by the very act which purported to casting the gains which they expect to disestablish it. In the United States and secure from the conference. The Liberain the colonies generally it is neither dis- tionists, in particular, speculate upon the senting sect nor establishment, but one sapping process to which they believe the of an unlimited number of co-ordinate re- old citadel of the Establishment will be ligious bodies. Yet, in spite of all these subjected from these Ghoorkas of the free apparent differences, each section finds Churches whom it has recklessly invited itself at one with the others on such broad into the privileged domain. We are satquestions as organization, belief, and gen- isfied that the grievance-mongers will find eral scheme of worship. This is no doubt themselves thoroughly astray in their calvery provoking for the high legal theo- culations. No doubt the experience of rizers who refuse to accept the Church of unestablished bishops struggling for great England except in the shape of a creation ends with scanty means will be tonic and of municipal law, and who declare them- instructive to their compeers at home, who selves unable to conceive any bond of know themselves to be virtually as unesunion which has not been positively enact- tablished, and practically as impecuniose, ed. As, however, the people who would at so many points of their teeming sees. be the first to notice the absence of any But there is something to be learned and such connecting link are fully persuaded | treasured on the other side. Those unes |