A History of Protestant missions in the near East

tion.
Syria and Palestine 233
On the other hand, the Russians cleverly
make use of
the national feeling of the Arab majority in the congregations
to undermine the influence of the Greek clergy. They encourage
the desire for a native Arab patriarch, because in him
they hope to have a willing tool for the carrying out of their
policy in the Near East. The Russian pilgrimages are very
extensive, fully 10,000 pilgrims at a time often staying for
months in Palestine, feeling in their simple, pious, yet bigoted
the holy places, to which they are led
souls the attraction of
one after the other. Their presence
is
employed to the full
by the Russian Palestine Association to push Russian interests.
Side by side with the Orthodox Greeks the Armenians have
hitherto held a leading position. Though only few in numbers
(there are about 2,000 in Palestine, 1,000 of these being
in Jerusalem), they are zealous and ready to undergo any deprivation
in the fight for the holy places. Since they were
impoverished by the dreadful occurrences in Armenia during
the last decade, their influence in Jerusalem has waned. The
rest of the Oriental Churches are only slightly represented.
Thus there are about 150 Kopts, 100 Syrian Jacobites and 100
Abyssinians. But each of these religious bodies holds fast to
its real or imaginary rights to the holy places.
To the onlooker the Oriental Churches present many points
of similarity. In all of them public worship has hardened
into endless ritualism and formalities in an unintelligible
language. Whatever real religious power there is in them
manifests itself in the fear of innumerable evil spirits,
sorcerers, witches, the evil eye, and harmful influences, and in
the reliance on counter magic, amulets, relics, in short on any
magical influences and powers which can be mechanically
used. Yet, at the same time, there is an undercurrent of
desire for union with God, which they seek to gain not by
religious or ethical means, but by convulsive movements,
hypnotism, or other forms of exalted, abnormal spiritual condition.
Veneration of the saints, and, in many cases, the
worship of images and pictures, are rife among them. They
thus present an altogether degenerate form of Christianity.