Russian Life To-day

by Bp. Herbert Bury

Like all his brethren of the episcopate he was greatly interested in anything I could tell him of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of his views and hopes about our own and the Russian Churches, and the Christian Church as a whole. He looked thoughtfully down as I spoke to him about unity and inter-communion under special circumstances, and said rather sadly:—

“How one would love more unity! But how much ground there is to be covered, how many difficulties to be cleared away before that can come!”

I smiled a little, at which he looked at me questioningly, and so I said:—

“I smiled because I thought of the brotherly and loving way in which you have received me to-day, and in which you are speaking so much and so freely of what is in your heart, and if these kind and friendly relations go on increasing between our Churches it will be progress such as He must love to see Who said ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye have love one to another.’ That will be progress of the best kind, and, even if it is slow, I for one shall greatly rejoice that we are moving at all in the right direction. Let us only keep moving, and we shall arrive in time.”

We talked on about my own experiences the year before just to the south of where he had lived so long, and when I told him that I hoped this year to go to the Altai, his own actual country, he looked as though he envied me the journey. After embracing me again he accompanied me into the ante-room, where a poor peasant woman was waiting to see him with an ikon to be blessed. There was a great pile of quite cheap ikons for the poor, towards which he waved his hand and said, “And I have all these to bless also.”

As I left I could only murmur to myself, “The dear old saint.” He made me feel some sense of being back at Troas or Miletum or Ephesus, or coming out from the presence of Barnabas or Silas or St. Paul. It was truly apostolic!

Of course the interpreter makes a tremendous difference, but again, as at Petrograd and Riga, I had an excellent friend and helper in Mr. Birse, one of the churchwardens of our church in Moscow, who had spoken Russian all his life. I may add also that, as in Mr. Feild’s case at Petrograd, he enjoyed the interview as much as I did, and would probably catch little subtleties of expression and self-revelation that would be lost to me by the hurried kind of interpretation that was necessary.

The next great dignitary I will try and describe, though I know I cannot possibly do justice to the dignity and nobility of character evident in all she says and does, is the Abbess Magdalena of the great Convent at Ekaterinburg in Siberia. The Convent is a most imposing group of buildings, stretching along an extended front, with cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, and is much frequented by pilgrims from far and near who come to pray in its chapel before a famous ikon. The Abbess and all her nuns wear the same kind of black dress, with cap and veil, quite black and unredeemed by any trace of white linen or cambric. The first thing that impressed me, even before I entered the gate, was the beauty of their singing. The choir were practising for a service on the Emperor’s name-day on the morrow, and their hymn was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard from women’s voices. It seemed to me that all the four parts were there. The bass certainly was, and I was told that the nuns with deep voices submitted them to careful training until they were able to reach very low notes indeed. There was, of course, no accompanying music, the conductor just waving her open hand to and fro to beat time, and the precision and crispness of the whole hymn were wonderful.

The chapel is a fine building beautifully painted by the nuns themselves, and its services are conducted by a priest and deacon. The deacon is a special feature in the ranks of the Russian clergy, and is responsible for all the choral parts of the services, apart from the actual priest’s part in the Liturgy of course, and is chosen for the beauty of his voice. If a young man has a very fine voice and is wondering what use he shall make of it, he sees nothing at all unbecoming or incongruous in saying that he has not made up his mind yet whether he shall choose the Church or the stage.