Home life in Hellas, Greece and the Greeks - eBooks4Greeks.gr

250 HOME LIFE IN HELLASa secular career, and grappling with the overloadedcurriculum of the Greek schools, who havedisplayed a knowledge of the New Testament moreaccurate and more extensive than that of theaverage English public-school boy, and itwas aninteresting experience to hear the Scriptures discussedin their own tongue.There is a diminutive church in Athens—a gemof Byzantine architecture—standing by the side ofthe cathedral, and popularly though erroneouslycalled the old Metropolis. Its plan and outlinesare those of an edifice dedicated toChristian worship,but it is built of fragments from the fanes ofan earlier faith. Pagan emblems and the figuresof pagan deities adorn its walls.This little churchof St. Eleutherios in a manner symbolises thereligionof the Greeks—essentially Orthodox, yetcontaining adventitious elements derived from thepagan Hellenes.No less a man than Ernest Renan has said,Greece never was seriously Christian—nor issheso to-day. This is true in so far as concerns theemotional and personal religion which is a purelyWestern development. But the Greek mightretort that this is not Christianity. As he understandsit, certainly it is not.