CHAPTER X
The Anglican Church in Russia
I welcome the opportunity that this chapter affords me of defining the position taken by our Church in Russia, for it is just the same there as in Germany, France, Belgium, and the other countries in our jurisdiction. Many English Churchmen deprecate, while others strongly resent, our having clergy, churches, and services on the Continent of Europe at all. They consider it an interference with the Church of the country, schismatical in its character, and a hindrance and impediment to the reunion of Christendom. Some English clergy come, therefore, into the jurisdiction of North and Central Europe from their own parishes, and though their own Church may have its services there, ostentatiously attend the services of the Roman Catholic Church. Young men coming out for business, girls taking positions as nurses and governesses, and others coming for health and enjoyment, are sometimes advised by their clergy not to go near the English Church, but to attend Mass and “worship with the people of the country.”
What, I fancy, many of our brethren at home, clergy and laity alike, fail very often to realize is the great difference between a temporary and permanent residence abroad. Many of us know what it is to spend a holiday in some simple and beautiful village—in the Black Forest, for instance—amongst devout and good people, far away from one’s own Church, and where it is just as natural as anything can be, and completes the friendly feeling between us, to go to church on Sunday and worship with them. Even in an unfamiliar service we have our own Prayer Books, and can read Collect, Epistle, and Holy Gospel, and be in spirit and touch with our brethren worshipping in their own churches all over the world.
There is something to be said, therefore, for sharing the worship of the people of the place when passing through or making but a short stay, though, even in holiday resorts or “Sports centres,” the opportunities which our Church, chaplain, and services offer are too precious and important to be lost or undervalued. But there is nothing whatever to be said for leaving a community of our own countrymen, permanently resident in another land, without the ministrations of their own Church, if they can possibly be supplied to them; and still less if, as in Russia and some other places, the people can find the means of support themselves.
Will any of our brethren seriously maintain that, when families have to leave this country and go to live on the Continent of Europe, they must leave their own Church and be received into the Roman or Greek Communion? Or, if not, will they consider that they ought to frequent the services of those Churches as outsiders, never having the experiences and helps afforded by the sacramental means of grace? It must be one or the other. If abroad we are not to attend the services of our own Church, then the only alternative is either to leave it altogether or to live the maimed spiritual life of those who are without the ministry of the Word and Sacraments.
And, moreover, if it is thought that one of the pressing duties of our time is to follow our brethren across the ocean to Canada, though even there the Roman Church claims to be the “Church of the country” in its French-speaking territory, and to give them the ministrations of religion, why are we not to follow them across the Channel, when they leave their country for precisely the same reason, to extend its business and commercial influence and to serve its interests in diplomatic, consular, and professional life? To think at all carefully over the situation is to see at once that our people in North and Central Europe have just the same rights (and I don’t ask for anything more than that) to the services of their own Church as anywhere else in the world.
Take, for instance, this typical case of a friend of mine living in one of the cities of Europe, and now retired from business, but still living on where he is so well known, and where he has many ways of making himself of use. He was married young, and his bride went with him to make her home abroad. They had their own Church there, and there they took their children to be baptized and, when old enough, to worship, be confirmed, and become communicants. There those children have been married, and from there gone out into the world to make new homes. In his house the clergy have been always made welcome, and have visited them when sick, counselled them when necessary, and received much valuable advice in return. Can any one be heartless enough, or foolish enough, to say that there ought to have been no English Church in that place at all, and that he and his young wife ought to have attended the Church of the country, and with their descendants been lost to their own?
Then there are girls at school, young men learning the language, governesses, nurses, lads in the training stables, girls dancing on the stage—these are well shepherded in Paris—and others. Are they to feel in after life, “Just at the critical time, when I needed it most, my Church was not there to give me the helping hand—and all might have been so different if it had been!” I will not dwell upon all the priceless opportunities afforded us abroad, where touch is more quickly gained, and more easily maintained, of winning during sickness and at other times those who have never been in touch with clergy or Church at home, bringing them out into the light, gaining them for the Church, and sending them home to “strengthen the brethren” there.
Most of our clergy, from Northern Russia to Southern France and the Pyrenees, have their inspiriting stories to tell of the services they have rendered to the Church at home in this way, and yet that Church, if some of our brethren could have their way, would disown them. It won’t bear seriously thinking of, this objection to English Church work abroad; and surely it rings more true to what we feel is the Englishman’s duty wherever he is, when we read that our countrymen, after settling at Archangel in the sixteenth century, built their warehouses and their Church at the same time, and wished, in their adopted country, to worship God “after the manner of their fathers.”