homes, circumcised and brought up as Moslems. Throughout Asia Minor, where the Turk has always been very anxious to Ottomanize the whole population, the punishment for speaking Greek was to have one's tongue torn out. Of course thousands of Rayahs did apostatize; and in the purely artificial medley of races who, joined by the profession of Islam, make up the Turkish people there is a great proportion of Greek and Slav (that is originally Christian) blood. On the other hand, it is the eternal glory of the Orthodox people that as a people it has remained faithful. This is the most wonderful fact of the history of the Eastern Churches. These Rayahs, cut off from the West by the schism, forgotten by civilized Europe, ignorant and miserable, a servile race, paying for their faith by taxes, disabilities, degrading humiliations, and the sacrifice of their own children, always exposed to the violence of their masters, having every possible advantage to gain by turning Turk, yet kept their faith throughout those centuries of oppression. And what they suffered, how many thousands of them shed their blood for the name of Christ during those long dark ages, God only knows. But we, who have never had to sit under the shadow of the Sultan's blood-stained throne, if we remember the ugly story of their fathers' schism must also remember how valiantly the Eastern Christians have stood for Christ ever since, and how in the days of her trial the Byzantine Church, once so foolish and obstinate, has sent that long procession of her children to join the white-robed army of martyrs.
3. The Porte and the Christian Churches.
As soon as the Turks settled down after their conquest they began to organize the subject-peoples. They classified them naturally according to their religions. Our idea that there is one law for all and that a man's religion, as far as the State is concerned, is his own private affair only is one that the Turk has never understood. Moslems are the dominant race directly under the Sublime Porte.[1] And the Rayahs, too, must be organ-
- ↑ Sublime Porte means in English, High Gate. The Gate is a very common Semitic idiom for Government. The Gates of Hell in Mt. xvi. 18 mean simply the devil's government; judgement was given and laws were
