The Religious Spirit of the Slavs | Page 6

take the mystic outlines of the Bible and do not care
about the details. In those mystic outlines we put our daily life, with its
details of sins and sufferings. We conceive the Christian religion
neither so juristic as the Roman Catholics, nor so scientific as the
Protestants, nor even so reasonable and practical as the Anglicans, but
we conceive it rather as dramatic.

SLAV ORTHODOXY IS NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT.
We are quite conscious that our religion is not solely Christ's work.
Every drop of blood of a Christian martyr is a stone in the work. Every

suffering man with heroic Christian hopes, and every dying human
being with optimistic Christian belief is a collaborator of Christ, or is a
founder of our Church. The Church is not at all solely Christ's work,
she is the collective work of many and many millions who, in the name
of Christ, decisively took part in this mystic race of earthly life. That is
just what Christ wanted and prophesied. That is why He washed the
feet of His disciples.
The work of Tolstoi is the work of a man; Slav Orthodoxy is the work
of the generations. Orthodoxy was first defined by the Christian Jews
and Greeks during the first eight hundred years. During the other
thousand years Orthodoxy was enriched by the Slav Bible, i.e., by Slav
religious experiences, by Slav martyrs, saints, heroes, by Slav sins and
repentances, by Slav struggles and convulsions for Christ. It is a very
large record, a very large Bible indeed, a wonderful drama, quite new,
fresh, original, although in old forms and words, and signs. Still Slav
Orthodoxy is not self-sufficient. She would become by human inertia
self-sufficient, unless Providence sent her punishment from time to
time. Tolstoi was for Orthodoxy a punishment. He was like a
whirlwind which pulls down many things but at the same time purifies
the unhealthy air. He was not at all a demon, but a man sent by God to
help our Church; and he helped very much indeed--as all the sects and
critics of Christianity from the beginning have helped the Christian
cause, ridiculing and exposing the Christian Paganism manifested in
ecclesiastical pride, in superstitions, prejudices, intolerance, etc.
What are the present needs of Slav Orthodoxy? Oh, her needs are great,
her thirst is immense. She does not need so much what Tolstoi
proposed for her, or what Harnack could give her, neither does she
thirst after the stricter and clearer juristic definitions, nor after a "sweet
reasonableness," as Matthew Arnold expressed Christ's being, a new
theology or a new worship.
She needs more Christian dramas blended in one. She needs more of
Christ on earth, more votes for Christ, all the votes for Christ instead of
dividing them between Olympus and Golgotha. She needs to be united
with all other Churches in one Christ-like body and spirit, in order that

all the pieces of a broken mirror may be recomposed and that Christ
could see in it His whole face. She is thirsty for more stigmata, more
suffering, more sins. Yes, she is thirsty for more sins, I say, and more
virtues; she likes to have all the sins and all the virtues of the world
confessed and recognised as the common burden and common good.
She is thirsty for a communion of sins and virtues among men, she is
thirsty to call you brothers. She is thirsty to cry in exaltation to every
man under the sun: "Poor child, give me just your sins (you don't need
them) and I will give you my virtues, in order that I may be ashamed of
your sins and you may be proud of my virtues."
For centuries Slav Orthodoxy seemed to the Western world like an
immobile tortoise with a multi-coloured shell and with no great
probability of its being inhabited by a living being. The outside world
looked at this multi-coloured, hard and unchangeable shell, sometimes
with love, sometimes with horror--always with an intense curiosity and
almost always with a doubt that there could be any living thing in it. I
will try to show you that there was and still is a living being contained
therein, with many more movements, dissatisfactions, convulsions,
longings and sufferings than it seems possible could exist.
II
SLAV REVOLUTIONARY CATHOLICISM
A FAR AIM AND A NARROW WAY.
If Providence bestows on the English Church only once in every half
century a man like Bishop Westcott, this Church, I think, can be sure of
a solid and sound longevity. Well, this Bishop Westcott spoke once
enthusiastically of "the noble catholicity which is the glory of the
English Church." My intention in this lecture is to describe to you an
island in the Roman Catholic Church among the Slavs, which island is
distinguished by