The Religious Spirit of the Slavs | Page 4

with the
confusing thousand opinions of Christ in Protestant Germany, he was
quite justified in calling our Church by a striking name, so
differentiating her from his own. I am glad that he invented the name
"petrified." With the proud spirit of a Protestant scientist, I wonder why
He did not invent a worse name for Eastern Orthodoxy. I wonder much
more that Professor Harnack, one of the chief representatives of
German Christianity, omitted to see how every hollow that he and his
colleagues made in traditional Christianity in Germany was at once
filled with the all-conquering Nietzscheanism. And I wonder, lastly,
whether he is now aware that in the nineteen hundred and fourteenth
year of our Lord, when he and other destroyers of the Bible, who

proclaimed Christ a dreamy maniac, clothed Christianity in rags,
Nietzscheanism grew up the real religion of the German race.
What is the fact about the "petrified" Church? If "petrified" means
intact, or whole, or undestroyed or living always in the same dress, but
still living, then the famous Professor may be right. Yet this petrified
Church has always come victorious out of any test to which she has
been put. The Christian Church is always on trial, and I think she is
never so much Christian as when she is being tested. She does not shine
or develop or make progress otherwise than through hard tests.
Christianity is founded upon a drama and not upon a science; therefore
its growth and development are dramatic and not scientific. Let us take
an example. Eastern Orthodoxy was put to the test for centuries to fight
for its existence and its ideals against the ruling Islam. Roman
Catholicism was put to a similar test in Spain. German Protestantism
was put to the test of German science. What happened? Islam was
defeated in Russia and in the Balkans, not only physically, but morally
and intellectually. The epoch of the catacombs and the bloody days of
Nero and Diocletian have been repeated once more in the Balkans, in
Russia, and are still being experienced in Armenia and Asia Minor. The
killed and martyred kings, princes, bishops, priests and laymen from
these countries will not be ashamed before the martyrs from the
Coliseum. Orthodox Christianity stood the test very well. It saved itself;
it gave the inspiration for resistance; it showed itself superior even
afterwards when the enslaved countries were liberated. Holy Russia
counts her greatness from the time when she got rid of Islam. During
the five years of their freedom Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria built more
than the Turks built during 500 years of Turkish rule.
Roman Catholicism in Spain came through its test very badly. Before
the Islamic invasion, and after it for a long time, the Christian
population showed itself inferior to the Moors, in work, in justice, in
progress. But to the honour of Roman Catholicism I must say that it
stood the test very well in Croatia and in Hungary in its struggle against
Islam. German cathedral Protestantism failed in its test. It is destroyed
as a religion, it exists only as an archival science. It ceased to be what
Christianity really sought to be--a drama; it is transformed into an

indifferent scientific medium for reading, exploring, classifying,
comparing, criticising. It is no more a living, dramatic being--no more
the serving, ruling and suffering Christ. There is very little heroic or
divine in it!
Why not then worship Wothan again instead of Christ?
And Anglicanism? It had the worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort,
quiet business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The
English Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses
of life under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only
if the British Empire is compared with an antique Pagan Empire.
Where in this Empire is there a Lucullus or a Caracalla? The
astonishing luxury, the bestial, insatiable passions? Or the furious
competitions in petty things with which the social life of Rome was
daily intoxicated? Yet English Christianity is neither so dramatic and
full of contrasts as Dante's Catholicism, nor so vibrating a lyric as
Dostojevsky's Orthodoxy, but rather a quiet, smooth epic like Milton's
poetry.

THE GREAT DOGMA OF SIN AND SUFFERING.
The Anglican Church has formulated this dogma much in the same
words as that of the Orthodox Church. Yet it is not nearly so vivid in
the daily faith of the English people as in that of the Slavs. The friends
of the reunion of the Anglican and Orthodox Churches never mention
this difference, which is, I think, the only really great difference
between them. This life on earth for the English Christian conscience is
a normal one with some few objections. Given some correction, and
life here on earth would be quite