The Greek Church Has Animated The
Muscovite Peasant, And Inspired Him With Hopes And Ideas Which,
However Humble, Are Still
Better than none at all; but the faith,
and the forms, and the strange ecclesiastical literature which act
so advantageously
Upon the mere clay of the Russian serf, seem to
hang like lead upon the ethereal spirit of the Greek. Never in any
part of the world have I seen religious performances so painful to
witness as those of the Greeks. The horror, however, with which
one shudders at their worship is attributable, in some measure, to
the mere effect of costume. In all the Ottoman dominions, and very
frequently too in the kingdom of Otho, the Greeks wear turbans or
other head-dresses, and shave their heads, leaving only a rat's-
tail at the crown of the head; they of course keep themselves
covered within doors as well as abroad, and they never remove their
head-gear merely on account of being in a church; but when the
Greek stops to worship at his proper shrine, then, and then only,
he always uncovers; and as you see him thus with shaven skull and
savage tail depending from his crown, kissing a thing of wood and
glass, and cringing with base prostrations and apparent terror
before a miserable picture, you see superstition in a shape which,
outwardly at least, is sadly abject and repulsive.
The fasts, too, of the Greek Church produce an ill effect upon the
character of the people, for they are not a mere farce, but are
carried to such an extent as to bring about a real mortification of
the flesh; the febrile irritation of the frame operating in
conjunction with the depression of the spirits occasioned by
abstinence, will so far answer the objects of the rite, as to
engender some religious excitement, but this is of a morbid and
gloomy character, and it seems to be certain, that along with the
increase of sanctity, there comes a fiercer desire for the
perpetration of dark crimes.
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