The king builds many. The churches are near running water for the sake of rites of purification, and they are planted round with trees, so that "there is nothing adds so much to the beauty of the country as these churches and the plantations about them."[1] They have thatched roofs, and they are surrounded by colonnades, the pillars consisting of trunks of cedar trees. In form they are round, and in the circular interior is a railed-off square, within which is a "holy of holies," only entered by the priests. The monks, according to Bruce, do not live in convents, but they occupy separate houses grouped round the churches. Bruce gives us little information as to the internal life of the Church in Abyssinia; but he mentions a priest who told him he never believed that the elements in the Eucharist were converted by consecration into the real body and blood of Christ. This priest thought that to be the Roman Catholic faith in contradistinction to the tenets of his own Church.[2] In the Abyssinian Church, pictures, but not statues, are used as in other Eastern Churches. Many saints are venerated, and in some cases worshipped with extravagant adoration.
In more recent years the country has been distracted by tribal wars and the contentions of rival claimants to the supreme power claimed by the Negus Negasti (king of kings), but only exercised by the stronger and more masterful of these suzerain lords. In the year 1829, missionaries went out from the English Church Missionary Society and were well received. Other missionaries followed, but, owing to the opposition of the priests, they were all obliged to leave the country in less than ten years.
Still, the prospect is not unhopeful. English and American missionary and educational work is spreading over Egypt and extending up the Valley of the Nile through Nubia. In course of time this may be expected to penetrate the Soudan till it joins hands with other missionary efforts in the interior of Africa. Then Abyssinia will be in closer touch with the modern movement, which is part of a
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