Pobedonostsev: The Church (Part V)

He who is truly Russian, heart and soul, knows what the Church of God
means to the Russian people. Piety, experience, and respect for
religious feelings are not enough in order to understand the import of
the Church for the Russian people, or to love this Church as one's
own. It is necessary to live the life of the people, to pray with it
in congregation, to feel the heart beating in accord, penetrated by
the same solemnity, inspired by the same words and the same chants.
Thus, many who know the faith only from their private chapels,
frequented by select congregations, have no true understanding of the
Church, or of religious sentiment, and regard with indifference or
repulsion those rites and customs which to the people are especially
dear, and constitute the beauty of the Church.

The beauty of the Orthodox Church is its congregation. On entering, we
feel that all are united, all is the work of the people, and all is
maintained by them. In the Catholic Church, all seems empty, cold, and
artificial to the Orthodox worshipper. The priest officiates and reads
alone, as if he were above the people, and independent of them. He
prays alone from his book, the members of the congregation from
theirs; having prayed, and attended one or another part of the
service, the congregation departs. On the altar the mass is performed,
the worshippers, while present, do not seem to participate by common
prayer. The service is addressed to sentiment, and its beauty, if
beauty there be, is strange to us, and not our own. The actions of the
service, mechanically performed, to us seem strange, cold, and
inexpressive ; the sacred vesture is unsightly ; the recitative
inharmonious and uninspired ; the chants - in a strange tongue which
we do not understand - are not the hymns of the whole congregation,
not a cry coming from the soul, but an artificial concert which
conceals the
service, but never unites with it. Our hearts yearn for our own
Church, as we yearn for our homes, among strangers. How different with
us : in our service there is an indescribable beauty which every
Russian understands, a beauty he loves so much that he is ready to
give up his soul for it. As our national songs, the chants of our
service flow in wide, free streams from the breasts of the people-
the freer they are the more they appeal to our hearts. Our religious
melodies are the same as among the Greeks, but they are sung otherwise
by our peoples, who place in them their whole souls. He who would hear
the true voice of this soul must not go where famous choirs sing the
music of new composers ; he should hear the singing in some great
convent or parish church : there he will hear in what wide, free
streams flows the hymn from the Russian breast, with what solemn
poetry is sung the dogmatic, what inspiration sings in the canticles
of Easter and Christmas. We hear the word of our chants echoed by the
congregation, it illumines upturned faces, it is borne over bowed
heads, borne everywhere, for to all the congregation the words and
melodies are known from child-hood, till the very soul seems to give
forth song. This true, harmonious service is a festival for the
Russian worshipper ; even outside his church he preserves its deep
impressions, and is thrilled at the recollection of some solemn moment
: he is exalted with the harmony, when in his soul echoes again the
song of the Easter or Christmas canticle.

In him to whom these words and sounds have been known from childhood,
how many recollections and images arise out of that great poem of the
past which each has lived, and each still carried in himself! Happy is
he who has known these words and sounds and images ; who from
childhood has found in them the ideal loveliness to which he aspires,
without which he cannot live ; to whom all is clear and congenial, all
lifts his soul out of the dust of life ; who in them gathers up again
the scattered fragments of his happiness ! Happy is he whom good and
pious parents have brought in childhood to the house of God, teaching
him to pray among the people, and to celebrate its festivals with it !
They have built him a sanctuary for life, they have taught him to love
the people and to live in communion with it, making the church for him
his parents' house, a place of pure; and true commmunion with the
people.

But what shall we say of the host of churches lost in the depths of
the forests and in the immensity of the plains, where the people
understands nothing from the trembling voice of the deacon, and the
muttering of the priest?

Alas ! the Church is not the cause of this, our poor people is in no
way guilty, it is the fault of the idle and thoughtless ministers, the
fault of the ecclesiastical authorities, who carelessly and
indifferently appoint them, sometimes the consequence of the poverty
and helplessness of the people. Happy, then, is the man in whom burns
a spark of love and zeal for the spiritual life, who leads the
forsaken church back to the world of loveliness and song. He will
truly enlighten with a light in the place of darkness, he will revive
the dead and raise the fallen, he will save the soul from death, and
redeem a multitude of sins. It is for this cause the Russian
sacrifices so much in the building and adornment of churches. How
blindly they judge who condemn him for his zeal, ascribing it to
rudeness and ignorance, fanaticism and hypocrisy ! They ask, Would it
not be better to devote this money to the instruction of the people,
to the founding of schools, to institutions of beneficence? For these,
also, sacrifice is made, but this sacrifice is another thing, and the
pious Russian, with healthy common-sense, will think twice before
opening his purse in support of formal educational and philanthropic
institutions.

