Note 1 — Chapter XV · THE SIBERIAN CHURCH.

In connection with this subject, we constantly meet with the terms “Eastern Church,” “Greek Church,” and “Russian Church.” Let us distinguish between them. If on a map of Europe a line be drawn from the White Sea southwards to Petersburg, thence along the western border of Russia to Cracow, then along the eastern and southern frontier of Austria to the Adriatic, this line will roughly divide Christendom between the Churches of the East and of the West. Eastern Christendom is sometimes divided into three main groups of Churches, the first group being the Chaldean, the Armenian, the Syrian, the Egyptian, and the Georgian Churches. The second is the Greek Church, whose members, speaking the Greek language, are found as far south as the desert of Mount Sinai, through all the coasts and islands in the Levant and the Archipelago, and whose centre is Constantinople. This is the only living representative of the once powerful Church of Constantine, called the “Orthodox Imperial Church.” The third group of Eastern Churches consists partly of the Sclavonic peoples, found in the provinces of the Lower Danube, Bulgaria, Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia; and partly, and much more largely, of the Sclavonic people of Russia. The Russian Church, therefore, is an offshoot of the Greek Church of Constantinople, once the centre of Eastern Christianity, which Greek Church, by reason of its former Imperial grandeur, sometimes gives its name to the other Oriental communions.