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 ENGLAND'S RELIGIOUS DUTIES TOWARDS 
 EGYPT. 
 
 Rev. George Broadley Howard. 
 
 A Paper read at the Carlisle Church Congress, Sep. -Oct., 1884. 
 
 It is with no affectation of diffidence, but with a very deep sense of in- 
 sufficiency, that I approach this question ; but that side of it to which 
 I shall mainly invite attention is, from my point of view, of such extreme 
 importance that I shall offer no further apology for venturing to accept 
 the invitation I have had the honour to receive to prepare a paper on 
 the subject. 
 
 The few minutes at my disposal will oblige me to omit much that I 
 would gladly say on the general subject, but this much I would urge in 
 the name of common humanity ; that our first duty in Egypt is to 
 secure the administration of justice without corruption, and the protec- 
 tion of the defenceless and the poor against the oppression of the strong. 
 And secondly, that, if possible, the White and Blue Niles should not be 
 suffered to pass into the hands of any slave-hunting or slave-holding 
 power. 
 
 With these general remarks, I pass to the question to which I propose 
 to confine myself; our duty in relation to the Christian population of 
 the country. 
 
 This population includes 
 
 1. The small community of the Orthodox, who are in communion 
 with the Holy Eastern, or Greek Church. 
 
 2. The Coptic, or as we may call it, the Native Egyptian Church, said 
 to number from 300,000 to 600, ooq souls ; the latter estimate being 
 that of a native gentleman, who, Miss Whately tells me, is especially 
 well informed in statistics. 
 
 3. A mixed population of Greeks, Syrians, Maronites, Armenians, 
 and other non- Egyptians, of divers sects and persuasions, the number 
 of whom in the aggregate must be considerable, though their several 
 communities, considered separately, may be comparatively small, and 
 are migratory in character. 
 
 Our attention, then, will be mainly devoted to the consideration of our 
 duty with relation to the first two classes, the Orthodox and the Copts. 
 And here I would enter a claim, which I hope I shall be allowed to take 
 for granted, that the expression England's duty in the title of our sub- 
 ject, and in connection with this department of it, though not perhaps 
 with other departments, refers to our duty as members of the Church of 
 England exclusively ; and the question to which I shall address myself 
 is this, What is our duty, as Churchmen, towards the Christians of 
 Egypt? 
 
 First, then, with regard to the Orthodox. And here, I think a grand 
 opportunity may, by the providence of God, be opening to us ; for we 
 are brought by the force of circumstances face to face with a portion of
 
 bat vast Eastern communion, which, cradled in the birth-place of 
 Christianity, has survived so many centuries of oppression and persecu- 
 tion, and still, throughout the dominion of the crescent, bears witness for 
 the cross. 
 
 The orthodox Christians of Egypt are numerically few, and are not 
 Egyptians by descent, even if born in the country. But they are a 
 compact, well-defined community, representing, or rather being, the exist- 
 ing remnant of one of the three original patriarchates of the Church. 
 
 Their present head is the Patriarch Sophronius, and their clerical staff 
 consists of one archbishop, thirty priests, and six deacons. They have 
 churches in seventeen towns of Lower Egypt, and did possess one in 
 Upper Egypt until it was lost to them by the late war. Their recognised 
 creed is that of the 318 fathers at Nicaea, as enlarged at Constantinople, 
 and ratified by the CEcumenical Council of Chalcedon. In other 
 words, it is that which is commonly called the Nicene Creed, as we have 
 it in our Prayer Book, only in its pure form, i.e., without the Filioque 
 in the procession clause, and with the word holy as one of the Notes of 
 the Church. Their chief public office is, of course, the Eucharist ; in 
 ■:he celebration of which they probably use the well-known liturgy of St. 
 Mark, the founder of the Church of Alexandria; not, however, to the ex- 
 clusion of others, such as that of St. Chrysostom, etc., all of which, I 
 need hardly say, are emphatically sacrificial and sacramental in their 
 tone. They minister, we are told, mainly to their own people, and do 
 not proselytise, but live on friendly relations, though not in communion, 
 with the Copts, whom we shall notice presently. 
 
