Russian Orthodoxy

“ One might say that any heresy inspires them with less horror than the Catholic doctrine about the Pope, and that they consider the rejection of this doctrine a sufficient proof of a healthy orthodoxy. But the day will come when every Russian who loves orthodoxy above all else will no longer regard with so much horror as now a church which is far better calculated than the Greek Church to furnish him with arms wherewith to defend the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Real Presence, the sacraments, the veneration of Mary and the saints. ”

“ In Russia it finds additional expression in the control of individual movement by means of the passport, without which document a Russian may be said to have no legal existence.
Even more striking is the position of the Russian Church, as well as the religio-national conception which dominates the Russian mind and according to which orthodoxy and nationality are regarded as one. The Russian Orthodox is the only true Russian; all others are foreigners. ”

“ The American public is perhaps not generally aware of the character of certain religious sects in Russia, which is considered to be a country of orthodoxy,27 with the Czar at its head, and where people think there is no room left for any other religion than the official one to develop itself. ”

“ Relations with us, and study, have disabused many credulous minds; in Russia, moreover, the double sentiment will operate in our favor of the danger to which orthodoxy will be exposed, and the insufficiency of the succor which can arrive to it from any quarter except the Catholic Church alone.
[pg 814] But Protestants, rationalists, Jews, Mahometans, and Raskolniks are not the only adversaries which the Russian Church must prepare to combat, and against whom she will find no help more efficacious than that which Catholics can afford. ”

“ With such dim fears the Old Believer opposed to the orthodox hierarchy a blind fidelity to orthodoxy. Their dread of seeing the Church corrupted inspired people and clergy with suspicion of all foreigners, even of their brethren in the faith whom the czars or the patriarchs had invited from Byzantium and from Kief. The Russian alone, of all the orthodox nations, had maintained his independence against infidel and pope, and he held himself the people of God, chosen to preserve the true faith. ”

“ Teachers of false doctrine, pretending to be defenders of the old national religion, disseminated their heresies throughout the empire, at first in secret, then openly, as they met with widespread sympathy.
Internal disorders, revolt in Little Russia, unsuccessful wars, and the consequent heavy burdens laid upon the people, aggravated the ferment of religious discontent. Numerous sects, asserting a purer Orthodoxy, arrayed themselves in opposition to the national Church; the most dangerous of these sectarian movements was that among the population about the White Sea ”

“ Well, then, this sustaining thought which supports the Catholic priest by making him feel himself a member of that family which is as vast as [pg 708] the world and a brother in the faith with martyrs—this support will be wanting to the Russian clergy when upon it alone will depend the fate of orthodoxy. The Russian priest, who, not being alone, will have need of a courage so much the greater as there are beings dear to him whose existence is bound up with his own, will seek examples to encourage him ”

“ Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the Russian Church regards with profound apathy those various intellectual movements which cause serious alarm to many thoughtful Christians in Western Europe. It considers religion as something so entirely apart that its votaries do not feel the necessity of bringing their theological beliefs into logical harmony with their scientific conceptions. A man may remain a good orthodox Christian long after he has adopted scientific opinions irreconcilable with Eastern Orthodoxy, or, indeed, with dogmatic Christianity of any kind. ”

“ The people violently rejected the new sign of the cross and the entire reformed liturgy. It mattered little that the new ritual was more ancient than their own. The ignorant Russian knows no antiquity older than his fathers and grandfathers, and his attachment to the outer forms of orthodoxy was only intensified by remembering the recent attempts of popes and Jesuits to gain a foothold in the country. ”

“ The Russian clergy have neither that haughty, aggressive intolerance which characterises their Roman Catholic brethren, nor that bitter, uncharitable, sectarian spirit which is too often to be found among Protestants. They allow not only to heretics, but also to members of their own communion, the most complete intellectual freedom, and never think of anathematising any one for his scientific or unscientific opinions. All that they demand is that those who have been born within the pale of Orthodoxy should show the Church a certain nominal allegiance ”

“ Russians to oppose themselves to a more extended liberty of conscience,134 but will rather proceed to examine whether, apart from what we have here said, it be not urgent, even in the interests of orthodoxy itself, that some changes should be introduced into the present organization of the Russian Church. ”

“ The fundamental dogmas of Orthodoxy, moreover, while being immutable, are simple and elementary, conveyed in language often vague and mysterious, capable of divers interpretations; consequently an inclination to refine and speculate is developed as a means of satisfying a spiritual craving. ”

