with Russian institutions. There are sixty-four Russian schools scattered all over Syria and Palestine where native children are taught the Orthodox faith and the fear of God and the Czar.[1] The Russian Palestine Society is founding preparatory schools for priests, who are then to be sent to finish their studies at Russian universities. It has built great establishments where a hospital, home for pilgrims, Russian Consulate, &c., cluster around a church in which the Russian services are held. At Jerusalem the enormous Russian buildings on the road to Jaffa dominate the city, besides the great Russian Gethsemani Church and five other establishments belonging to the same society; at Ain-Kerim, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Ramleh, Jericho, &c., the high towers of the Russian buildings stand up above every other building as if they were already the houses of Russian colonial governors.[2] Then come the Balkan States, Here, too, Russia prepares the day when she can swallow them by teaching them to look to the Czar as their natural protector. She always takes up the cause of the Slavs against the Phanar, she made the Sultan constitute the Bulgarian Church, and, in spite of the schism, the Russian Church remains in communion with it. And Mount Athos, the holy mountain and centre of Orthodox monastic life, is getting swamped with Russians. In fact, Russians say quite openly now that their Holy Synod had better take over the government of the whole Orthodox communion; nine-tenths of that communion are Russians, the Œcumenical Patriarch may doubtless keep a shadowy primacy of rank, but practically Orthodoxy is, and should be, Russian.[3] Of course, all this is gall and wormwood to the Phanar; the Patriarch always makes quite hopeless attempts to persuade the Porte not to accept pro-Russian candidates for the other sees, and quite recently he ventured on a protest against the doings of the Russian Palestine Society, addressed to the Holy Synod
- ↑ Echos d'Orient, iii. pp. 177–181: Les écoles russes de Palestine et de Syrie. In the seminaries all the Arab ecclesiastical students are carefully taught the Russian language. E. d'Or. vii. p. 117.
- ↑ Echos d'Orient, iv. pp. 202, seq., 275, seq.: La politique russe dans la Palestine et la Syrie.
- ↑ So the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1899: Echos d'Orient, ii. 246 (April, 1899).
