Russian Life To-day

by Bp. Herbert Bury

This young Russian, with his wife, had travelled a great distance for his Baptism and Confirmation, and, if I remember rightly, was leaving Russia in the course of time. He was able, therefore, to receive Confirmation in our own Church, although Russian subjects, if Jewish, on receiving Baptism from us—it is a strange anomaly that we hope will soon cease—are expected to choose whether they will next be received into the communion of the Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Churches. None of these, of course, attract them after receiving instruction and Baptism in our own Church, and, on that account, no doubt, many of them have reverted again to their old religion.

The passport system in Russia is an admirable and comprehensive one, and as soon as a Hebrew Christian abandons his Faith and returns to Judaism, he is required by law to report it at once to the local authority, in order that his passport may be altered; and on his doing so a notice is at once dispatched to our chaplain at Warsaw that a pen is to be drawn through his name in the baptismal register. It was painfully affecting to turn over the pages of that register, and see those ominous-looking lines drawn from top to bottom of various entries. One could not see anything like it anywhere else, I suppose. It carried the mind back to the early days of the Faith, and to that sad class known as the lapsi (“lapsed”); to the lament over Demas, who had forsaken S. Paul and gone back to the world; and to such promises as “I will not blot out his name from the book of life.”

There is much in the work at Warsaw to take one back thus in spirit to the days of the Apostles. One felt it a little at the Confirmation itself, when saying the sentence which accompanies the laying on of hands, first in German for the young Jew, and then in English for the girl who followed him; but most of all on the Sunday evening, when the services of the day in the little chapel were all over, and everything was quiet.

That is the time always given to “inquirers”; and they came one after another, that first Sunday of mine at Warsaw, stealing in, just as Nicodemus came by night and for the same reason, sometimes singly, sometimes husband and wife together, and sometimes a whole family—the children going off to join the chaplain’s children, while the parents came to us. When the room in time was quite full we began by singing a few hymns in German, after which the chaplain prayed for guidance and the sense of God’s presence; and then a most interesting time followed. He took the holy Gospel for the day, every one reading a verse in turn—in German—during which questions were encouraged if the literal meaning of the verse was not clear.

It was a particularly arresting Gospel for those present to consider, as it included our Lord’s words, “If I by the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.” There is no more striking symbol for a Jew than that of the “finger of God,” nor anything more absorbingly interesting than “God’s kingdom”; and I have always thankfully felt that I was fortunate that night. The Chaplain of Warsaw is not one who loses or wastes opportunities, and he did his very best with that one. It was an extraordinarily interesting scene as I watched the faces of that little gathering of men and women gazing with the keenest and most penetrating of expressions upon their teacher; and now and then, as he mentioned psalm or prophecy, taking up their Bibles to find the passage named. Then, satisfied as to its apposite character, they would look up again as eagerly as before. I seemed to be back again in spirit sharing in one of those Apostolic scenes of the New Testament, when one or another “preached Christ unto them,” and they, as at Berea, received the teaching “with readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures whether those things were so.”

Just such little gatherings as that at Warsaw, and in just such places, to which people came stealthily yet expectantly, were addressed by Barnabas and Paul, by Silas and John Mark. One feels now when listening to a chapter from the Acts of the Apostles, or reading it, as if one had been there and seen and heard. It is only a year since I was once more at Warsaw, and again it was Sunday evening, with the Holy Communion, Confirmation, and other services of the day all over, and just as before the Jewish inquirers came quietly in, in ones and twos and threes, only this time the gathering was larger and the attention keener even than it had been three years before. The same order was followed, the singing of hymns in German, prayer—those present were encouraged to pray in very simple words—the reading of a passage from the New Testament, and then its exposition; but though it was the same faithful teaching of the Faith, or preaching Christ, there was a difference both in what was said and in the questions asked. It was no longer the Messiah, or the Christ fulfilling Messianic psalm or evangelical prophecy, but the living Christ of to-day.

It was a sight not soon, if ever, to be forgotten, those keen Jewish faces, such as our Lord Himself looked into daily during His ministry, eager, expectant, hopeful, while questioning again, as in the Synagogue of Capernaum, how it could be possible for Him to be not only Way and Truth, but Life; how He could in any comprehensible sense be said to live in His people, and how any one could with any conviction say or sing “And now I live in Him.” It made one feel that even there, in far-away and comparatively unknown Russia, that same Spirit is moving upon the waters to whom the Quarterly Review gave its testimony in the October number of 1912, when it stated at the close of a remarkable review of modern German and other critical literature that the net result of modern negative criticism had only been “to make the living Christ a greater Reality to-day than He has been since the days of the Apostles.” So it was at Warsaw that night. They wanted to understand the Christ whom S. Paul not only taught but had experienced ever since his conversion, and which enabled and impelled him to say, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

The Jews have had hard experiences in Russia, and the story of their wrongs would take long to tell; but let us hope that now there is no reason for wishing to tell it. We are hoping that in more ways than one Russia is going to “forget those things which are behind, and reach forward to those things which are before,” and which are worthy of the aims of a great nation. Few nobler things have been said during the war than General Botha’s counsel to his fellow-countrymen when the Beyers and De Wet revolution had come to a fitting end. He reminded them that what had happened was within their own household, and their own affair, and that the only right course was to let by-gones be by-gones, and “cultivate a spirit of tolerance and forbearance and merciful oblivion” with respect to the errors of the past.

A year ago, if writing upon Russian life of to-day, one could not but have touched upon the hardships of the Jews who have to live “within the pale” in Russia, and have been alternately tolerated and persecuted, even massacred within recent years; and one would have had to own that there was something to be said upon the Russian side as well, even if not agreeing with it. But this is now no longer necessary. In Russia as in South Africa we must say, “Let by-gones be by-gones, and let the spirit of tolerance and forbearance and merciful oblivion” blot out the errors of the past for Russian and for Jew. It should be remembered also that the devout Jew is as mystical in his religion as the Russian, who must surely now and then, as he looks toward the seven-branched candlestick within his own sacrarium, or listens to the psalms, be reminded that his devotion has a Jewish source.

A Jewish Confirmation with none but Jews in the congregation is a great experience. Twice I have had it at Wandsbeck, just outside Hamburg, where, under Pastor Dolman of our London Society, the work is entirely for and amongst Jews. At my first visit there were about fourteen candidates, fine young men from many countries, one or two being German and Austrian, and several in uniform. As we entered, the large congregation, without rising, began to sing a German hymn, slowly and softly, and at once the whole atmosphere of the place became deeply devotional. Everything was in German, and though I confirm in German I cannot venture to preach or address in the language; and so in the address Pastor Dolman stood beside me to interpret, and so masterly and rapid was this interpretation that the candidates seemed to be listening to me, rather than to him, from first to last. There was no mistaking the spirit of that congregation, nor the character of the service. Every one was in it, every one deeply interested and attentive, and eager to be spiritually helped. The consciousness of it seemed to embrace every one present in the most convincing way, and again seemed to carry us back to Apostolic days, making one wonder whether amongst those rugged and strong-featured men and women there might not be another Aquila and Priscilla, ready for work if God should bring it to them; whether amongst those youths there might not be another Timotheus ready to gladden the heart of any one who should see what was in him and take him in hand for God. “Why shouldn’t there be amongst this eager-looking crowd,” I found myself thinking, “another Apollos, or even a S. Paul?”