As for the Church of God, it pleads for itself, it is a living
institution, an institution of the people. In it alone the living and
the dead are happy. In it alone all seek light and freedom ; in it the
hearts of young and old rejoice, and find rest after suffering ; in it
the proud and the lowly, the rich and the poor, are equal. It is
adorned more splendidly than the palaces of kings ; it is the House of
God, and the poor and feeble stand in it as in their homes. Each may
call it his own ; it was built, and is maintained, by the roubles,
and, what is more, by the groshes of the people. There all find that
refuge in prayer and consolation which the Russian loves the most.

Such are the sentiments, conscious or unconscious, of the Russian soul
towards the Church, such are the sentiments which inspire him to
sacrifice for the Church without hesitation or thought. He knows that
in this he can make no mistake, and that he gives for a true and holy
work.

Pobedonostsev: The Church (Part IV)

IV

We are sometimes told that ritual is a trivial and secondary
consideration. But there are ceremonies and practices which to abandon
would be to deny oneself, for they reflect the spiritual life of man,
they express his spiritual nature. In differences of ceremony are most
clearly expressed the fundamental and deep diversities of spiritual
conceptions hidden
in the unrecognised domains of the soul. It is this diversity which
prevents the communion and assimilation of peoples of different race,
and forms the elemental cause of distinctions of churches and
religions. To deny, from the abstract, cosmopolitan point of view, the
action of these attractive and repulsive forces, attributing them to
prejudice, would be to deny the affinities (walverwandsdiaft) which
analogously interact in the relations of individual men.

How remarkable, for instance, are the diversities in the funeral
ceremonies of different peoples, and in their conduct towards the
bodies of their dead. The Southerner, the Italian, flies the presence
of a corpse, and hastens to rid his house of it, committing to
strangers the duty of its burial. In Russia, on the contrary, a
religious feeling towards the dead body, full of love and tenderness
and piety, is a feature of the national character. The immemorial
lament for the dead, accompanied by poetical ceremonies and exercises,
on our conversion to a new faith was transformed into the solemn
prayers of the Church.

Nowhere outside our own country are the burial rites and ceremonies so
elaborate ; and there can be no doubt that this is an outgrowth of our
national character, in special conformity with our nature and our
outlook upon life. The features of death are everywhere repulsive and
terrible, but we veil them in splendid veils, we surround them with
the solemn stillness of contemplative prayer ; we chant over them
songs in which the terror of stricken nature is relieved by love and
hope and pious faith. We do not flee from the presence of death ; we
adorn it in its coffin; we are drawn to bend our eyes to the abode of
the departed soul ; we reverence the body, we grant it the last kiss,
and watch over it three days and three
nights with reading and chanting and prayer. Our funeral prayers are
full of beauty and magnificence; they are prolonged by hesitation to
surrender to the earth the body tainted by corruption; around the
grave not only do we hear the last blessing, but witness a great
religious solemnity enacted in the supreme moment of human existence.
How dear is this solemnity to the Russian, how well he understands it
! The stranger seldom understands it, because - because it is
strange. Among us the sentiment of love, defeated by death, expands in
the funeral ceremony ; the stranger is repelled by the ceremony, and
stricken by terror alone.

A German Lutheran resident of Berlin lost in Russia a dearly-loved
sister who belonged to the Orthodox Church. When, on the morning of
the burial, he arrived and saw his sister lying in the coffin he was
stricken by terror, his heart ceased to beat, the feeling of love and
piety which he felt in parting with the dead gave place to repulsion.
In this, as in many other things, the German who does not live among
us and enter into the depths of our spiritual life, cannot understand
us. Nothing repels the Lutheran so much as the adoration of the
sacred relics - a practice which to us, who venerate our dead, embrace
them, and honour them in burial, seems simple and natural. Not living
our life, he sees in this veneration but a barbarous superstition, for
us an act of love, the most simple and natural.

