ad its roots in Greek Philosophy; that of
the other in Roman Law. One tended to a brilliant diversity, the other
to centralization and unity. One was a group of Ecclesiastical States,
a Hierarchy and a _Polyarchy_, governed by Patriarchs, each supreme in
his own diocese; the other was a _Monarchy_, arbitrarily and
diplomatically governed from one center. It was the difference between
an archipelago and a continent, and not unlike the difference between
ancient Greece and Rome. One had the tremendous principle of growth,
stability, and permanence; the other had not.

Such were the race tendencies which led to entirely different
ecclesiastical systems. Then there arose differences in dogma; and
Rome considered the Church in the East schismatic, and Byzantium held
that that of the West was heterodox. They now not only disapproved of
each other's methods, but what was more serious, held different creeds.
The Latin Church, after its Bishop had become an infallible Pope (about
the middle of the fifth century), claimed that the Church in the East
must accept his definition of dogma as final.

It was one small word which finally rent these two bodies of
Christendom forever apart. It was only the word _filioque_ which made
the impassable gulf dividing them. The Latins maintained that the Holy
Spirit proceeded from the Father--_and the son_; the Greeks that it
descended from the Father alone. It was the undying controversy
concerning the relations and the attributes of the three Members of the
Trinity; and the insoluble question was destined to break up Greek and
Catholic Church alike into numberless sects and shades of belief or
unbelief; and over this Christological controversy, rivers of blood
were to flow in both branches of Christendom.

The theological question involved was of course too subtle for ordinary
comprehension. But although men on both sides stood ready to die for
the decisions of their councils which they did not understand, there
was underlying the whole question the political jealousy existing
between the two: Byzantium, embittered by the effacement of its
political jurisdiction in the West, exasperated at the overweening
pretensions of Roman bishops; Rome, watching for opportunity to cajole
or compel the Eastern Church to submit to her authority and headship.

Such was the condition of things when Russia allied herself in that
most vital way with the empire in the East. It is impossible to
meas