416 A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.

officiating priest washed Ills hands in a brass basin ; and
the deacon—who was also the schoolmaster—come round
the church holding up his scarf, which was heaped full of
little cakes of unleavened bread. These he distributed to
all present. An acolyte followed with a plate, and col-
lected the offerings of the congregation.

We now thought the service was over; but there remained
four wee, crumpled, brown mites of babies to be christened.
These small Cojits were carried up the church by four
acolytes, followed by four anxious fathers. The priest
then muttered a short prayer ; crossed the babies with
water from the basin in which he had washed his hands ;
drank the water; wiped the basin out with apiece of
bread; ate the bread ; and dismissed the little newly made
Christians with a hasty blessing.

Finally, the bishop—who had taken no part in the ser-
vice, nor even partaken of the Eucharist—came down from
his chair, and stood before the altar to bless the congrega-
tion. Hereupon all the men and boys ranged themselves in
single file and trooped through between the screen and the
apse, crowding in at one side and out at the other; each being
touched by the bishop on his cheek, as he went by. If
they lagged, the bishop clapped his hands impatiently,
and the schoolmaster drove them through faster. "When
there were no more to come (the women and little girls,
be it observed, coming in for no share of this benediction),
the priest took off his vestments and laid them in a heap
on the altar; the deacon distributed a basketful of blessed
cakes among the poor of the congregation; and the bishop
walked down the nave, eating a cake and giving a bit here
and there to the best dressed Copts as he went along. So
ended this interesting and curious service, which I have
described thus minutely for the reason that it represents,
with probably but little change, the earliest ceremonial of
Christian worship in Egypt.*

•"The Copts are Christians of the sect called Jacobites, Euty-
chians, Monophysites and Monothelites, whose creed was condemned
by the Council of Chalcedon in the reign of the Emperor JIarcian.
They received the appellation of ' Jacobites,' by which they are gen-
erally known, from Jacobus Baradicus, a Syrian, who was a chief
propagator of the Eutychian doctrines. . . . The religious orders
of the Coptic church consist of a patriarch, a metropolitan of the
Abyssiuians, bishops, arch-priests, priests, deacons and monks. In