Even as he cannot understand our ritual, so we find coarse and
repugnant the agitation carried on in Germany and in England for the
practice of a new mode of disposing of the dead. It is demanded that
corpses shall be buried no more, but burnt in furnaces, specially
constructed ; and this is required for utilitarian and hygienic
reasons. This propaganda is gaining strength, its adherents hold
meetings, societies are formed, perfected furnaces constructed at the
expense of individuals, chemical experiments made, and funeral marches
composed to solemnise the incineration. . The demand for cremation is
made in the name of science, in the name of civilisation, in the name
of social well-being. To us these voices seem to come from a distant
world, a world so strange to us, so inhospitable and cold. May God
deliver us from dying in the land of strangers, far away from our
native Russian soil !

Pobedonostsev: The Church (Part III)

We are reproached by Protestants with the formalism of our service,
but when we examine their ritual we continue to prefer our own ; we
feel that our service is simple and majestic in its deep, mysterious
significance. The office of our priest is so simple, that it needs but
pious attention to the words he utters and to the actions he
accomplishes : from his lips the sacred words are their own
interpretation, their deep and mysterious voices reach the souls of
all, and unite our congregations in sentiment and in thought. Thus the
simplest, most artless man may without exertion repeat the prayers,
feeling in communion with the congregation. The Protestant service,
with all its external simplicity, demands that the prayers be recited
in a certain tone. Only deeply spiritual and very talented preachers
may retain their simplicity, the immense majority is driven into that
artifice and affectation which we notice first of all things in
Protestant churches, and which produce in unaccustomed witnesses a
sensation of weariness. When we hear the preacher, with his face
turned to a congregation seated on benches, pronounce the prayers,
lifting his eyes towards heaven, and crossing his hands conventionally
while giving his words an unnatural intonation, we experience a
painful sentiment : how uncomfortable, we think, he must be ! Still
more painful is it when, having ended the service," he ascends the
pulpit and begins a long sermon, turning from time to time to drink
from a glass of water and to recover breath. Seldom do we hear in
these sermons a living word, and then only when the preacher is a man
of talent or of rare spiritual nature. For the most part the preachers
are the journeymen of the Church, with extraordinary, whining voices,
infinite affectation, and vigorous gestures, who turn from side to
side, repeating in varying tones conventional phrases. Even when
reading their sermons, which seldom occurs, they have recourse to
gestures, intonations, and intermissions. Sometimes the preacher,
pronouncing a few words and phrases, cries out and strikes the pulpit
to give emphasis to his thoughts. We feel here how faithfully our
Church has been adapted to human nature in excluding sermons from its
services. By itself, our whole service is the best of sermons, all the
more effective since each hears in it, not the words of man,
but the words of God. The ideal of that sermon is to lead to faith and
love, according to the Scriptures, and not to awaken emotion in a
congregation which has come together for prayer.

Pobedonostsev: The Church (Part II)

II

The difference between the social spirit and composition of the Anglo-Saxon and the Russian races
is noticeable nowhere so much as in the Church. In an English church, more than anywhere else, the
thought occurs to the ^Russian, There are many good things here, yet I am thankful that I was born in Russia. In our churches all social distinctions are laid aside, we surrender our positions in the world and mingle completely in the congregation before the face of God. Our churches for the most part have been built with the money of the people ; between rouble and grosh there is no distinction ; in all cases our churches are the work and the appanage of the
whole people. The poorest beggar feels, with the greatest noble, that the church, at least, is his. The church is the only place (how happy are we to have one such place !) where the poorest man in rags will not be asked, "Why art thou here, and who art thou?" It is the only place where the rich may not say to the poor, "Your place is not beside me, but behind."

