THE RELIGION OF MODERN GREECE.* THIS volume, the outcome of
the tenure of the " Carnegie Research Fellowship," is a very interesting study in compara- tive religion. It is not too much to say that an English traveller, looking on at the celebration of some great Greek festival, finds the scene as unfamiliar as if he were in some sacred place of Islam or Brahminism or Buddhism. Take, for instance, the "Festival of the Annunciation at Tenos." Some forty-five thousand people, men, women, and children, crowd the island,—in the year of Miss Hamilton's visit there was the counter-attraction of a General Election and the number had sadly fallen off. To some it was little more than a pleasure trip, but most came on business of a more or less religious character. Mothers bring their children to give them a spiritual start in life,—the baby's weight in candles is offered, and then it is likely to turn out a good Christian. Sick people come to be healed of their ailments: one priest administers spoonfuls of holy water to the worshippers, another morsels of holy bread. A pilgrim carries away some oil from a sacred lamp, or buys a candle which is to burn itself out before a shrine, but, as a matter of fact, is sold to a newcomer as soon as the purchaser's back is turned. There is nothing like it here; but any one who knows what Delos was in the Greek life of classical times at once recognises the resemblance. Tenos, by the way, is near to Delos, and owes its present celebrity to an incident curiously resembling the Lourdes story. Then, again, we have the rivalry between various shrines. Thus our author met an invalid girl who was making a toilsome journey to the Panagios of Kalathos; the Lindian Panagios bad not deigned to answer her, and she was going to try another. Perhaps jealousy might prevail where kindness failed. Then we hear of St. Michael of Mandama.da. in Lesbos, so diligent a helper of the faithful that he has to be provided with new shoes ; and of St. Dionysius of Zakynthos, who goes in person to assist the island fishermen. The priest even shows seaweed which he has brought back with him from his journeyings. What does this all mean ? Whence do these devotions spring ? Not from any deliberate plan of utilising the old superstitions, but from the fact that human nature remains the same, and dominates the religion which ought to conquer it. And then we ask : Is it for good or evil ? Anyhow, we can answer that the Greek peasant or artisan or shopkeeper who goes to Tenos is better off than his far-off predecessor who made the pilgrimage to Delos. These virgins and saints are certainly innocent, we may say improving, objects of contemplation. The worshipper has, it may be said, a mythology in the place of a religion, but it is a pure mythology, and this is a step upward. Miss Hamilton's hook is, we need scarcely say, of a most interesting nature.
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