DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0372
ISLANDS OF THE AEGEAN 341
faithful servant, I concluded my part of the service
with the Lord's Prayer in Greek.
The sweet-faced priest then swung his censer over
the grave, and recited a few passages from the Greek
service for the dead, another priest at the other end
of the grave gave the responses, and the people
joined in the benedictions. It was a brief service,
but cheerful and triumphant in its tone. As we
moved away from the grave slowly but without for-
mality, I took the arm of the lovable priest and asked
him in Greek if he understood what I had read.
MdXuTTU (" certainly") Then opening his liturgy
he showed me the Lord's Prayer in the same Greek,
turned a few pages to the exquisite Corinthian chap-
ter, and putting his finger on the closing verse —
' And now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest
of these is love,' — said, 'tlpalov, wpalov, " Beautiful,
beautiful."
Then I felt that the barrier of language had indeed
been broken down and that priest and people had
Felt with me the ties of brotherhood and human
sympathy which bound us all together. It was sig-
nificant that the three nations there represented,—■
Greece, France, and America, — had all stood for
liberty, equality, fraternity. And it was deeply inter-
esting that the great apostle in his famous chapter
to the Greeks of Corinth and in his address to the
Athenians on the Areopagus had furnished in the
Greek tongue a bond of sentiment and union which
made us feel at that grave that God had made of
one blood all the nations of the earth, and that hope
and faith, and above all love, are the supreme things
in the world.
faithful servant, I concluded my part of the service
with the Lord's Prayer in Greek.
The sweet-faced priest then swung his censer over
the grave, and recited a few passages from the Greek
service for the dead, another priest at the other end
of the grave gave the responses, and the people
joined in the benedictions. It was a brief service,
but cheerful and triumphant in its tone. As we
moved away from the grave slowly but without for-
mality, I took the arm of the lovable priest and asked
him in Greek if he understood what I had read.
MdXuTTU (" certainly") Then opening his liturgy
he showed me the Lord's Prayer in the same Greek,
turned a few pages to the exquisite Corinthian chap-
ter, and putting his finger on the closing verse —
' And now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest
of these is love,' — said, 'tlpalov, wpalov, " Beautiful,
beautiful."
Then I felt that the barrier of language had indeed
been broken down and that priest and people had
Felt with me the ties of brotherhood and human
sympathy which bound us all together. It was sig-
nificant that the three nations there represented,—■
Greece, France, and America, — had all stood for
liberty, equality, fraternity. And it was deeply inter-
esting that the great apostle in his famous chapter
to the Greeks of Corinth and in his address to the
Athenians on the Areopagus had furnished in the
Greek tongue a bond of sentiment and union which
made us feel at that grave that God had made of
one blood all the nations of the earth, and that hope
and faith, and above all love, are the supreme things
in the world.