 But though few in number, their position as a recognised portion of 
 the Holy Eastern Church, renders our attitude towards them a matter of 
 the greatest consequence. If we approach them in an unsympathetic 
 spirit ; if we regard them as wandering in a desert of ignorance and 
 superstition, and our dealing is marked by a tone of condescension and 
 superiority ; if we endeavour to supplant their offices by the introduction 
 of our own, or of something altogether novel in the form of a so-called 
 Scriptural liturgy, a process attempted among the Syrian Christians of 
 Malabar, then we shall be met with polite but determined opposition ; 
 we may very likely succeed in producing a schism, and we shall certainly 
 lose the opportunity before us. 
 
 But if we meet them in a spirit of affection and Christian love, anxious 
 to receive them, and to be received by them as fellow-members of the 
 great Christian family, willing to acknowledge and to admire rather than 
 : o find fault, and not bent upon bringing them to the level of our own 
 
 andard in all things ; then we may, perhaps, both learn something our- 
 selves, and may, peradventure, be permitted not only to urge any 
 necessary reforms, but even to bring about a restoration of that Christian 
 unity and intercommunion, the rupture of which is so deplorable. 
 
 I do not hold a brief in behalf the Eastern Church, to defend her 
 through thick and thin ; there are some things, perhaps many things, 
 which most of us, I suppose, would fain not find, both in her public 
 offices, and in her manuals of private devotion. I cannot here digress 
 into particulars, though it would be easy to do so. With the experience 
 of the Western Church before us, and influenced by what may. have 
 fallen under our own observation, we are very properly sensitive and 
 anxious about such matters as I have in mind ; and yet, I submit, it 
 
 , UIUC .
 
 might be going much too far to condemn all actions and expressions to 
 which we ourselves may entertain the gravest repugnance. That which 
 to our more prosaic minds may seem inseparable from objection, may in 
 the mind of an Eastern be only the expression of that which is essen- 
 tially true and justifiable ; and there may be substantial unity without 
 uniformity. 
 
 Moreover, there is good reason for us to bear in mind the proverb, 
 that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. An Eastern 
 Churchman has but to take up our Book of Common Prayer, and he 
 will there find that in three important matters, one of them involving 
 fundamental doctrine, the Church of England, though boasting of her 
 reformation and her purity, yet varies from the Church of primitive an- 
 tiquity. Our reformers retained the Filioque in the Creed; they rejected, 
 I fear deliberately, the scriptural and primitive practice of using chrism 
 in confirmation, confining the outward sign to the laying on of hands ; 
 and they have left us no trace of the Invocation of the Holy Spirit in 
 connection with the consecration of the Bread and Wine, though it is a 
 marked feature in all the earliest Liturgies. 
 
 I shall return to the first of these subjects presently, but before 
 doing so I would invite your attention to the " Coptic Church," which by 
 reason of its numbers, undoubtedly presents the leading feature in the 
 Christianity of the land. Its members, moreover, represent the ancient 
 race of the Egyptian people. 
 
 This Church is presided over by the Patriarch Cyril, under whom are, 
 in Egypt, two metropolitans and eleven bishops, with a large staff of 
 clergy ; in Abyssinia, one metropolitan and four bishops ; and in Jeru- 
 salem, one metropolitan. 
 
 I take these statistics, as well as those which I have given about the 
 Orthodox Church, from the report of the representatives of the Associa- 
 tian for the Furtherance of Christianity in Egypt ; a society which 
 should command our best sympathy and support. The secretary is the 
 Rev. E. M. Blakiston, 7, Whitehall. 
 
 The Coptic creed is, I presume, like that of the Asiatic Monophysites, 
 the Constantinopolitan, or, as we commonly call it, the Nicene Creed ; 
 and their liturgies or anaphoras, a translation of three of which, by the 
 Rev. J. M. Rod well, is now before me, are based upon the model of the 
 primitive liturgies ; but the distinguishing feature of this Church is its 
 maintenance of the Monophysite heresy, and consequent rejection of the 
 4th (Ecumenical Council. 
 
 In dealing with these people, therefore, it seems to be of the first im- 
 portance that we should clearly understand in what the Monophysite 
 heresy really consists. The Monophysites, we are told, acknowledge 
 only One Nature in our Lord, and thus it might be thought that they 
 regard Him only as a Man, denying His Divinity. But it is not so. 
 They acknowledge His divinity and His humanity also, in the plainest 
 and most unequivocal terms. 
 
