Holy Russia

“ Russia is in fact 145 million peasants—ploughing and praying. And here once again one is reminded of the Middle Ages. Cross the Russian frontier and you enter the mediaeval world. Miracles are believed in, holy men are revered as saints, thousands of pilgrims journey on foot every year to Jerusalem, which is to every true believer the centre of the universe and therefore becomes at Easter almost a Russian city. Russia is the most Christian country in the world, and her people are the most Christ-like. ”

“ There is hardly a soldier in all Russia’s immense army that does not regard the freeing of all sorts and conditions of Slavs as his most sacred duty.
And there was the religious question to add to the nation’s enthusiasm. Russia is the most religious nation in Europe. Every home, no matter how humble, has its ikon. The festivals of the Church are25 real holy days, and not mere secular holidays. The Church itself is indeed the mother of the people. The simple, unquestioning faith of the mujhiks is without a parallel in Europe, except perhaps in the remote districts of Ireland. ”

“ A pilgrim perfect in his calling will go from shrine to shrine for several years. If God is good to him, he will strive, after making the round of his native shrines, to reach the valley of Nazareth, and the heights of Bethlehem and Zion. Some hundreds of these Russian pilgrims annually achieve this highest effort of the Christian life on earth; making their peace with heaven by kissing the stones in front of the Redeemer's tomb. Of course the poorer and weaker man can never expect to reach this point of grace; but his native soil is holy. Russia is a land of saints ”

“ Saints and sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere; and so it has come about that Russia is the land of lofty ideals." And Mr. Stephen Graham, again, in his Undiscovered Russia, speaks with glowing admiration of the Russian Church. "The Holy Church," he says, "is wonderful. It is the only fervid living church in Europe. It lives by virtue of the people who compose it. If the priests were wood, it would still be great. The worshippers are always there with one accord. There are always strangers in the churches, always pilgrims. ”

“ Scepticism, in modern days, may be rampant, self-asserting, and widespread, but the Church is never assailed; its children may have lost faith in its teachings, it still retains its hold upon their affection and their sympathies.
As in England, the Church in Russia is a national Church; it is also a member of a great Christian communion, which rises above kingdoms and nationalities, and claims universal homage as the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Orthodox Church. ”

“ So in Church matters Russian policy works out as being uniformity within, and the Orthodox Church in its Russian branch, with the Russian Liturgy and the rule of the Russian Holy Synod, without. We shall come back to the way in which uniformity in Russia is procured, the abominable persecution of the Ruthenian Church, the crushing out of the Georgian Church, the harrying of the Armenians. As for the preaching of the Orthodox faith in other lands, one has only to look for the places where the Russian Government wants a sphere of influence, there is the Orthodox Russian faith preached. ”

“ Inspired by his Church, a Russian has obtained the gifts of resignation and of sacrifice. By an act of devotion he has conveyed his individual rights to his native prince, even as a son might give up his rights to a father in whose love and care he had perfect trust. A right is not lost which has been openly lodged in the hands of a compassionate and benevolent Tsar. The Western nations have retained a liberty which they find a curse, while the Russians have been saved by obeying the Holy Spirit. ”

“ But above all, Moscow, the holy mother of the land, is the centre of Russian history and tradition, to which all the inhabitants of the empire devote their love and veneration. Every Russian entertains all his life long the desire to visit one day the great city, to see the towers of its holy churches, and to pray on the tombs of the patron saints of Russia. “Mother Moscow” has already suffered and given her blood for Russia, as all the Russian people are ready to do for her.
There is not in Europe any nobility which possesses such large fortunes, (?) ”

“ The true Russian likes his Bible—yes, even better than his dram—for the Bible tells him of a world beyond his daily field of toil, a world of angels and of spirits, in which he believes with a nearer faith than he puts in the wood and water about his feet. In every second house of Great Russia—the true, old Russia, in which we speak the same language and have the same God—you will find a copy of the Bible, and men who have the promise in their hearts. ”

“ The Church no longer so supported by the State may feel her weakness, but she will grow rather than diminish in strength as she learns to use more and more the real weapon of Christianity, namely, the sacred truths of our religion published both by writing and by preaching. Russia is one of the great nations of the world. The Orthodox Church which dominates Russia is both true and faithful, and she will guide her people into prosperity and peace when she has learned to follow her Master's example and to order the sword drawn in her defence to be returned altogether to its sheath. ”

“ People who understand Russia know that there is a patriotic Russian party (or, rather, tendency) in the heart of the country, in Moscow, and among the most educated people, that hopes for an awakening of their Church in the direction of the Western Church—that is, of the Roman, not the Evangelical Communion—who work for this, and who see in it the only hope for Russia. ”

“ To the devout Russian the so-called good things of this life are unsubstantial and swiftly passing experiences, while the great and only realities worth thinking about seriously are those spiritual experiences of the Apostles as they went in and out with Christ and companied with Him, which are now described in the Gospels that we may have the same “even to the end of the ages.” If Russia gives, as we pray she may, a lead to Christendom in the direction of unity, she will have a wonderfully uplifting and apostolic contribution to offer to the common stock of our Christian heritage. ”

“ The travellers attended the service in the British chapel, where Mr Gray officiates, and they were surprised to find it so well filled. There were several persons in Russian uniforms—Englishmen, or the sons of Englishmen, in either the military or civil service of the Czar, who are allowed to worship God after the mode of their fathers. By the laws of Russia no Russian may change his religious profession, but any stranger entering the country may worship according to his belief—as may his descendants, although they become naturalised Russians. ”

