The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-06

1ne ndllVe monks say that the ITeeh
 priests who have beep imported from Constantinople, Athens, smyrna, the
 Isle of Samos and other places now
 hold all the fat jobs. and that they are
 compelled to work for something like
 s7 each per month. They do the pas
 toral work of the villages and act as
 the priests of the towns. On the other
 hand. the outsiders have amassed for
 tunes. They pretend to be hermits and
 devoted to fasting and prayer, but
 they are accused of living luxuriously
 and of keeping establishments which
 are by no means as good as they
 should be.
 Christians FIoREed By Mohammedans
 Indeed, the fights among the warrins s Christians are such that the Mohamme-
 dan soldiers have to use whips to keep
 them in order. The Turks are always
 on guard in the Church of the Holy Sep ulcher. have seen them there at Easter
 time when they were whipping the quarreling Greeks, Armenians and Copts in order to separate them. Dur
 ing the fight knives were drawn, and 1t is not an uncommon thing for blood to pollute the Holy Sepuleher on festal days.
 went last week to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity. In the stable where Christ was born a line
 has been drawn across the center Of the floor. On one side of that line the Greek Cath olics claim their rights and the other side belongs to the Romans As the two sects were worshiping, a Mohammedan soldier, with gun and whip in his hand, stood at each end of the line and kept order. Other Mos lem soldiers were guarding the service in the church overhead.
 It seems disgraceful to think that Mo hammedans should be necessary to keep the peace among Christians. Neverthe- less, Palestine belongs to the sultan, and It Is his troops who must maintain order. A year or so ago a pilgrim had fight in the Church of the Nativity during which he shot one monk and wounded two others, and such troubles are liable to arise any day in the Church of the Sep ulcher.
 This is especially so at Easter time, when the thousands belonging to the diff ferent sects go marching about singing their fanatical songs and denouncing each other. One of their cries is: This Is the tomb of our Lord" Another is, God help the sultain," and a third, ''Oh, Jews! Jewsl your feasts are the feasts of pigs.
 As they go the Greeks jostle the Ar menians and the Abyssinians bump against the Latins Not long since the followers of one sect set fire to some rich hangings that had been placed in a grotto of the church by the followers of another sect. fire occurred, the church was filled with smoke and 1t mar rowly escaped being burned.
 What the Natives Want
 The Creeks of Palestine claim that they have the right, under the new Turkish constitution, to all the churches, con- vents and monasteries belonging to their church in the Holy Land. They demand that the money changers. as they call the foreign priests. be whipped out of the temple, and that the gifts of the pi- grims be applied to the building of hos pltals, old age homes and schools for their children. This movement is not connned to Jerusalem, but it extends Palestine, and it has the ap- proval of the best element of the com There are altogether about 900 native Greeks here, and they have recently had meetings attended by dele gates from their colonies living in Jaffa, Nablous, Tiberias and Bethlehem. They nave, l understand, demanded that the patriarch resign, and have sent word to the sultan that they will not serve under him.
 We have so few Greek Christians in the United States that it is hard for us to ap- preciate what the Greek church means. It is one of the strong churches of the world. It has altogether about 100, GOO O0O which Is more than one-ffth of Ill the Christians on earth and more than lWo-tnlrds as many as all the Protestants have before me the latest statistics of religious denominations. There are in the world 2S0OcO,oOO Roman Catholics. about I5o.0o000o Protestants, 100,0O00oo Greek Christians, 100000 who belong to the Church of Abyssinia and about 1,7oO,o The sum total of Christians Is less than 500, ,000.000 and less than one third of the population of the world
 On the other hand, there are 256Ooo GOO Chinese who worship Conflcius, 90.0O0.- DO Hindoos, 176.000,000 Mohammedans and 147.0oO,0Oo Buddhsts. Those who be- lieve in the various other religions are fewer.
 The Patriarch of Jerusalem
 During my stay here have had an in- terview with the patriarch of the Greek church. He is the Pope of this part of the world as far as that denomination is concerned, and he controls the vast pos sessions owned by the Greeks in the Holy Land am told that the income of the church is something like 1000, GOO a year and that the greater part of this fund is administered by him. I have met the Pope al Rome, but his holiness does not appear in such splendor as does the pa- triarch of Jerusalem. The patriarch comes out upon state occasions in hat and gown, decorated with diamonds, em- eralds and rubies. His clothes are of woven gold and silver, and the bishops who march with him have crosses of dia- monds which hang from their necks and they are gowned in gold and silver bro- cade
 One of the queerest sights of the world Is to see his beatitude, as the patriarch Is called, going through the ceremony of washing the feet of the F apostles In front of the Church of the Holy Sepul- cher. This he does every year He ap- pears dressed as I have described but be- fore going through the humble ceremony of washing the feet of the bishops who have been picked out to represent the apostles he takes off his grand gown of woven gold and lays aside his domed hat which is incrusted with jewels.
 As he does so his long hair falls to his waist. and he stands forth in plain sight of his people clad in a long robe of CT eam-colored silk crepe, which is bound in at the waist with a golden white gir- ale. He now takes Turkish bath towel which he wraps around his loins, and then, slooplHE over, ne pourS some water from a golden pitcher into basin of gold. In the meantime each of the bish- ops hast cast one of his shoes, and he holds his bare foot out to be washed. The patriarch does this quickly. splashing the foot with water and drying it with a towel. As he finishes this operation he kisses the foot, and then goes on to the next one in turn. I have seen this ceremony with my own eyes in com pany with 10000 or more sightseers and pilgrims