The Religious Spirit of the Slavs | Page 3

came now a bright poetry warranted both as a past
and present reality.
It will remain as the greatest wonder in history how a poor Man, who
preached in Palestine for about two years, who scarcely had a hundred
followers at the end of His mission, who was crucified and died a
shameful death, whose cause seemed a quite desperate episode,
scornfully rejected or fearfully abandoned by all those who knew
it--how this poor Man replaced successively the mightiest gods the
human imagination ever invented: Zeus in Olympus, Jupiter in the
Capitol, Wothan in the North, and at last also Perun in Kieff. The secret
lies, I think, in the reality of His human life, in the mystery of His
resurrection, and in the amazing enthusiasm with which thousands of
His followers afterwards suffered death for Him and His cause.

However, Christ entered the Slav world in an epoch when, not only one
man after another bowed before Him, but nation after nation. He came
to our ancestors no more as a humble preacher, but as a Lord, under
whose feet lay already conquered Zeus, Jupiter and Wothan. He came
to us, not from a poor Bethlehem cottage, but from the most brilliant
temple upon earth, from the Saint Sophia in Constantinople. He came
with a wonderful three-fold mission, to serve, to fight, to reigning one
word, to be "all in all." He entered the Roman world as a humble
servant. I am afraid He remained in this world for ever only as a servant.
But He entered the Slav world as a Lord, and until to-day He remains
there as the Lord.

CHRISTUS MILITANS.
With Christ's coming among the Slavs the balance between good and
evil spirits was lost. Quite unlike Perun, Christ was a decisive fighter
for good. He showed only one--exclusively one--way, the narrow way
leading to the kingdom of good, which is the Kingdom of God, the
Highest and the Best, Deus Optimus, not only as a dream of Pagan
humanity, but as a provable reality. Although good seems very often to
be a weak and losing party in this world, men must not waver but
always take cheerfully the part of good. Evil spirits in men and around
men are very powerful in this world. Christ Himself was overwhelmed
for a time by the evil spirits of this world. But it was only for a time
which is now over. It was at the new beginning of the world, so to say,
when He came to break the power of Pagan men, hold the balance
between the good and evil spirits and to stop the serving of "two
masters." The start was very unpromising; He was trodden down, but
He got up and proved Himself the victor. He came now as a victor to
the Slavs to make new armies of men, who would consent to undertake
His burden, and to go His exclusive way of good, worshipping and
serving only one God, His Father and the Father of all men. He came
claiming everyone, telling each one "not to be ashamed"--as it is
wonderfully expressed in the English Baptism formula--"manfully to
fight under His banner, against sin, the world, and the devil, and to
continue to be Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end."

Tolstoi exalted only Christ's Sermon on the Mount, i.e., only Christ's
teaching, or part of Christ's teaching. The Orthodox Church exalted
Christ himself, as an exceptional, dramatic Person, suffering for good;
as a divine hero, fighting against all the evil powers of the world. A
teaching or a life drama--i.e., Tolstoi or Orthodoxy! The Church
thought: there is something greater than Christ's words, that is Christ
Himself. His words are extraordinary, it is true, no man spoke as He,
but His person and His life were more extraordinary still. Thousands of
martyrs died for Him, not for the Sermon on the Mount. His words died
with His death and came to life again only with His resurrection. The
fate of His words was quite dependent on the fate of His person.
Consequently His words have been only a shadow of His personal
drama, only an inadequate expression of His individuality and His
world mission, only the secondary fascination for the coming
generation. He himself was the essence of the human drama; He
himself--the essence of God and Man; He himself--the incarnated good
and the standard of the good in the world's history. He is incomparably
better than Zeus, Jupiter, Wothan or Perun, because He is a reality, a
divine reality among men.

The "Petrified" Church.
So Professor Harnack from Berlin called the Orthodox Church of the
East. I know his reasons for that very well. Comparing the
unchangeable image of Christ, fixed in the East once for all,