The Agony of the Church | Page 8

is foredoomed to failure: the German as well as the Turkish and
the Napoleonic. The policy of the Church was designed by her Divine
Founder: "He that is not against us is for us." Well, there is no human
race on earth wholly against Christ and wholly unprepared to receive
Him. The wisdom of the Christian missionaries therefore is to see first
in what ways Providence has prepared a soil for Christian seed; to see
which of the Christian elements a race, or a religion, already possesses,
and how to utilise these elements and weld them into Christianity. All
that--in order to make Christianity grow organically, instead of pushing
it mechanically.
In conclusion let me repeat again: the wisdom of the Church has been
inclusive. Inclusive was the wisdom of her Founder, inclusive the
wisdom of her organisation and of her destination. Exclusiveness was
the very sickness and weakness of the Church. That is why we in the
East in the time of sickness of the Church looked neither towards Peter,
nor Paul, nor John, but towards the Holy Wisdom, the all-healing and
all-illuminating. For St Sophia in Constantinople, the temple dedicated
to Christ the Eternal, includes in itself the sanctuaries of Peter, Paul and
John; moreover, it is supported even by some pillars of Diana's temple
from Ephesus and has many other things, in style or material, which
belonged to the Paganism of old. Indeed, St Sophia has room and heart
even for Islam. The Mohamedans have been praising it as the best of
their sanctuaries!
I speak thus to you because I am sure you will not misunderstand me.
And because I know you, the British, to be a race of the world-wide
spirit, I dare to make this appeal to you.
Look to the Holy Wisdom! Look beyond Peter, and Paul, and
John--through them and still beyond them! Every Church has her
prophet, her apostle, her angel. Look now over them all to the very top
of the pyramid, where all the lines meet!
Either Christianity is one, or there is no Christianity. Either the Church
is universal, or there is no Church.

There lived once upon a time twelve men as different as any twelve
men could be. And the Holy Wisdom united all of them into one
spiritual body. Such was the first Church of the twelve, and such ought
to be the last Church of the milliards: different in all her parts, but
cemented by the Holy Wisdom into one glorious building. Christ, God's
Holy Wisdom, includes all of us, why should we exclude each other?
He was sent for the salvation of China and Japan and India as well as
for that of the Jews and Greeks. Well, let us quarrel no more about the
"circumcision" while a milliard of human beings are still waiting to
hear for the first time the name of Jesus Christ--yea, for the first time
after two thousand years! Let the present time be the new Pentecost for
us all. I speak to you, the British: don't look around you and wait; it is
yours to start. All the peoples of earth are looking towards you and
listening to you. Don't be too shy to start.
To start what? To start a revival of the primitive wisdom of the Church,
i.e. to confess and declare:
That Christianity in its integrity is one and indivisible;
That Christianity is not a precious stone preserved in a box called the
Church of England, or the Church of the East, or Rome, but that it is
the common good of mankind, destined for all continents and all races;
That there is no constituent of the present European civilisation, but the
Christian religion, which could stop the brutal struggle among men, in
one form or another, and guarantee a Godlike peace profitable for the
whole of mankind.
All of us, small or great nations, are now looking to you with respect,
not only for the victory over a revived anachronical Paganism in
Central Europe, but also for a formulation of the new ideal, of saving
power for all men.
Great is our expectation indeed, but it is justified by your gifts, given to
you by Providence. Therefore let your hearts be larger than your
Empire and your national Church, and the respect of mankind towards
you will be warmed by love. Surely there can not be built a greater

Empire than yours, humanly speaking. The only greater Empire than
yours will be Christ's Empire. And if you are longing for something
greater than your present possession, you are indeed longing for this
universal, pan-human Empire of Christ. Otherwise you would be
sticking either at a stagnancy or at something impossible. Both would
be unwise: nature tolerates no stagnancy and punishes experiments
with the impossible.
But