This book was intended at first to contain accounts of the other Eastern Churches too. Want of space made that impossible. It is proposed to make another volume some day describing the Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, Copts, Abyssinians, and, above all, our shamefully neglected brothers the Uniates. I fear that, in the last part especially, the account of the Orthodox would not please them. I am sorry that the racial quarrels among them loom so large; but it is true that these fill up nearly all their history during the last century. I have tried to write it all fairly, and have said what I think should be said in their excuse. In spite of this, in spite of the irony which is not mine but that of the circumstances, this little book has been written without any sort of rancour against and, I hope, without any want of due respect towards those great sees whose wonderful history and ancient traditions make them the most venerable part of the Christian world—except only that greater Western throne whose communion they have rejected.
Jerusalem, Low Sunday (Kal. Greg.),
Jerusalem, Holy Cross Sunday (Kal. Iul.), 1907.