Enter an English church and watch the congregation. It is devout ; solemn it may be, but it is a
congregation of "ladies and gentlemen," each with a place specially reserved ; the rich in separate and embellished pews, like the boxes of an opera-house. We cannot help thinking that this church is merely a reunion of people in society, and that there is place in it only for what society calls " the respectable." All use their prayer-books, but each has his own, which makes it plain that he wishes to be alone before God, and in no way to sacrifice his individuality. It is said that in the last twenty or thirty years a remarkable change has taken place in this ;
the places in the churches are to a great extent free, and access to them is easier than before ; but in former times, more particularly in the provinces, the pews were constructed with closed partitions, so that the occupant might pray in peace, alone, and undisturbed by any neighbour. How plainly these dispositions reveal the history of a feudal society, and even the history of the Reformation in England. " Nobility and gentry" lead in all, because they possess and
appropriate all. All is bought by conquest, even the right to sit in church. The celebration of
divine service is a privilege sold at a fixed price. In England the preferment of clergymen, with right to fixed incomes, is the hereditary right of " patronage," and the power of election to the ministry is the appanage either of the local proprietors or of the Crown, by virtue not so much of the rights of the State as of the rights of the feudal possessors. Thus the clergy, appointed independently of the people, and independent of the people for their maintenance, appear above it as princes placed above their subjects. The offices of the Church are, first of all, a "preferment," an appanage ; and, it is shameful to say so, this appanage is the object of traffic. The office of incumbent may be bought for a certain sum, determined by the capitalisation of the income, as in our country the positions of attorneys, notaries, and brokers. In any English newspaper you may find a special department for the advertisement of these
so-called "preferments," you may see a series of offers of the office of incumbent, with a statement of the income ; the amenities of the position will be praised, the house and its situation described, the price indicated, with the information that the present incumbent is so many years old, and is not likely to enjoy his position long. In London appears a journal {The Church Preferment Register) specially devoted to this traffic, with a detailed description of every office, its amenities and revenue, for the information of those who might buy.

We are told that, from the political point of view, every right, personal or social, should be attained by competition alone. This observation may be generally true, but it cannot be applied to the right of praying in church. We must not wonder, then, that the conscience of the people is not satisfied with the constitution of the Church, and that England, the country of an Established State Church, the classic country of theological learning and religious discussion, has become, since the Reformation, the country of dissidence too. The need of religion
and the need of prayer in the mass of the people, finding no satisfaction in the Established Church, seek issue in free and independent congregations and in diverse sects. The different sects
which flourish in the most insignificant village are innumerable. The Established Church itself is
divided into three schools, the so-called High, Low, and Broad Churches, and the partisans of
each have their own churches, and will not enter the churches of others. In the smallest villages, with a settled population of no more than five hundred, three Anglican churches may sometimes be found, and, in addition, three Methodist churches of different denominations, distinguished only by verbal subtleties and capricious details, yet cut off from all communion with one another. There will be one chapel for Primitive or Wesleyan Methodists, another
for Congregationalists, one for the so-named Bible Christians - these last are also Methodists, who severed their connection some years ago because they opposed the others in believing that those invested in the office of the evangelists ought not to be married. Such a number of churches, large, handsome, and roomy, may be found in a single village. All these sects are distinguished by peculiarities of doctrine, sometimes very subtle and capricious, or altogether absurd, but, apart from differences of doctrine, all are inspired by a desire for a popular
Church, free to all, and many by implacable hatred of the Established Church and of its ministers.
In addition to these separate sects, in the midst of the Established Church itself a numerous party has been formed under the name of the Free Church Movement. Individuals and societies procure for simple folk the means of participating in divine service ; for this purpose they build special churches, and hire buildings, theatres, sheds, and halls. This movement has produced a visible reaction in the practice of the Established Church, and has forced it to throw
its doors more widely open. But is it not strange that in England the masses have been forced to
conquer in battle what among us has always been free as the air we breathe?

How often do we hear in Russia strange words about our Church from men who have been abroad, who love to judge everything after the manner of strangers ; and, on the other hand, from simple men
infatuated with ideals to the estrangement of reality.These men have no limit to their praise of the Anglican and German Churches, and of the Anglican clergy, and to their condemnation of our Church and our clergy. If we believe them, there all is living activity, while among us all is death, rudeness, or sleep ; there is work, here ceremonial and inactivity. It is not surprising
that people speak thus. Men judge by appearance. To judge by dress is easy, but much thought and
observation are needed to learn the spirit and significance of things. Men seize on impressions and cling thereto. There are many for whom the first and final factors in creating impressions are external perfection, manner, dexterity, purity, and respectability. Judged by this standard, there is much to be admired in the Anglican Church, and much to be lamented in our own. Few of us have not met men of the world, and, unhappily, even ecclesiastics, who exalt the simplicity which they find in religion abroad, and condemn our own for " immaturity." Such judgments are as much to be deplored, as the conduct of a young man who, having spent some time in the fashionable world in the midst of the refinements of a metropolis, returns to the village where he has
spent his childhood, and looks with contempt on his modest surroundings, and on the rude and simple manners of his family circle.

