The Religious Spirit of the Slavs | Page 8

of
theology asked their colleague Huss to confess that "the Pope is the
head and the Bishops the body of the Church, and all their orders must
be obeyed." But Huss did not care very much either about the head or
the body, but principally about the spirit of the Christian Church. And
this spirit he saw eclipsed. He saw men again falling back to the creed
of serving "two masters." He looked to the heart of the Christian

religion and saw that it was sick, and his soul revolted against it. But
his righteous revolution was regarded as a malevolent innovation, his
words as a scandalous licence, and his tendencies as a deliberate
destruction of Christianity. Therefore Jan Huss was brought before a
tribunal of Christian judges, condemned to death and burnt to ashes, ad
magnam Dei gloriam, as the Bishop of Lodi preached on that occasion.
The fact was that the Council of Constance was a great innovator, and
that Huss stood for the true catholicity of old. He fought for the
primitive Christian spirit which always inspired, vivified and purified
the Christian world, and his judges introduced a quite anti-Christian, a
quite new spirit into the Church, the spirit of judging and killing. The
sufficient proof--if you need proof at all--of this is that Huss suffered as
a Christian martyr and through painful suffering brought his cause to
glory; whereas his judges killed him in the hope through a crime to
promote the Christian cause, and so covered their names with shame.
The truth and glory of Jan Huss's cause were manifested last year
throughout the whole of the globe. The whole world celebrated the
quincentenary of his martyr death. I participated in this celebration in
New York. It was a rare spectacle, that the New World saw. The
Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans,
Methodists and Baptists, all the Churches and denominations
participated in it. We went together, we prayed together, and we felt
united in one and the same spirit. That was a great moment, for many
of us the unique moment, when we experienced what is meant by the
catholicity, by the noble catholicity, of the Christian Church, as Bishop
Westcott called it. It was an elevated and sweet feeling. The diabolical
spirit of the Council of Constance never could unite us, but the
Christian Catholic spirit of Jan Huss united us. The memory of Pope
John XXIII divides the world, whereas the memory of the great apostle
of the Bohemian nation unites it. Yet the revolution of Jan Huss was
not of a personal character. It was not directed against John XXIII, or
against the Vatican as Vatican--it was directed against the spirit of
Forum Romanum which crept into the Vatican and dwelled there. It
was directed against Jupiter, who took the place of Christ in Rome and
who invisibly inspired the Council of Constance; and against Perun,
who, disguised, smiled from every church in Prague, and with a smile

ruled over the souls in Bohemia under the name of Christ.

THE POLISH REVOLUTION.
Mickiewicz, Sienkiewicz! Two great milestones in the history of the
Polish soul; two great milestones in Christian history also! Both Roman
Catholics and both revolutionists in religion. The religious revolution
they made can be characterised only by the words "noble catholicity."
Both of them were attracted by Primitive Christianity much more than
by the official Church of their own time. Sienkiewicz's work "Quo
Vadis?" is by far better known than Mickiewicz's lectures on "The
Official Church and Messianism." Yet the same religious ideal has
been pictured in both these works. Mickiewicz put on record as the true
Christian men of suffering, of intuition and of action ("hommes de
douleur, d'intuition, d'action"). Sienkiewicz described the first
Christians as being such men. He revived the first days of Christianity
in Rome. What striking contrasts between paganism and Christianity!
Two quite different worlds in conflict--one world consisting of men of
pleasure, and the other of men of suffering. On one side: Nero,
Petronius, Vinicius, Seneca himself, and a mass harassed only about
panem et circenses. On the other side: Paul of Tarsus, Petrus, Lygie,
Ursus and many others willing to suffer and to die, and singing in
suffering and in dying: pro Christo! pro Christo! On the one side, the
proud Roman citizens, who adored force and who gave sacrifices to
good and to evil spirits equally in order to save or procure their
miserable, fleeting pleasure. On the other the humble inhabitants of the
suburbs of Rome who adored only the Good Spirit of the Universe and
did not care about pleasure, but about Justice and Love. Nero or Christ!
The Emperor of the Casa Aurea, who, oversaturated and annoyed by
life, finished by suicide; or the Prophet from Nazareth who came