for its alterations of the old service books and other innovations.
In the Greek Church the communion service is more lengthy, elaborate, and dramatic than the Roman mass. There are prayers and lessons, but every function of the service is accompanied by some action. While the Western ceremonial appeals to the soul mainly through the ear, the Eastern seeks to awaken the interest and chain the attention more by its appeal to the eye in richly varied symbolical acts performed by the priests and deacons. The congregation watches the stir and movement of an elaborate moving function. Now the candles are lighted; now they are extinguished; doors are opened, closed again; the clergy kiss the altar, kiss the gospel, cross the forehead, mouth, and breast; there is the swinging of the censer; the liturgical vestments are frequently changed so that the worshipping spectator may have passing before his gaze a kaleidoscopic variation of colour—each tint having its special symbolism; processions, genuflections, prostrations, all have their part in the great ceremonial. Much of this is to be witnessed in a Roman high mass, but not with the volume and variety of symbolism seen in the performance of the Greek liturgy. The pomp and ceremony of the Church is parallel to the pomp and ceremony of the court described with so much unction by the literary Emperor Constantine Pogonatus. It agrees with the stiff embroidered and jewelled vestments, the enamelled icons, the gold and mosaic decorations of the basilicas in which it is the scenic drama of worship. There is no attempt in all this to rouse enthusiasm; that can be done by the sermon which precedes and prepares for it, when the excitable congregation clap and shout and wave their handkerchiefs at the eloquent periods of some popular preacher.[1] In the liturgy, on the other hand, all is decorum. The people join in the responses; they wail the Kyrie Eleison; they make the dome ring again with the mighty chant of the
- ↑ This was the ancient custom. To-day preaching is rarely heard in the Greek Church.