By nature we are much inclined to be infatuated with beauty of form, with organisation, with the
external perfection of things. Thence springs the passion for imitation, and for transplanting to our soil those foreign institutions which attract us by their external symmetry. But we forget, or remember too late, that those institutions were historically evolved; they sprang and developed from historical conditions, and are the logical consequence of the past, created
of necessity. History cannot be changed or evaded; and history itself, with its actions, its actors, and its complex polity, is the product of the national spirit, as the history of the individual is the product of his living soul. The same may be said of all systems of church organisation. Therein all things conform to the spiritual basis whereon they have grown; too often charmed with the superstructure, we neglect the base; otherwise, we should not, perhaps, have hesitated to reject this ready-made symmetry, but with gladness should have clung to
our old and rough form, or deformity, until such day as our spiritual nature had evolved a new one for us. In all human institutions the spirit is essential: hence we should zealously preserve it from distortion and alloy.

From its dawn to the present day our Church has been the church of the people, inspired by love, and all-embracing, without distinction of class. The faith has sustained our peoples in the day of privation and calamity, and one thing only can sustain, strengthen,and regenerate them, and that is faith, the faith of the Church alone. Our people is reproached with ignorance in its religion ; its faith, we are told, is defiled by superstition; it suffers from corrupt and wicked
practices ; its clergy is rude, inactive, ignorant, and oppressed, without influence on its flocks. In this reproach is much truth, but these evils are in no way essential, but temporary and adventitious. They spring from many circumstances, from political and economic conditions, with the disappearance of which they also will disappear. What then is essential ? The love of the people for its Church, the conception of the Church as a common possession, a congregation common in all things, the total absence of social distinctions, the communion of the people with the ministers of the Church, sprung from the people, and differing neither in manner of life, in virtues, nor in failings, who stand and fall with their flocks. This is a soil which would bring forth rich fruits with good cultivation, with less concern for the amelioration of life than the bettering of the soul, with less desire that the number of churches exceed not the needs of the people than that those needs shall not remain unsatisfied. Is it for us to covet, through rumour from afar, the Protestant Church and its ministers? May Heaven withhold from us the time when our priests shall be officials, placed above the people as princes above their subjects, in the
position of men of society with complex needs and desires, while surrounded on every side by privation and simplicity.

By reflection on life we are convinced that for every man in the course of his spiritual development, the thing most precious and essential is to preserve inviolate the simple inborn feeling of humanity in his human relations, and to nourish truth and freedom in his spiritual conceptions and impulses. This is the impregnable fortress which guards and delivers the soul from the onslaught of rank, and from all artificial theories which corrupt insensibly the simple
moral sentiment. However precious in some respects these forms and theories may be, when rooted in the soul they corrupt its simple and healthy conceptions and sensations, they confound the notions of truth and untruth, and destroy the roots from which healthy men develop in relation to their fellow-creatures. This is the essential which so often we neglect when seduced by externals. How many men, how many institutions have been perverted in the course of a false development, for these rooted principles in our religious institutions are of all things the most precious. May God prevent them ever being destroyed by the untimely reformation of our Church!

Pobedonostsev: The Church (Part I)

REFLECTIONS OF A RUSSIAN STATESMAN
THE CHURCH

I

The more we consider the distinctive ethnical features of religion the more firmly we are convinced how unattainable is an union of creeds by a factitious accord in dogma, on the principle of reciprocal concessions in immaterial things. The essential in religion cannot be expressed on paper, or categorically formulated. The most essential, the most persistent, and the most precious things in all religious creeds are as elusive and as insusceptible of definition as varieties of light and shade as feelings born of an infinite series of emotions, conceptions, and impressions. The essential elements are so involved with the psychical nature of the race, with the principles of their moral philosophy, that it is futile to separate one from the other. The children of different races and different faiths, in many relations may feel as brethren, and give to one another their hands ; but to feel themselves worshippers in the same temple, joined in religious communion, they must have lived together long and closely, they must sympathise with the conditions of each other's existence, they must be bound by the most intimate links in the depths of their souls. A German who has lived long in our country may come unconsciously to believe as Russians believe, and to feel at home in the Russian Church. He becomes one of us, and is in complete spiritual communion with us. But that a Protestant community, situated far away, judging us by report, could, through abstract accord in dogma and ritual, combine with us in one church in organic alliance, and become one with us in spirit, is inconceivable. No reunion of churches based upon accord in doctrine has ever succeeded ; the false principle of such an alliance must sooner or later manifest itself, its fruit is everywhere an increase not of love but of mutual estrangement and hatred.

