The Agony of the Church | Page 4

not!
Carlyle and Emerson were over-anxious to recommend every great man
as a leader of mankind more than Christ. It is the same as to say: men!

take candles and lamps to light your way in darkness, but be aware of
the sun. How quite different are Dostoievsky and Tolstoi!
I looked at men in prayer and I thought: Behold, the fallen angels! I
looked again at them in hateful quarrel and I thought: Behold, the risen
demons!
Animals are cruel but not vulgar. Yet both in cruelty and vulgarity man
is on record. If forced to chose one of two evils, we should prefer to
look at cruelty rather than vulgarity.
All our to-days are spoiled by reminiscences about yesterday and
sorrows about tomorrow. Thus we are disindividualising and emptying
all our "to-days" and degrading them to a misty meeting-place of
yesterday and tomorrow.
From the physical point of view the greatest thing in this life is its
mystery. From the moral point of view the greatest thing in man is the
optimistic interpretation of that mystery. There is no reasonable
optimism outside of Christianity.
No man could be a tyrant unless he were a slave of some moral defects.
No nation could tyrannise over another nation unless it were tyrannised
over itself by some illusions.
Nobody in the world is free but he who feels himself to be a prisoner of
Christ. The greatest champion of freedom in human history called
himself: "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ."
CHAPTER I
THE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH SOPHIA
The most magnificent sanctuary of the Eastern Churches is called St
Sophia (Holy Wisdom), whereas the most magnificent sanctuaries of
the Western Churches are called St Peter's, St Paul's, or St John's, etc.
As every hair on our head and every line on the palm of our hand has a

certain significance, so these dedications of the Church have doubtless
certain significance. And this significance is typical of the religion of
the East and the West. Western Christianity, grown upon the soil of a
youthful individualism, preferred this or that apostle's personality and
dedicated their best temples to him. The aged East, tired of
individualistic ambitions, tired of great men, flagellated by the phantom
of human greatness, was thirsty for something higher and more solid
than any human personality. Adoration of great personalities being the
very wisdom of this world, the East stretched its hands to a superhuman
ideal, to the Holy Wisdom. It is a psychological fact that youth sees his
ideal in personal greatness, progressed age in holiness. The East asked
for something more eternal than Peter, Paul or John. There is wisdom,
and there is holy wisdom. Philosophical or personal wisdom existed
from the beginning of mankind, but Holy Wisdom entered the world
with Jesus Christ. Christ was the embodiment of God's wisdom, the
very incarnation of Holy Wisdom. This Wisdom stands above all
human wisdom and revives and illuminates it. Holy Wisdom includes
the essential wisdom of Peter, Paul, John, and any other apostle or seer,
or any other thing or creature, as the ocean includes the water of many
rivers. In the darkest times of dissension, uncertainty or suffering, the
Christian East did not rely so much upon the great apostles, either Peter,
or Paul, or John, but looked beyond time and space to the Eternal
Christ, The Logos of God, and asked for Light. And it looked to
Eternity through this church in Constantinople, St Sophia, as the
all-embracing and all-reconciling, holy symbol. Whenever Peter, or
Paul, or John, or any other apostle, or prophet, became the ground upon
which the believers quarrelled, it was in the Holy Wisdom that they
sought refuge and healing from their intellectual one-sidedness and
ill-will.
Yet if Holy Wisdom has only in the East a magnificent visible symbol,
Holy Wisdom is none the less the very foundation, substance and aim
of the Western Church as well as of the Eastern, yea of the one, holy
Catholic Church. For Christianity had been destined neither for the East
alone nor for the West alone, but for the whole globe. And what means
the so-much abused word Catholic if not inclusiveness? Even such is,
too, the meaning of the Divine wisdom as revealed in Christianity from

the beginning.
I will try to show this inclusive wisdom of the Church, revealed from
the beginning, Firstly in the Church's Founder, Secondly in the
Church's organisation, and Thirdly in the Church's destination.

THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH'S FOUNDER
By His birth He included and bound together the lowest and the highest,
the natural and the supernatural: stable, manger, straw, sheep and
shepherds on the one hand; stars, angels, magi and Davidic royal origin
on the other.
By His life He included the austerity of the Indian monks,