[6] Published by T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square.
CHAPTER V
Religious Life and Worship
It is well sometimes to define our terms and phrases, and it is absolutely necessary in this case. What is it that we mean when we speak of the religious life of a people, Christian and non-Christian alike? Our soldiers have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with Hindoos and Mohammedans, whose British commander, on the eve of their first battle, addressed them in words which ought to be long remembered by those who are working and praying for the hastening of God’s kingdom, appealing to their faith, and reminding them that prayers were ascending from Mosque and from Temple to the God of all, on their behalf.
The Hindoos and Moslems have their religious life as well as ourselves. And it behoves us of the Christian Church, especially when such stirring words can be addressed to two Eastern peoples, so widely different in their creeds, to remind them that their prayers are going up to the same “God of all,” to look very earnestly and sympathetically at the religious life and worship of all the different Churches which make up the “Mystical Body of Christ and the blessed company of all faithful people.”
It is along that way and that alone—the affectionate, respectful, and sympathetic interest in the religious life and worship of those who differ from us and those not in communion with us, that unity lies, and I feel sure there is no other. The religious life of a man, or people, is his life as it is influenced by the creed he professes and the worship he offers.
We are not thinking at the moment of a moral life, for a moral life is led by many who, as they would express it, “make no religious profession.” It is open to us to question whether they are not more influenced than they are aware by the religion of those about them, which is in the very air they breathe, for there is such an influence as “religious atmosphere”; or we may think also that they have more religion than they suspect; but they themselves would disclaim all this. Some live, as John Stuart Mill lived, frankly without religion, yet leading a blameless and irreproachable moral life. Then as a contrast there are the lives of religious people leaving as far as moral values are concerned much to be desired, and probably, in many cases, most of all by themselves.
Religious life, however, is creed and worship translated into daily life and expression, effort and achievement; and accepting that definition I unhesitatingly claim for the Russian people that they are one of the most religious peoples in the world. Their religion is the desire and effort to know God. “This is life eternal, to know God, and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent.” The Russian has not been fully taught as yet the ethical and moral side of this knowing God, though he is ready for it, but only its mystical side. He seeks the knowledge of God, quite simply, as a spiritual experience.
It will always be found that when races have received civilization and Christianity suddenly, as the Russians have done, while they astonish and charm by their spiritual fervour and deep earnestness, they disappoint by their want of consistency in moral life. But spiritual fervour and great earnestness arising out of a real need for God and a deep sense of His meeting that need “fulfilling minds and granting hearts’ desires,” and a real sense of communion with the Great Eternal in Christ in beautiful and uplifting worship, afford the best of all foundations for building up moral conduct permanently and well.