May God forbid that we should condemn one another because of faith ; let each believe as he will! But each man has a faith which is his refuge, which satisfies his spiritual needs, which he loves ; and it is impossible for him when brought into contact with another faith not to feel that it is not his own, that it is inhospitable and cold. Let reason prove, with abstract arguments, that all men pray to one God. Sentiment is repelled by reasoning such as this ; sometimes sentiment feels that in a strange church it prays to a strange god.

Many will laugh at this sentiment, or condemn it as superstition and fanaticism. They will be wrong. Sentiment is not always delusive, it sometimes expresses truth more directly and justly than reason itself.

The Protestant Church and the Protestant faith are cold and inhospitable to Russians. For us to
recognise this faith would be as bitter as death. This is a direct sentiment. But there are many
good reasons to justify it. The following is one which especially strikes us by its obviousness.

In the polemics of theologians, in religious dissensions, in the conscience of every man and of every race, one of the greatest questions is that of works. Which is the greater, works or faith? We know that on this question the Latin doctrine differs from the Protestant. In his theological compositions, the late M. Khomyakofif well explained how deceptive is the scholastic-absolute treatment of this question. Union of faith with works, like identity of words and thought, of deeds and words, is an ideal unattainable by human nature, as all things absolute are unattainable - an ideal eternally troubling and eternally alluring the faithful soul.

Faith without works is sterile. Faith opposed to works offends us with the consciousness of internal falsehood ; but in the infinite world of externals around mankind what can work, what can any possible work signify without faith ?

Prove me thy faith by thy deeds, a terrible command ! What can a believer answer when his questioner seeks to recognise the faith by the works. If such a question were put by a Protestant to a member of the Orthodox Church, what would the answer be? He could only hang his head. He would feel that he had nothing to show, that all was imperfect and disorderly. But in a minute he might lift his head and say : " We have nothing to show, sinners as we are, yet neither are you beyond reproach. Come to us, live with us, see our faith, study our sentiments, and you will learn to love us. As for our works, you will see them such as they are." From such an answer ninety-nine out of a hundred would turn with a contemptuous laugh. The truth is that we do not know, and dare not show our works.

It is not so with them. They can show their works, and, to speak the truth, they have much to show of works and institutions existing, and preserved for centuries in perfect order. See, says the Catholic Church, what I mean to the community which hears me and which serves me ; which I created, and which I sustain. Here are works of love, works of faith, apostolic works ; here are deeds of martyrdom ; here are regiments of believers, united as one, which I send to the ends of the earth. Is it not plain that grace is in me, and has been in me from the beginning until now?

See, says the Protestant Church, I do not tolerate falsehood, deception, or superstition. My works conform to faith, and reason is reconciled with it. I have consecrated labour, human relations, and family happiness ; by faith I destroy all idleness and superstition ; I establish justice, honesty, and social order. I teach daily, and my doctrine accords with life. It educates generations in the performance of honourable work, and in good manners. My teaching renews humanity in virtue and justice. My mission is to destroy with the sword of words and deeds corruption and hypocrisy everywhere. Is it not plain that the grace of God is in me, since I see things from the true standpoint ?

To the present day Protestants and Catholics contend over the dogmatic signification of works in
relation to faith. But in spite of the total contradiction of their theological doctrines, both set works at the head of their religion. In the Latin Church works are the justification, the redemption, and the witness of grace. The Lutherans regard works, and, at the same time, religion itself, from the practical point of view. Works for them are the end of religion ; they are the touchstone which proves religious and canonical truth, and it is on this point more than on any other that our doctrine differs from the doctrine of Protestantism. It is true that these doctrines do not constitute a dogma of the Lutheran Church, but they pervade its teaching. Beyond all dispute they have an important practical value for this world ; and therefore many would set up the Protestant Church as a model and an ideal for us. But the Russian, in the depths of a believing soul, will never accept such a view. " Godliness is profitable unto all things," says the apostle, but utility is hardly one of its natural attributes. The Russians, as others, know that they ought to live by religion, and feel how ill their lives accord with their beliefs ; but the essence, the end of their faith is not the practical life, but the salvation of their souls, and with the love of religion they seek to embrace all, from the just man who lives according to his faith, to the thief, who, his works notwithstanding, would be pardoned in an instant.

