A REAL EASTERN CHRISTIAN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XIII, 28 March 1896, Page 344

A REAL EASTERN CHRISTIAN.

I quickly found lodgings, after my arrival in Sinna, that bright little Oriental city, in the house of a Roman Catholic Nestorian, or Chaldaean as he would be properly called, who soon arranged a most comfortable, even luxurious, apartment for myself, and stabling for my three horses. A good fellow he was, too, in his way, a fanatical Christian, making the signs of the cross at all moments, muttering his prayers at all hours, and living, as it did not take one long to discover, in absolutely disreputable immorality. In this, however, he was typical of the greater part of his co-religionists in Persia, who seem to have adopted all the vices of the Persian, to which they add not a few of their own. In fact, the Oriental Christian is a strange creature, a hot-bed of immorality and deceit, with a deep-rooted fanaticism and hatred of all other creeds. My friend at Sinna told me with uplifted eyes that he had never missed a Sunday or a Saint’s-day from church for fourteen years —and yet I —but enough.