Orthodox,
with being heretical in doctrine and worship. To put the common view,
this Church, which is the repository of Apostolic doctrine, and from
which we, in common with others, have derived, has, along with the truth,
a large admixture of error, which renders her dangerous and to be
avoided.

We, who plume ourselves on the orthodoxy of our doctrines and purity of
worship, have a remarkable facility for detecting and magnifying the
errors of others: of creating them where they do not exist, and of
exaggerating them where they do. This facility has this advantage, that
it keeps our eyes away from ourselves and from the errors which are
nearer home. Like the beams of the winter sun which have little warmth in
them, the line of our vision is somewhat oblique.

This is a subject much too large to occupy our attention to any extent
here. It may be enough to remark in regard to the major charges, that
nowhere does the Eastern Church address worship, either to the Mother of
our Lord, or to the saints and angels. They are venerated and invoked,
but worshipped, never. Worship, as we understand it, is addressed to the
Triune God, and to Him alone. This is a rather dangerous subject to
touch, and this is not the place to safely approach it; but it may
suffice to say that we might be a great deal the better, and none the
worse, and it might be comforting and strengthening in times of
affliction and trial, to realise more than we do, that our Lord wore our
flesh when He sojourned with us on the earth, and that He derived His
humanity from Mary. We might thus even be induced to use Her name with
greater veneration and affection than have yet characterised our
references to Her, when these have had to be made, and so aid the
fulfilment of Her own prophecy, "Behold, from henceforth, all generations
shall call me blessed." And might it not be good for us to remember that
there _are_ saints and angels, and that we are "compassed about with so
great a cloud of witnesses?" Who doubts the fact? Do not they who tacitly
ignore the existence of the Blessed Dead?

If any of the hymns contained in this volume should touch the heart of
anyone who reads them, or, better still, at any future time, sings them,
may he, as he remembers the source from which they have come, think
reverently and sympathetically of the struggling Church of the East.

HYMNS FROM THE EAST

MO