This practical basis of Protestantism is nowhere shown more plainly than in the Anglican Church,
and in the religious spirit of the English people. It accords with the character of the nation as formed by history to direct all thought and action to practical aims, steadfastly and tenaciously pursuing success, and in all things taking those paths and measures which are short and sure. This innate tendency must seek a moral base, and must construct a system of morals ; and it is natural that these moral principles shall seek a sanction in a religious spirit corresponding to their nature. Religion indisputably consecrates the moral principle of activity ; its precepts teach us how to live and act ; it demands laboriousness, honesty, and justice. This no one will dispute. But, in the practical consideration of religion, we pass directly to the question : What of the faith of those who live in idleness, who are dishonest and false, corrupt, and disorderly, who cannot control their passions ? Such men are heathen, not Christian ; he only is a Christian who lives by the law, and in himself bears witness to its power.

This reasoning is logical in appearance. But who has not asked the question : What is the part in
the world and in the Church of the wanton and dishonest, who, in the words of Christ, shall take
a higher place in the kingdom of heaven than the just according to the law ?

It would be too much to suppose that such religious opinions constitute a positive formula of
the Church of England. Such a formula would be a direct negation of the precepts of the Evangel.
But such is precisely the spirit of religion among the most zealous and conscientious representatives of the so-called National Established Church, which they defend and extol as the first bulwark of the State, and, as the last expression of the national genius. In English literature, both religious and profane, this view is expressed, sometimes in trenchant words which would excite doubt and almost terror in the mind of a Russian reader.

In a work remarkable for depth and clearness of thought, written evidently by a believer deeply and jealously attached to his Church, the following remarks occur upon religion :

"Some forms of religion are distinctly unfavourable to a sense of social duty. Others have simply no relation to it whatever, and of those which favour it (as is the case in various degrees with every form of Christianity) some promote it far more powerfully than others. I should say that those which promote it most power- fully are those of which the central figure is an infinitely wise and powerful Legislator whose own nature is confessedly inscrutable to man, but who has made the world as it is for a prudent, steady, hard, enduring race of people, who are neither fools nor cowards, who have no particular love for those who are, who distinctly know what they want, and are determined to use all lawful means to get it. Some such religion as this is the unspoken deeply-rooted conviction of the solid, established part of the English nation. They form an anvil which has worn out a good many hammers, and will wear out a good many more, enthusiasts and humanitarians notwithstanding." Stephen (Sir James F.), "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," pp. 305-6. London, 1873.

Such is the conception of religion held by a convinced Anglican churchman. The passage I have
quoted is a direct negation of the words of the Evangel, for it says : Happy are the strong and powerful, for they shall possess the kingdom ; to which we reply : Yes, the kingdom of the earth, but not the kingdom of heaven. The author makes no such limitation ; he sees no distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth. What a terrible and despairing doctrine !

Such tendencies of religious thought were indisputably of the greatest practical value in Protestant countries, especially in England ; and it cannot be denied that Protestantism was a strong and beneficent influence towards social development among the peoples who accepted it, and with whose nature it accorded. But is it not plain that certain races, by their nature, could never accept or submit to it, because they do not find in this doctrine of Protestantism the vital principle of religion? They see not unity but a duality of the religious conscience ; not the living truth, but a factitious composition of speculation and falsehood.

"Woe to the weak and fallen ! Woe to the vanquished ! " Truly in this life this is inevitable truth, and the voice of worldly wisdom cries to us: Fight, get and hold by force if you would live in this world there is no place for the weak. But the soul will no more allow the absolute and dogmatic application of this rule to religion than it will accept the terrible Calvinist doctrine that some are predestined from eternity to virtue, to glory, to salvation, and to happiness ; while others, no matter what their lives may be, are condemned from eternity to the abyss of despair and eternal torment.

