“Instead of the march music of Progress it offers the choir dance of the Mystery.
“Instead of Progress itself it offers Communion.”
I told them my belief that Russia is the hope of Europe, that we are all looking to her, that she is the living East, the pole of mysticism, in opposition to America, the living West, the pole of materialism. This pleased the Bogoiskateli very much. They made quite sure it was not simply a compliment, and then one of them added:—
“Yes, Russia is the hope of Europe, and Moscow is the hope of Russia.” And another, an Old Believer, added to that:—
“And beyond the Preobrazhenskaya Zastava is the hope of Moscow”—it is there that the Old Believers have a vast and important settlement.
At half-past six the discussion broke up in the central part of the tavern and was left to be prolonged in separate groups. Perhaps later it again became general. I went out, and eight who accompanied me suggested that we go to another tavern two streets off and drink another glass of tea. This we did, and the talk went on and on as it goes on every day and hour in Russia, in every town or village—talk about God and the idea of Christ and suffering, of what is necessary and what not.
Russia is considered a country where speech is not free, and, indeed, listening to such meetings as ours there are often plain-clothes detectives. But the police could no more stop the mouths of the Russian people or the current of popular opinion than they could drain or hide the water of the ocean. In the monastery hostelry, in the third-class waiting-rooms, in third-class carriages, in the muddy and crowded market-square, in the tavern, the Russian is always to be found eagerly asking, seeking, informing, emphasising, making points of exclamation. All priests, policemen, post office officials, schoolmasters, squires, commercial travellers, and Russian-speaking foreigners will bear witness to how they have been pestered with simple Russians asking for an explanation of passages in the Bible, or asking questions about God. So Russia shows herself alive. Even the taverns, in which there is so much drunkenness and debauch, the Russians have made into something like free churches or open debating societies.
VII
IN THE CHURCH
I have been much struck with the many ruins of abbeys in England. There are many ruined abbeys that seem to need comparatively little restoration to make them great places of worship. Kirkstall Abbey outside Leeds, for instance, is a grand pile of stone, and has room for 1200 worshippers—but it remains little more than a curiosity and a questionable adornment of industrial Leeds. In Russia there are no such ruins. Throughout the wide stretch of Russia there is not a single Christian ruin. Christianity does not tolerate ruins. Kirkstall would never have been allowed to fall out of Christian service unless a heathen power like Turkey had gained possession of it. Russia, for instance, in 1875, coming into possession of the ruins of early Christian churches on the newly-acquired Caucasian shore of the Black Sea, at once set to work to restore them and to build new churches on the old holy sites. Kirkstall was built in 1152; it struck me, looking at it, that at their best the Russians of to-day are not unlike the English Christians of that date. They have the characteristics of early Christian fervour.
The most representative cathedral of Russia is quite a modern one—that of St. Vladimir at Kief. It is much worth entering. A wonderful interior painted by the marvellous Russian painters, Vasnetsof and Nesterof—mediæval artists alive in the present, the eyes of the dead Middle Ages opening again after a thousand years’ sleep. All the walls and the pillars of St. Vladimir are painted by these wonderful artists. At the north by the font is a vast representation of the birth of Russian Christianity, the stepping of the army of King Vladimir down into the waters of the Dnieper to their first baptism. And away high over the altar in a background of dark blue is painted Vasnetsof’s majestical Mother and Child, whence naturally the congregation raises its eyes in adoration and aspiration. In the choir at the west is painted the story of Adam and Eve and their sin, and at the east is the wonderful Crucifixion and Resurrection, human birth balanced by spiritual birth, Paradise lost by Paradise regained. On the columns of the church are immense figures of the warrior-saints of Russia, the champions of Russian Christendom. When on Easter Eve this wonderful modern cathedral is full of all manner of Russians, you have a complete and national picture—another vision of Holy Russia. It is not necessary to pray or to fall upon one’s knees. It is only necessary to exist in the great choric throng and to look over a thousand heads to the awful and yet altogether lovely vision of the Virgin to feel one’s heart almost stand still and one’s soul become rapt in wonder, awestruck, thrilled. You wish to stretch arms above the head and give yourself completely to the spirit of beauty, the Godhead. You lose the sense of the Ego, the separated individual, you are aware of being part of a great unity praising God. You cease to be man and become the church, the bride of Christ.