“ No clergy of our Church have ever gone to Russia to learn what they could for themselves, or give lectures, or act as members of deputations, and come into touch with the Orthodox clergy and been disappointed with their reception ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their religion appears to be a Protestantism of a very decided type, and in the few church ceremonies which they retain, such as a second baptism for adults, they resemble the Anabaptists and Mennonites of Germany. They reject external observances, fasts, images, the invocation of the saints, and all the rites of Orthodox worship as simply useless and unnecessary; they seem to be animated more by a spirit of calculation and of economy, of indifference to outward form, rather than by religious scruples or any deep-seated repugnance to church ceremonies ”

“ The Raskol was divided into two sects, which have ever remained, each hostile to the other. The adherents of one retained the belief that Christianity, or a Church, could not exist without a priesthood of regular apostolic descent; they held that the Church of Russia had not necessarily, by adopting Nikon's heresy, lost its sacred character, that ordination of priests by its bishops was still valid, and, consequently, that to have a clergy in regular standing they had but to convert and draw to their ranks ministers of the national establishment. ”

“ The synodical, or federative form, of government is the natural and logical one for churches of the Orthodox communion, as it adapts itself equally well to all political constitutions. In democratic Greece the Church has followed the example given by the Church of autocratic Russia, and its organization there, while differing in detail, is similar in principle. Whatever form among Orthodox Churches the higher, or governing power may have assumed, it has never made any pretence to be of divine origin, but, whether patriarchate or synod, has always been, and been held to be, of human institution ”

“ Ordination in the Russian Church is not necessarily for life; a priest may be relieved of his vows by the Holy Synod. If convicted of crime, he may, like any functionary, be degraded from his office; the death of his wife (a second marriage is not permitted) deprives him of his sacred character, and he can no longer officiate. In a word, the Russian pope is rather a minister at, and a servant of the altar, than the representative of the Deity.
The clergy of the Orthodox, like that of the Catholic, Church is divided into the regular and secular bodies ”

“ They had some influence on our political relations with other Orthodox Slavonic nations [10] .
This unifying orthodox conception of the world was, however, a dogmatic construction: it suppressed the varieties of religious experience and fettered the development of Russian thought. This is the principal reason why the Orthodox system could not endure: it was crippled by the great Schism (Raskol) , which embodied a protest in regard to some religious rites, and it was unable to stifle the growing power of secular thought in Russia. ”

“ Although the Orthodox Church is magnificent in its equipment, and its priests most richly caparisoned, yet it offers a marked contrast to the aristocratic system of the Roman Catholic Church. The Russian most devoutly takes off his hat in passing a church or holy image, but he keeps it on when passing the priest, and he kisses the priest on the cheek rather than the hand. ”

“ I realised, and, once again, not abstractly, but with body and soul, that in Russia, orthodoxy and the existing order of things are inseparably united, and that before both—autocracy and orthodoxy—are rejected together, a new conception of Christianity must first be arrived at. ”

“ Monasticism in Russia has never felt the renewing and vivifying influences springing from works of active charity and benevolence, while the more fervently devout and piously inclined of the population have been drawn away from the national Church, and from its institutions, by dissenting sects. ”

“ The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the people ”

“ Already, in these obscure dissensions of the Middle Ages, the fundamental principle of the Raskol—that is to say, scrupulous regard for the letter of the law, formalism—begins to assert itself. An annalist of Novgorod, in the fifteenth century, mournfully complains that some of the clergy have impiously changed the ancient invocation of, "Lord! have pity upon us!" for "O Lord! have pity upon us!"
The manner in which the Russian people were converted to Christianity, suddenly, by order, as it were, made religion appear to them as consisting in form, in words, rites, and ceremonies. ”

“ What Jerusalem and the Temple were to the Jews, Kiev and the Petcherski are to the Russians. The vast and mysterious catacombs are peopled by the bodies of thousands of holy men, who still rest in the caverns where they lived; miracles are worked by their remains, and keep alive the ardent devotion of innumerable worshippers at their shrines.
When Christianity was introduced in Russia the schism dividing the East and the West, although threatening, was not declared, and the Russian establishment was a branch of the Church universal, still, in theory, one and indivisible. ”

“ To the Church, dominated by a religio-national point of view, they were the very opposite of her ideal type of Russian orthodox, their very existence in Russia being regarded as an anomaly and as an actual and possible influence in disintegrating the religious faith of the orthodox peasants. To the nationalists they were an alien people racially and religiously, whose assimilation with the Russian people was neither possible nor desirable. ”

“ The Orthodox Church of Russia seems to have been and to be as remote from the life of the people as the political bureaucracy. The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. The Christian religion is the dominating force in the works of Gogol, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. How eager the Russian people are for the simple Gospel, and with what amazing joy they now receive it, remind one of the Apostolic age. ”