 The teaching of Mar Xenajas, one of their greatest doctors, whose 
 other name, Philoxenus, is probably better known in connection with his 
 version of the New Testament, is given by Assemani (Bib. Or. II. 25) 
 to the following effect : — 
 
 " The Son, Who is one of the Trinity, united personally to Himself a 
 body endowed with a reasonable soul and mind in the womb of the
 
 Deipara. His body had no existence before this union. In this He 
 was born ; in this He was nourished ; in this He suffered ; in this He 
 died. The Son's divinity suffered not ; died not. And all this was 
 done truly and naturally ; not in appearance, not fantastically. Further, 
 the word was not converted into flesh, nor mingled therewith, nor 
 confused therewith, nor divided therefrom, and vice versa. But the 
 word was united to the humanity, as the reasonable soul is united to 
 the body. And as one human nature is composed from the reasonable 
 soul and body ; so from the humanity and divinity of Christ ariseth 
 One Nature, not indeed simple, but compounded, or (for he is said to 
 have adopted St. Cyril's phrase) One Nature enfleshed (\xia tyvaiq 
 a£(rapK(A)fA.ivr).)" 
 
 The teaching of Mar Xenajas is expressed in a very ancient Syriac 
 MS (of the Sixth century perhaps) to the same purport, and annexed 
 thereto are some remarkable reasons for rejecting the Council of Chalce- 
 don, among which is the following : — 
 
 " No. 8. And again we anathematize and set aside the Council of 
 Chalcedon, because in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son 
 of God, it separates the natures, and the properties, and the actions, 
 and the heights, and the humiliations, and the divinities, and the huma- 
 nities (all these are plurals) ; and thinks of Him as Two, and brings in 
 a quatemity, and worships the simple Son of Man," etc. 
 
 A similar dread of worshipping a Quaternity in place of the Trinity 
 appears elsewhere in the same treatise, and shows how the language of 
 Chalcedon was misapprehended. [Add. MSS., 14,529, fol. 65, 68, 69. 
 Br. Mus.] 
 
 The teaching of Jacobus Baradseus, from whom the Syrian Jacobites 
 derive their name, was, says Assemani (Bib. Or. II. 25), in accordance 
 with that of Xenajas, and is that of their descendants at the present 
 day. 
 
 Thus the Monophysites maintain the union of the divinity and 
 humanity in the person of our Lord as stoutly as any ; and they fully 
 accept the four negations of the Council of Chalcedon — aavy xvtioq, 
 aTpiiTTwQ, aSiaiptrcjQ, a\n)fyiaTioQ : — I find then, for instance, in the 
 Coptic Liturgies of St. Gregory and St. Basil — but whereas the Catholic 
 Church declares these two natures to be " united " (for the Council 
 speaks of union, not conjunction, and see St. Cyril's third letter to Nes- 
 torius, and the anathemas following : Labbe and Cossart III. 949), in 
 the one Person of Christ, they maintain one Nature in Him ; and yet they 
 speak of this nature as duplex ; and use by way of explanation the 
 simile of wine mingled with water, as opposed to the combination of 
 water and oil. 
 
 This appears to be the sum total of their heresy ; and since it may 
 perhaps be urged that, if this be so, the difference is one of terms, 
 rather than in the essence of the faith, I conceive that there may be a 
 great temptation to condone the Monophysite traditional expression, 
 and even to effect a compromise between them and ourselves, in the 
 hope of gaining their goodwill, and promoting their welfare both as 
 Christians and as Egyptians. Something of this kind was done in 
 India, where Bishop Heber received the Jacobite Metran Athanasius to 
 communion at Bombay, and placed him in his own episcopal chair ; 
 and where the special heresy of the Jacobites appears to have been made
 
 of very small account, or rather quite lost sight of, by the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society's missionaries in Travancore. 
 
 I am, myself, not unconscious of such a temptation, so great is the 
 interest I feel in these ancient Christian communities, and so great is 
 my love for them. Nevertheless I feel constrained to deprecate most 
 earnestly any condonation of a heresy condemned by the (Ecumenical 
 Council of Chalcedon. I do not forget that it was against the vain 
 babbling of Eutyches that the definition of the Council was particularly 
 directed, and the Monophysites expressly reject Eutyches ; but their 
 opinion is condemned by that Council in the words, " and feign one 
 (nature) after the union ; " and they in turn anathematise the Council. 
 To condone their heresy would therefore be inconsistent with our pro- 
 fessed acceptance of the Council ; it would be an act of disloyalty to 
 the Church ; and it would indefinitely postpone the restoration of in- 
 tercommunion with the Eastern Church, whose claim to Catholicity is 
 indisputable, and whose members are numbered by millions. 
 
