THE RELIGION OF THE ARMENIANS.
THE mission among the Armenians long conducted by the American board has borne fruit, not only in Turkey, where more than half of the total number of the Armenians reside, but also in this country. About thirteen thousand Armenians now live in America. In the controversy concerning Christ’s twofold nature, the Armenian Christians refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (to which political trouble had prevented their sending representatives), and constituted themselves a separate church, called the Gregorian or Armenian. In the fifteenth century this church became split into majority non-Romanizing and minority Romanizing parties; since then most of the latter have accepted papal supremacy. This, or the United Armenian party, again split when, in 1870, the dogma of papal infallibility was promulgated, and affiliated with the Old Catholics. The orthodox Armenians reject the doctrine of purgatory, but believe in the intercession of saints. Some of their ritual peculiarities are: the threefold immersion at baptism; the union of baptism with confirmation; the dipping of the bread in the wine at the Holy Communion; finally, the administration of extreme unction to the priests alone, and that after and not before death. The work of the American board in Turkey has always been aimed, not to antagonize this Christian church, but rather to lead its followers into a larger liberty. The Katholikos, or head of the church, to whom the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople are subordinate, resides near Erivan, in Russian Armenia—for sixteen centuries the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Armenian nation.—The Outlook.