PREACHING IN THE ORIENTAL CHURCH

If we are to credit the reports of travellers and tourists, preaching in the Oriental Church has gone almost into desuetude, at least among the schismatics; and at this we cannot wonder when we see the superficial training that candidates for the sacred ministry there receive. They are ordained in some places upon the sole qualification of being able to recite a few prayers in addition to the Creed; and so low is their status among the Copts that it has been found necessary to print all the rubrics of the missal in Arabic, in order that they might know what to do. (For a corroboration of this statement concerning the wide-spread ignorance among the Oriental clergy see Smith and Dwight, Researches in Armenia, vol. ii. p. 34 et passim.)

So careless are the Russians in regard to preaching that they entrust the duty not unfrequently to the most illiterate persons, even to laymen, and attach very little importance to the orthodoxy of the preacher’s views.