 I lay the more stress upon this, because unity is one of the first duties 
 and chief necessities of Christendom ; and to break unity by obstinate 
 resistance to the ruling of a General Council, is on this ground a crime 
 that may not be excused ; it is of the very essence of heresy — a choos- 
 ing of one's own judgment in preference to the teaching of the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 It is difficult to know how to deal with cases such as these ; but I am 
 strongly impressed with the conviction that sympathy with minds per- 
 plexed, a recognition of their difficulties, and of their desire to get at 
 the truth (which must be allowed to those who differ from us, unless 
 there be the clearest proof to the contrary), and entreaty to submit 
 private judgment to the decision of the Church in Council, will do more 
 than argument. One should remember, too, the inadequacy of words 
 to deal with transcendent mystery. No language can ever represent the 
 fulness of fact ; no word painting can present the picture before the eye 
 in all its details ; it serves but to create or aid imagination. In the 
 striking words of Professor Westcott, " The Bible itself teaches^ us, by 
 its antithetical utterances, that no single expression of the truth is co- 
 extensive with the truth itself." " Life proves beyond question," he adds, 
 "that words gather wealth in the course of ages ; and it is not too much 
 to say that no formula which expresses clearly the thought of one 
 generation can convey the same meaning to the generation which fol- 
 lows." [Preface to "Rev. of the Father." 1884]. 
 
 What, then, can be done ? Are there no active steps to be taken by 
 us as Churchmen in our dealings with the Christians of the East ? 
 Yes, indeed there are ; and they will demand all the energy, care, and 
 prudence which it may be given us to bestow upon them. 
 
 1. In the first place, I think we should endeavour to assist the Copts 
 and other Christians in Egypt, by promoting their temporal security, so 
 that none shall be molested or oppressed on account of his religion. 
 This is a matter of political detail ; but it may be in our power to urge 
 it upon those who hold the reins. 
 
 2. Then there is the question of education ; and here we may surely 
 render assistance of a very practical kind. 
 
 Miss Whately has been working patiently in this direction for the 
 last 23 years, and her schools at Cairo now receive nearly 700 pupils, of
 
 whom about hall the boys and two-thirds of the girls are Moslems, the 
 rest mostly Copts. " Controversial teaching," she writes, " is not per- 
 mitted in my schools ; but there is no keeping back the knowledge of 
 salvation through the One Mediator between God and man, and the 
 Scripture is freely taught to all." Here, then, is a very important centre 
 of educational work, which has already been supplemented by the 
 establishment of a Medical Mission, and of a higher school by Miss 
 E. J. Whately. 
 
 But it is not the education of children alone that is wanted. The 
 Coptic clergy are taken, it seems, from among those who are pursuing 
 their ordinary work as laymen, and have had no special training for 
 the ministry. Would it not be possible, then, to promote the education 
 of the clergy, both before and after ordination ? I would do this, with- 
 out attempting any controversial interference with their religious tenets, 
 by promoting the study of Church history ; and, above all, of the holy 
 Scriptures in the Hebrew and the Greek, the former of which, at least, 
 from its affinity with Arabic, would, I apprehend, be acquired with little 
 difficulty. 
 
 At present, with the exception of Miss Whately's schools and mis- 
 sion, but little has been done by us. A mission has, however, been 
 recently established at Cairo by the Church Missionary Society, and 
 there is, I am told, the sum of ^200 at the disposal of the Standing 
 Committee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in case 
 of a mission being opened of which that committee should approve. 
 
 3. An appeal has been made to us for help in another direction, and 
 that is against the seduction of the American Presbyterian missionaries, 
 who have already persuaded many families of the Copts to join them. 
 Now we need not doubt that these missionaries lay stress upon salvation 
 through Christ, and upon the importance of faith, and piety, and moral 
 virtue, as far more essential than mere ritual observances ; but they can- 
 not lay more stress on these points than a Churchman will do, if he be 
 a true man. The Presbyterian and other Protestant sects, having re- 
 jected episcopacy, have lost, I fear, the power to celebrate a valid com- 
 munion, and so far from promoting the restoration of their adherents to 
 Catholic unity, they do but lead them away from primitive order, with 
 consequences that are incalculable. The Coptic priests have asked for 
 tracts in support of Episcopacy against Presbyterianism ; so that here we 
 have an opportunity of addressing the people with the good will of 
 their own clergy. This is a great opportunity, and I trust it will be 
 wisely and faithfully used. 
 
