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.