Holy Synod, consisting of twelve Bishops, together with a number of the lower clergy, the principal influential laymen, and the heads of the trade corporations, assemble in the great hall of the Patriarchate, where they deliberate with closed doors, whilst a crowd generally fills the outer court anxiously awaiting the result. The senior member of the Synod then proposes an individual, and if approved of, the rest cry out Ἄξιος, He is worthy; if they disapprove of the selection, they exclaim Ἀνάξιος, He is unworthy. It seldom happens, however, that there is any division in their councils, as the whole is previously concerted by the four principal laymen, who exercise great influence over the Bishops. In the present instance there was no dissenting voice, and when the name of the successful candidate was announced to the people without, it was received with a general shout of Ἄξιος! Ἄξιος!
It will not be out of place to give here some account of the proceedings of the American Board of Foreign Missions in Constantinople, whose agents belong to the Presbyterian, Independent, Dutch Reformed, and other dissenting bodies, especially as my conduct towards them during my residence at the capital was publicly censured by certain periodicals. It is well known to every one, that many of the doctrines, and the entire constitution of these sects, are as opposed to the teaching and discipline of the Anglican Church, as they are to the faith and ecclesiastical government professed by all the Eastern Churches. Yet, notwithstanding this wide difference existing between us, they designedly or otherwise give it to be understood that they hold the same faith as we do, and differ only on the most trivial points. This opinion has been so deeply impressed upon the great mass of the native Christians, and has been so strengthened by the manner in which many of our own missionaries have fraternized with them, that I have found it a most difficult task to persuade them to the contrary; and their missionary proceedings have been carried on upon principles so diametrically opposed to those professed by our Church, that any efforts on our part have come to be regarded not only with suspicion, but to be treated as pernicious by all the Churches of the east.
The right, moreover, which the committee of the American