 These, then, are some of the steps which occur to me as called for 
 on our part by our very position in the country. But there is far more 
 to be urged than this. I think I see before us an opportunity, magni- 
 ficent beyond what could have been conceived possible only a few years 
 ago, in the position into which we have drifted under the disposal — can 
 we doubt it ? — of an all-controlling Providence. May we not, ought we 
 not, to make an effort, through our relations with the Orthodox Church 
 in Egypt, to restore union (and by union I mean not only reciprocal 
 good feeling, shown in complimentary letters and hospitality, but actual 
 recognition and intercommunion) between the holy Eastern Church 
 and ourselves ?
 
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 gssortaticm for thr JFurtfjrranre of Christianity tn(JFgopt. 
 7, Whitehall, London, S.W. 
 
 November 2\th, 1884. 
 
 A Meeting of the Committee of this Association will 
 be held here on Tuesday, December 2nd, at 3 p.m. precisely. 
 
 The Rev. G. Greenwood, who starts for Egypt on Wednes- 
 day, December 3rd, hopes to be present. 
 
 The Rev. G. B. Howard offers, for the acceptance of each 
 member of the Committee, a copy of the paper which he read 
 at the Church Congress in Carlisle. It will readily be under- 
 stood that the Association is not responsible for any opinions 
 that may be expressed in it. 
 
 Your attendance at the Meeting is earnestly requested. 
 
 AGENDA. 
 
 I. Finance. 
 
 II, Mr. Few will call attention to the paper read at the 
 Carlisle Church Congress by Dean Butcher, with especial 
 reference to the following paragraphs : — 
 
 1. "At present there is no Bishop to look after the Chaplaincy 
 
 and Missionary station in Egypt and Syria. ... I think 
 that something should be done without delay. The Jerusalem 
 Bishopric is not a popular one .... but whether [it] be 
 filled .... or whether a bishopric be erected in Cairo, or 
 .... in Cyprus, somehow, I say, the present gap should 
 be filled, and filled without delay, or the Church of England 
 convicts herself of grievous negligence." 
 
 2. " The ground belonging to the English Church [in Cairo] is an 
 
 unoccupied space, with a small and inconvenient Church 
 thrust into a corner of it, and, until last year, only open for 
 six months out of the twelve. . . . Now let the Church take 
 this matter in hand ; improve the present building, erect a 
 clergy-house, and open a school." 
 
 Hon. Sec.
 
 But with any such object before us we must go with the Holy Scrip- 
 tures and the Primitive Creed of Christendom in our hands. I have 
 spoken of our retention of the interpolated Filioque in the Creed. That 
 it is an interpolation there can be no doubt ; that indeed has never been 
 seriously disputed. I can myself point to the particular shelf and 
 volume in which a MS. copy of the Creed is contained, written nearly 
 iooo years before Luther was born, and it has not the Filioque. We 
 find traces of the doctrine long before the time of King Reccared ; but 
 when, and where, and by whom the Filioque was first introduced into the 
 Creed is uncertain. It gradually found its way into the west, and being 
 eventually adopted by the Church of Rome, was afterwards strenuously 
 insisted upon by her. In this matter Rome changed her own policy, 
 for Pope Leo III. had repudiated the addition, and she changed it 
 apparently with the object of obtaining the recognition of her supremacy 
 even over an (Ecumenical Council. From Rome then we have inherited 
 the Filioque, and at the Reformation the clause was probably overlooked, 
 not being one of the points in controversy at the time, and so it remains 
 in our Prayer Book to this day. 
 
 When we reflect that it is into the exact language of the great Creed 
 of Christendom that this clause is introduced, and that the predicate 
 it contains is concerning the essence of one of the Persons of 
 the Holy Trinity, it becomes impossible to contend that it is of 
 little importance. The nature of the Godhead is a subject we are 
 bound to treat with the most reverent awe, and can be known only by 
 what God reveals concerning Himself. The council of Ephesus forbade 
 any addition to the Nicene Creed (Ac. 6). The council of Chalcedon, 
 after reciting the Creed as it then stood, i.e., without the Filioque 
 (and this long after the doctrine of the double procession had 
 appeared both in east and west) declared that " it teaches perfection, 
 licdiBaGKU to riXtiov* concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost," and denounced anathema or deposition against any who should 
 presume to propose, compile, hold, or teach another faith. And the 
 Eastern Church has maintained a constant protest against the addition. 
 
