form. The catechumen was placed with face toward the west, and then commanded to renounce Satan with gestures of abhorrence, stretching out his hands against him, or smiting them together, and blowing or spitting against him thrice. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his 'Mystagogic Catechism,' thus depicts the scene: 'Ye first came into the ante-room of the baptistery, and standing toward the west ((
Greek characters)) ye were commanded to put away Satan, stretching out your hands as though he were present. … And why did ye stand toward the west? It was needful, for sunset is the type of darkness, and he is darkness and has his strength in darkness; therefore symbolically looking toward the west ye renounce that dark and gloomy ruler.' Then turning round to the east, the catechumen took up his allegiance to his new master, Christ. The ceremony and its significance are clearly set forth by Jerome, thus: 'In the mysteries [meaning baptism] we first renounce him who is in the west, and dies to us. with our sins; and so, turning to the east, we make a covenant with the Sun of righteousness, promising to be his servants.'[1] This perfect double rite of east and west, retained in the baptismal ceremony of the Greek Church, may be seen in Russia to this day. The orientation of churches and the practice of turning to the east as an act of worship, are common to both Greek and Latin ritual. In our own country they declined from the Reformation, till at the beginning of the 19th century they seemed falling out of use; since then, however, they have been restored to a certain prominence by the revived mediævalism of our own day. To the student of history, it is a striking example of the connexion of thought and ceremony through the religions of the lower and higher culture, to see surviving in our midst, with meaning dwindled into
- ↑ Augustin. de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii. 5. Tertullian. Contra Valentin. iii.; Apolog. xvi. Constitutiones Apostolicæ, ii. 57. Cyril. Catech. Mystag. i. 2. Hieronym. in Amos. vi. 14; Bingham, 'Antiquities of Chr. Church,' book viii. ch. 3, book xi. ch. 7, book xiii. ch. 8. J. M. Neale, 'Eastern Church,' part i. p. 956; Romanoff, 'Greco-Russian Church,' p. 67.
