So Professor Harnack from Berlin called the Orthodox Church of the East. I know his reasons for that very well. Comparing the unchangeable image of Christ, fixed in the East once for all, with the confusing thousand opinions of Christ in Protestant Germany, he was quite justified in calling our Church by a striking name, so differentiating her from his own. I am glad that he invented the name "petrified." With the proud spirit of a Protestant scientist, I wonder why He did not invent a worse name for Eastern Orthodoxy. I wonder much more that Professor Harnack, one of the chief representatives of German Christianity, omitted to see how every hollow that he and his colleagues made in traditional Christianity in Germany was at once filled with the all-conquering Nietzscheanism. And I wonder, lastly, whether he is now aware that in the nineteen hundred and fourteenth year of our Lord, when he and other destroyers of the Bible, who proclaimed Christ a dreamy maniac, clothed Christianity in rags, Nietzscheanism grew up the real religion of the German race.
What is the fact about the "petrified" Church? If "petrified" means intact, or whole, or undestroyed or living always in the same dress, but still living, then the famous Professor may be right. Yet this petrified Church has always come victorious out of any test to which she has been put. The Christian Church is always on trial, and I think she is never so much Christian as when she is being tested. She does not shine or develop or make progress otherwise than through hard tests. Christianity is founded upon a drama and not upon a science; therefore its growth and development are dramatic and not scientific. Let us take an example. Eastern Orthodoxy was put to the test for centuries to fight for its existence and its ideals against the ruling Islam. Roman Catholicism was put to a similar test in Spain. German Protestantism was put to the test of German science. What happened? Islam was defeated in Russia and in the Balkans, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. The epoch of the catacombs and the bloody days of Nero and Diocletian have been repeated once more in the Balkans, in Russia, and are still being experienced in Armenia and Asia Minor. The killed and martyred kings, princes, bishops, priests and laymen from these countries will not be ashamed before the martyrs from the Coliseum. Orthodox Christianity stood the test very well. It saved itself; it gave the inspiration for resistance; it showed itself superior even afterwards when the enslaved countries were liberated. Holy Russia counts her greatness from the time when she got rid of Islam. During the five years of their freedom Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria built more than the Turks built during 500 years of Turkish rule.
Roman Catholicism in Spain came through its test very badly. Before the Islamic invasion, and after it for a long time, the Christian population showed itself inferior to the Moors, in work, in justice, in progress. But to the honour of Roman Catholicism I must say that it stood the test very well in Croatia and in Hungary in its struggle against Islam. German cathedral Protestantism failed in its test. It is destroyed as a religion, it exists only as an archival science. It ceased to be what Christianity really sought to be—a drama; it is transformed into an indifferent scientific medium for reading, exploring, classifying, comparing, criticising. It is no more a living, dramatic being—no more the serving, ruling and suffering Christ. There is very little heroic or divine in it!
Why not then worship Wothan again instead of Christ?
And Anglicanism? It had the worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort, quiet business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The English Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses of life under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only if the British Empire is compared with an antique Pagan Empire. Where in this Empire is there a Lucullus or a Caracalla? The astonishing luxury, the bestial, insatiable passions? Or the furious competitions in petty things with which the social life of Rome was daily intoxicated? Yet English Christianity is neither so dramatic and full of contrasts as Dante's Catholicism, nor so vibrating a lyric as Dostojevsky's Orthodoxy, but rather a quiet, smooth epic like Milton's poetry.
THE GREAT DOGMA OF SIN AND SUFFERING.
The Anglican Church has formulated this dogma much in the same words as that of the Orthodox Church. Yet it is not nearly so vivid in the daily faith of the English people as in that of the Slavs. The friends of the reunion of the Anglican and Orthodox Churches never mention this difference, which is, I think, the only really great difference between them. This life on earth for the English Christian conscience is a normal one with some few objections. Given some correction, and life here on earth would be quite normal and perfect. Slav Orthodoxy, on the contrary, emphasises very emphatically the abnormality of human life on earth from the beginning. Sin is the beginning of life, and sins are the continuation of it. The first man deviated in some way from God's will; the first brother killed his younger brother; the first-born nation made war with the second-born nation, and this bloody business of men, of which, in the greatest degree, we are the witnesses to-day, continued through many thousands of years. The development of human virtues is not so obvious as the development of human sins. Still, nobody has written a work on the development of sins. The Orthodox Church believes quite seriously in this fatal development; she believes more than seriously that "the whole world lies in evil." Suffering is a consequence of sin. Even the righteous man suffers, not because of virtue, but because of sin. If he himself has no personal sins still he must suffer because of the sins of other men, no matter if near or far from him in space or time. For all men from the first to the last are made from the same piece of clay, therefore they all, from the first to the last, form one body and one life. Each is responsible for all, and each is influencing all. If one link of this body sins, the whole body must suffer. If Adam sinned, you and I must suffer for it. If St. Paul suffered, it is because his suffering is a consequence of the sins of other links of the same body. If Christ suffered and died because of Adam, it is also just. It is not good, but it is just. The suffering of nature around us is incomparably small compared with the suffering of men. The abnormality of the animal, plant or mineral world is not nearly so obvious as the abnormality of our life. God's creatures, who were created on the sixth day and destined to be the most perfect among creatures, are abased by sin to an imperfection which is unknown among the creatures made before the sixth day.
In no other Churches are there so many repetitions, in no other so many symbols, as in the Orthodox Church. The whole worship is a continual repetition for thousands of years. In Byzantium was fixed the image of Christ, His mission, His worship. The whole system of belief and worship came, fixed and accomplished, over to us Slavs. To keep that system intact for ever was the first duty taught us by those who brought it. Its tendency was to impress the image of Christ in the imagination and heart of the generations as much as possible and always in the same way. We are living in a world of evil; Christ is leader of the struggle against this evil. Men lived thousands of years wavering between good and evil, worshipping good and evil. Now they must be for good. They are educated and accustomed to weighing things for themselves. Therefore it has become necessary to ask them every day, every hour even, to confess that they are with Christ. They must repeat it again and again, in prayers, in signs, in symbols, until it becomes a new custom, a new education, a new blood and spirit, a new man, a new earth. They must be reminded in every place and at all times that they are soldiers of Christ and not of Perun. Churches, shrines, chapels, ikons, candles, processions, priests, bells, monasteries, travelling preachers, every day's saints, fast seasons—everything is the repetition of the same idea, namely, that Christ is the ruler of life and we are His followers. Christ must be expressed everywhere, indoors and outdoors. Many Englishmen have remarked that the Bible is read very seldom in the home in Russia and Serbia. That is true. People read the Bible more in symbols, pictures and signs, in music and prayers, than in the Book, Our religion is not a book religion, not even a learned religion. It is a dramatic mystery. The Bible contains the words, but in this dramatic mystery there is something higher and deeper than words. Slav Christianity is something greater than the Bible. Looking at an ikon, a Russian mujik perceives the Bible incarnated in a saint's life-drama. Mystery of sin, mystery of atonement, mystery of heroic suffering, mystery of the daily presence of Christ among us in holy wine, in holy bread, in holy water, in holy word, in holy deed, in every sanctified substance, even in matter as in spirit, mystery of communion of sins and of virtues—all are recorded once in the Bible, and all are recorded and repeated also in our daily life—that is what we call our Slav Orthodoxy. We take the mystic outlines of the Bible and do not care about the details. In those mystic outlines we put our daily life, with its details of sins and sufferings. We conceive the Christian religion neither so juristic as the Roman Catholics, nor so scientific as the Protestants, nor even so reasonable and practical as the Anglicans, but we conceive it rather as dramatic.