 When all this is considered, it will be seen to be a very serious 
 thing still to retain the clause. I do not presume to say that it 
 predicates what is untrue ; but it is really no part of the Creed : it 
 cannot, I submit, be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture 
 — for it is not to the Mission of the Holy Ghost by the Son, but to 
 His eternal Procession that the clause refers : its retention brings us 
 under the anathemas of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and renders inter- 
 communion with the great Church of the East impossible. 
 
 And why should we desire to retain the clause ? Is it because we 
 have inherited it from Rome ? or got it, perhaps, from some error of a 
 copyist, or from a small Spanish Council ? or is it simply because we 
 have had it now for so many hundred years that it is too much to ex- 
 pect that we should give it up ? 
 
 It would not, indeed, be without a wrench that we should remove 
 an expression which we and our fathers have been wont to use, in 
 simple obedience (as we thought) to the Church's teaching, and in 
 
 * The Greek expression, it will be seen, is, if possible, stronger than the perfec- 
 tionem docet of the Latin.
 
 8 
 
 all the awe and earnestness of Christian confession ; but with such an 
 example of sincerity on the part of the great and powerful Church of 
 England, we should be in a position from which we might consistently 
 urge the adoption of such reforms in our sister Church of the East as 
 careful examination might show to be desirable. 
 
 I venture to advocate the unconditional removal of this clause from 
 the Creed. And I do so in connection with our present subject, 
 because I believe that any steps that may be taken in this direction 
 would be of immediate and material assistance to us in whatever efforts 
 we make in behalf of the Orthodox and Coptic Christians of Egypt. 
 
 A movement of so momentous a character should not be hurried, 
 and the machinery of our constitution renders undue haste impossible ; 
 but if it were carried out, I see no limit to the results we might hope for 
 from its accomplishment. For the Filioque is, I suppose, the most 
 serious bar to our recognition by the Eastern Church ; and if this 
 recognition were mutually attained, there are not wanting directions in 
 which action might at once be taken for reciprocal comfort and edifica- 
 tion, and for the extension of Christ's kingdom through the world. 
 
 The moral weight of such a union would be inestimable. Our own 
 network of apostolic succession — for it is a network rather than a chain — 
 would be placed beyond the Romanist's cavil, by the co-operation of 
 Eastern bishops in our consecrations ; the infusion of Western energy 
 would, under the divine blessing, be sensibly felt for good in the 
 Churches of the East ; and the assembling of a great Council of all 
 Orthodox Christendom, in which the four quarters of the world should 
 be represented, might become no idle day-dream. The late Archbishop 
 of Canterbury did a great thing in convening the Pan-Anglican Synods ; 
 what if it should be reserved for his grace, our present Primate, to do a 
 yet greater thing by bringing about a council which might not unreason- 
 ably claim to be (Ecumenical ? Rome would certainly stand aloof; but 
 Rome, insisting on the Filioque in the teeth of Constantinople, Ephesus, 
 and Chalcedon, and on the reception of claims and dogmas unknown 
 to primitive antiquity, would not be in a position (notwithstanding her 
 imposing numbers) to offer any valid objection on the score of not bjing 
 represented. Such a council would have for one of its objects the 
 reconciliation of the Nestorians of Asia, and the Monophysites of Asia 
 and Africa, on such terms as, being consistent with the Catholic Faith, 
 as might least wound their amour propre, and least interfere with the 
 temporal interests and ecclesiastical position of their patriarchs, bishops, 
 clergy, and people. 
 
 One's mind is crowded with thoughts and hopes of what might be 
 possible if such a dream were realised ; but I must not now indulge in 
 the discussion of them, and I have only to thank you for the patience 
 with which you have so kindly heard me. I am deeply sensible of the 
 grave responsibility I incur by venturing to bring forward thus publicly 
 the proposal I have made. It is, however, no novelty, no revolutionary 
 measure, that I am advocating, but only a return to the creed of the 
 (Ecumenical Councils of the Church. And the question must be 
 faced, if we are to have any dealings with the Christian population of 
 Egypt that shall be at once sound, cordial, and lasting in their character. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE CHURCH CONGRESS, BY 
 BEMROSE AND SONS, DERBY J AND 23, OLD BAILEY, LONDON.
 
 
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