“ The Russian Church is a branch, and far the most important branch, of the Greek Orthodox Church, which drifted apart from the Catholic Church, which had its centre at Rome, and finally separated from it in the eleventh century. As the greatest Orthodox Christian power in the world, Russia naturally regards herself as the rightful protector of all Orthodox Christians. Her mortal enemy, with whom so long as he remains in Europe any lasting peace is impossible, is the Turk; and her eyes are ever directed towards Constantinople, as the ancient capital of her faith. ”

“ They endeavored to spread their doctrines and practices among Christians of all denominations, and, about 1870, their disciples were found in Little Russia. The dissemination of their teachings in this portion of the empire is remarkable, from the fact that Little-Russians have generally evinced but slight interest in religious movements without the pale of the Church, and feel no sympathy for the foreign population in their midst. ”

“ In all the countries we have visited, whether of the Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, or other faith, we have found the religious edifices adorned in the most costly manner, and there is no reason why Russia should form an exception to the general rule. ”

“ So, if we draw our illustrations from the events of our own time, there is nothing but what is perfectly simple in the feeling which calls Russia, as the most powerful of Orthodox states, to the help of her Orthodox brethren everywhere, and which calls the members of the Orthodox Church everywhere to look to Russia as their protector. ”

“ All priests, policemen, post office officials, schoolmasters, squires, commercial travellers, and Russian-speaking foreigners will bear witness to how they have been pestered with simple Russians asking for an explanation of passages in the Bible, or asking questions about God. So Russia shows herself alive. Even the taverns, in which there is so much drunkenness and debauch, the Russians have made into something like free churches or open debating societies. ”

“ Some men are marching; others are running. Each man has his own individual expression in his countenance; he has not merely a regimental expression. Russia does not care for ranks, for blocks of houses, for formal gardens, for churches with pews. She likes the individual to do as he pleases. Hence a divine disorder, a glorious promiscuity. The church perhaps shows the quickest picture of national life—the kaleidoscopic mingling of people and colours, the wonderful crowd encompassed by the frescoed walls, the faces of the saints, the great cloud of witnesses. ”

“ In its intimate nature Russia differs from Europe. The contrast between the two civilisations is determined by religious and ecclesiastical differences. It is the contrast between faith, and knowledge inimical to faith; between tradition and criticism; between eastern Orthodoxy, on the one hand and Roman Catholicism and predominantly German Protestantism, on the other. Orthodoxy is for Russia the buckler of revealed religion; the Orthodox creed is the mystical expression of absolute and divinely revealed religious truth. ”

“ People differing thus widely have not merely to live side by side, but must think and work with one another and for one another!
The spiritual contrast between Russia and Europe is displayed in its fullest significance in the Russian monastery. Here we find the most genuine and the oldest Russian life, the feeling and thought of Old Russia. We see this already in the monasteries of Petrograd, but we see it yet more clearly in remoter monasteries and hermitages. Russia, Old Russia, is the Russian monk. During my first visit to Russia I had a vivid experience of this. ”

“ Inside the churches, where the women kneel on one side in their bright cotton head-scarves and the soldiers on the other in their long, dark coats, prayers are being said for Russia, that God will protect her and her “little Father,” the Tsar, and all his faithful children, making the dark cloud that is on their horizon to pass them by unharmed. From porch to chancel they bend forward with their faces as near to the floor as their close crowding will permit. ”

“ Petersburg, all was logical, conservative, Christian and anarchic. Russia had nothing in common with any ancient or modern world that history knew; she had been the oldest source of all civilization in Europe, and had kept none for herself; neither Europe nor Asia had ever known such a phase, which seemed to fall into no line of evolution whatever, and was as wonderful to the student of Gothic architecture in the twelfth century, as to the student of the dynamo in the twentieth. Studied in the dry light of conservative Christian anarchy, Russia became luminous like the salt of radium ”

“ The Russian considers that a man who is not Orthodox is not a Russian. He divides humanity, roughly, into two categories—the Orthodox and the heathen—just as the Greeks divided humanity into Greeks and Barbarians. Not only is the Church of Russia a national church, owing to the large part which the State, the Emperor, and the civil authority play in it, but in Russia religion itself becomes a question of nationality, nationalism, and patriotism." Russian Christianity, like Russian Tsardom, is derived from the old Roman empire of Constantinople. ”

“ Visitors to Moscow in Lent are seldom shown this really interesting sight, much more humanly interesting than the Kremlin, the churches and museums. For Russia can boast of very little antiquity in her civilisation or her buildings. Much more interesting than her little past is her present.
At the fair all is Russian—even the oranges and lemons come from the groves of South Russia and the Caucasus. One gets another glimpse of the Russian 107harmony, the harmony of which the winter, the forests, the church, the peasants, the beggars are integral parts. ”

“ People of the working and middle classes came for miles to stand on a bleak cold day for long hours merely to catch a glimpse of the coffin which contained the mortal remains of a man who, according to their belief, lived more than any man in accordance with God's law. Russia is religious to the very core; but, like all religious nations, our own included, she longs to express her deep sincerity through diversity and not through uniformity. ”

“ Yet in this fact of facts lies the key to every estimate of Russian progress and Russian power.
This Popular Church consists of the Old Believers; men who reject the pretended "reforms" of Patriarch Nikon, and follow their fathers in observing the more ancient rite. "You will find in our country," said to me a priest of this ancient faith, "a Church of Byzantine, and a Church of Bethlehem; a new voice and an old voice; a system framed by man, and a gospel given by God."
No one has ever yet counted the men who stand aloof from the State Church as Old Believers. ”