It is terrible to read those English writers who sound with special emphasis this chord of English Protestantism. Carlyle, for instance, is seized with rapturous emotion through the strength and talent of the conqueror, while he despises the conquered. He honours his strong men as the incarnation of Godhead, and treats with thin, contemptuous irony the weak and unhappy, the incapable and the fallen, crushed by the triumphal chariot of the conqueror. His heroes personify the idea of light and order in the darkness and disorder of the cosmic chaos ; they create their own universe ; all whom they meet on their path who refuse to submit and to serve, yet have not the strength to resist, are justly and utterly destroyed. Carlyle's extraordinary talents infatuate the reader, but it is painful to read his historical writings, and see the name of God invoked in the struggle of the strong with the weak. The pagans of the classic age, with better sense, sent, by the chariot of the conqueror, a jester, who represented the moral principle, pursuing with his irony, not the conquered but the conqueror himself.

Most painful of all is it to read Froude, the celebrated historian of the English Reformation, and the best representative among historians of the principles of the English people in religion and in politics. Carlyle, at least, is a poet, while Froude speaks in the tranquil tones of the historian, loves dialectics, and knows no iniquity which he cannot justify by dialectics in the interest of a favourite idea. There is no hypocrisy which he does not glorify as truth in his justification of the Reformation and of its protagonists. Unshakeable and fanatical, he holds to the principles of Anglican orthodoxy, the base of which he declares is the recognition of social duty, devotion to the political idea and to the law, and the implacable chastisement of vice and crime and idleness, and all that is designated the betrayal of duty. In human affairs, all this is excellent ; but can we make such principles the beginning and end of religion, when we think how the words, duty, law, vice, and crime are variously interpreted day by day, and that men to-day call justice and courage what to-morrow may be condemned as falsehood and crime. For charity and compassion the religion of Froude has no place. How can he reconcile charity with indignation for vice and crime, for the violation of the law ? Speaking of the terrible punishments sometimes endured by the innocent as well as the guilty, this stern judge of human affairs eulogises his compatriots as a strong and severe people who know no pity where there is no legal cause for pity, and who, on the contrary, are filled with a sacred and solemn horror of crime, a sentiment which, as it develops in the soul, of necessity hardens it, and results in forming an iron character. The man of severe morality is inclined to compassion only when the disposition to good remains in conflict with evil : in cases of total corruption compassion is unjustifiable, and is conceivable only when in our hearts we confound crime with misfortune. Such, in effect, are the sentiments of Froude.

How the author would have despised us Russians, in whose minds there actually is such confusion, and who from time immemorial have called the culprit unfortunate (nestckastnui).

The characters of churches, as the characters of men, and the characters of races, have their merits and defects. The merits of Protestantism are well explained by the history of the German and Anglo-Saxon races. The spirit of Puritanism has created the Britain of the present day. The principle of Protestantism gave to Germany strength, and discipline, and unity. Yet we see with this some defects and tendencies with which we cannot sympathise. As every spiritual force, Protestantism is most inclined to fall where it seeks its firmest spiritual foundation. In aspiring to absolute truth, to the purifying of faith and its realisation in life, it is over-confident of its own righteousness, it is infatuated to idolatry with its justice, and it despises the strange faith which temporises with untruth. Thence springs the danger of hypocrisy and of pharisaical pride. And, indeed, how often do we hear with bitterness from the Protestant world that hypocrisy is the plague of rigorous Lutheranism ! On the other hand, while beginning by preaching toleration, and liberty of thought and belief, Protestantism, in its ultimate development, is inclined to fanaticism of a peculiar nature, the fanaticism of the pride of intellect, the fanaticism of a rectitude above all other faiths. Rigid Protestantism treats with contempt every faith which appears to it unclean, uninspired, defiled by the superstition and ritual which it has cast off as the fetters of slaves, the garments of children, the attributes to ignorance. Creating for itself a system of beliefs and ceremonies, it maintains its doctrine as the doctrine of the elect, the enlightened and the rational, and regards all those who hold to the ancient Church as beings of a lower race, who cannot rise to the height of pure reasoning. This contemptuous attitude is expressed unconsciously, but it is only too sensible by the adherents to other faiths. No religion is free from fanaticism, but the height of all absurdity is reached when Lutherans turn to us with such accusations. In spite of the tolerance which is inherent in our national character, we meet, of course, individual cases of exclusiveness and bigotry in religion ; but there never has been, and never can be, anything like to that contempt with which rigid Lutherans regard the attributes to our Church, and the qualities of our faith, which to them are incomprehensible, but to us are filled with a deep spiritual significance.