The walls of all churches in Russia are painted all over with immense pictures. This is dimly thought by Western people to be in bad taste. But that is because the distance between the Western and Eastern churches of Christ is as yet unbridged. The Russian has the child-soul, the peasants get to heaven where we fail, because they are “as little children.” And the children like the pictures. Older and more staid folk would not perhaps have thought of them. But they only need to go through the spiritual experience of praying in a Russian church surrounded by the painted cloud of witnesses to wish to be such children, and to feel that the child-idea of painting the walls with the pictures of the heavenly host is a perfect felicity.
The Eastern Church abhors dumb walls and the restriction of movement and attitude implied by pews. Every wall and every pillar is painted with pictures of the saints, and of incidents recorded in Holy Writ. Walls, blank walls, are always in the nature of prison walls. They separate us from other people. But the Russian, by painting the walls blue and crowding them with the saints, imparts to them a character of infinity. He gives to the worship a background of eternity. He paints in the spiritual landscape of the church.
A great interpretive Russian writer[[6]] thus writes of the fresco and wall-painting:—
In the West, where the Gothic arose, wall-painting naturally disappeared. There was no place for it on the arrowy columns and in the spaces between the windows. But in orthodoxy a continuous blank wall begged to be covered with painting. An ikon, a little picture in a square frame, was hung here and there, but still did not cover or give voice to the senseless walls at which the eyes of the worshippers gazed. In orthodoxy the wall must not be dumb, it must speak. But the wall cannot speak by texts—for which there are books. The people in the church ought to see themselves surrounded by holy scenes, pictures—of immense content and of immense dimensions. Such are frescoes. Only in orthodoxy are they possible, and indeed without them orthodoxy is dumb, powerless, not expressed. Thirst for such pictures among the Russian orthodox is great.
Frescoes make the walls live. The soul poured forth on the walls calls to prayer, and says as much to the worshippers as does the reading and the singing in church, not less.... The worshippers feel around them the great background of historical Christianity. They not only hear but see—Christian history, they not only hear but see—the story of salvation, they not only hear but see—the exploits of the martyrs, the suffering.... They see the pageant of orthodoxy, its splendid victories.
The great difference between our immense wall-paintings and mere painting on canvas, the things that are exhibited in galleries and academies, is that the one is national whereas the other is only personal. Instead of nervous shrieking pictures, these minute creations which hang on academy walls, we have something eternal, everlasting, to which may bow their heads generation after generation, to which will pray one human family, another human family, another....
This is an orthodox Russian’s view of one of the characteristic features of his own church. To the Russian it means so much. But to one who has worshipped in both churches, and is speaking for those who for the most part pray in churches that have dumb walls, there is a great deal more to note and to follow up in the consideration of this most interesting new emblem in religion. Rozanof sets us on the highroad for a fundamental understanding of Russian orthodoxy, and what I call the Eastern point of view in Christianity.
This praying in a church whose walls are “the great cloud of witnesses” is a portentous matter.
First of all, a word as to the service in a Russian church—the holy scene that shows itself if you go into vespers or matins, to a funeral or a wedding or a baptism, or a service for the remembrance of the dead, or any of the numerous occasions of religious gathering. There are no pews, no chairs. There is always a crowd, a promiscuity of rich and poor, of well-dressed and tattered, a kaleidoscopic mingling of people and colours, people standing and praying, people kneeling, people prostrated, people pushing their way to the altar, people handing candles over one another’s heads, people pushing their way out, churchwardens wandering about collecting alms, no irritation at the pushing, no anger through discomfort. The lights are dim, being mostly those of the worshippers themselves, of the candles they have lit before votive shrines. There is no organ music, but an unearthly and spontaneous outburst of praise from the souls of the choir and the clergy and the laity worshipping together. It is a strange and wonderful crowd where noble human faces, broad shoulders, and beautiful forms predominate rather than clothes or uniforms. No ranks of pews and people, no “man’s order,” only God’s order, the varying and wonderful multitude. And from the back and the sides, and from the pillars and columns look the pale faces of antiquity, the faces of the dead who are alive looking over the shoulders of the alive who have not yet died, all praising God, enfolding in a vast choric communion the few who in the church have met on the common impulse to acknowledge the wonder and splendour of the mystery of God.
All the walls and the people and the priests are praising God. Whom do they praise?