Two excerpts from The Waters of Marah

by Peter Hammond

Rockliff 1956

An account of two years studying the Greek church after the Second World War

There are those whose knowledge of the Ecclesia Anglicana would seem to be limited to the fact that she is divided as irrevocably as Caesar's Gaul into three parts, high, low and broad: though the significance of these mysterious divisions eludes their comprehension. Others know her only through the widely publicised activities of certain of the more idiorrhythmic of her dignitaries. Occasionally, however, a happier encounter affords the suspicious Greek ecclesiastic a glimpse of something which he can recognise as familiar amid the obscurity in which the west is veiled: which may even prompt him to inform his wondering flock, when he preaches to them the following Sunday, that in the mysterious providence of the Pantocrator , though all the territories of the patriarch of the west have fallen into heresy, some remnant of primitive orthodoxy has been preserved in those islands whence came Byron and Codrington and the Kyrios Churchill.
        It was my custom when travelling in Greece to carry with me several copies of a Greek translation of the Scottish Communion Office. The recipients of this work included the abbot of a certain monastery, whose hospitality I had enjoyed: a rigorist who regarded all that lay beyond the pale of Orthodox Christendom as unrelieved darkness and heresy. It was some months before I stayed at the monastery again, and my visit coincided with a festival. After the liturgy the abbot invited several of those who had been present in church to the guest-chamber, where coffee and cognac were served by a deacon. The inevitable catechism ensued:
        "The Kyrios is not a Greek?"
        "No, he is a stranger."
        "From what country?"
        "He comes from England."
        "Ah! from England."
        "Yes, he is a theologos from Oxford."
        "He is Orthodox?"
        At this point another of the visitors, a high-school teacher from Cyprus, rashly asserted in a loud voice that the English were all Luthero-Calvinists. "It is evident, Sir Professor," said the abbot, "that you are ill-informed in regard to the belief of the English Christians. I, however, have closely studied the liturgy of the British nation which, it is beyond doubt, is no other than that of St. James, the Lord's brother. The Christians who have such a liturgy are evidently orthodox in faith, even though their canonical status, owing to their remoteness and isolation, is somewhat irregular."
        It is perhaps only fair to add that other travellers have on occasion met with a less encouraging response to their efforts to diffuse a more exact knowledge of our own liturgical life.

The Waters of Marah pp14-15

To worship without incense is commonly regarded as one of the innovations of the Catholics. There is a story of an English churchman who was catechised by some Orthodox monks (I fancy that they were Serbs) as to the practice of the Ecclesia Anglicana .
      "Do you, in your divine worship", they demanded, "invariably offer incense?"
        The Englishman confessed that this evangelical custom was not observed at every service within the territories of the Metropolitan of Canterbury.
        "Ah!" said the monks, shaking their heads at this irrefutable testimony to the spread of popery: "We knew that you were tainted with Catholicism!"
        Let not the western Protestant be dismayed if his refusal to burn incense in his churches is interpreted by the Orthodox not as a sign of his adherence to evangelical tradition but, on the contrary, as a badge of popery. I have always suspected that my Greek friends must find it extraordinarily difficult to enter into the history of the 'ritualistic' controversies of the latter part of the nineteenth century, since the issues at stake are so remote from their own experience. What can one make of muddle-headed barbaroi who are so perverse as to regard the observance of evangelical customs as evidence of the continuing influence of the Arch-Protestant?

The Waters of Marah p175