Unhappily for the people, when a man rises from among them and accomplishes unheard-of undertakings, the prestige of his name eclipses the light in which justice would regard his actions. If flattery erects to him its altars, and if religious or political passions find it to their interest to exalt him, this man, though in his grave, continues no less to exercise a powerful influence; and all his qualities, even his bad ones, receive a species of consecration. A century and a half have elapsed since the death of Peter the Great, and yet it may be said with truth that he still rules Russia. It is no common thing to find a series of sovereigns, all of whom draw their inspiration from the same idea; and yet all the czars, with the single exception of Peter II., who only reigned three years (1727-1730), perpetuated, with regard to the Russian Church, the idea of the originator of the synod.
That the czars, however, should have made it their rule to walk in the footsteps of Peter, and that in their ukases they should recall his memory with enthusiastic eulogies, it is easy to conceive; and also that Protestants, especially those of Germany, should never weary in their praises of his religious reforms; these praises being, in the first place, the payment of a debt of gratitude to the czar, and, in the second, an homage rendered to the Protestant side of the reforms themselves. But the most painful part of the matter is that Peter and his successors should have found, in that very church which they were oppressing, not only docile instruments of their will, but also the warmest encouragements to prosecute their work. Theophanes Prokopovitch, Bishop of Pskoff, of whom we will speak further, wrote treatises to prove that “the czars have received from on high the power to govern the church; only it is not permitted that they should officiate in it.”[126] [pg 546] Plato Levchin, Metropolitan of Moscow, while he was still tutor to the Czarowitz Paul, afterwards Paul I., prepared for his use a catechism which has been held in great esteem by Protestants. In the epistle dedicatory he thus addresses his pupil: “I bear in mind a saying of your highness—saying worthy of eternal remembrance. We were one day reading this passage in the Gospel: Take heed that you say not among yourselves: We have Abraham for our father (S. Matt. iii. 9); when, upon my remarking that the Jews vainly gloried in having Abraham for their father, whose faith and works they failed to imitate, your highness deigned to reply: ‘And I also should glory in vain that I descend from the great Peter, did I not intend to imitate his works.’ That these and other similarly excellent dispositions of your highness may increase with your years, behold this is what the church of God, prostrate before the altar, supplicates, and will never cease to supplicate, of the divine mercy, from the profoundest depths of her heart.”[127]
There is nothing surprising in the fact that lessons such as these, explained and developed in the body of the catechism, should have borne their fruit. The pupil of Plato, having become czar, was the first who introduced into official edicts the title of Head of the Church[128] for himself and his successors, and more emphatically than perhaps any one of the others he established as a principle the supremacy of the czar over the church.[129]
We forbear to quote other examples. If it be true that nations never stop short at a theory, the same thing is true also of sovereigns; and, when Nicholas I. acted as every one knows he did act, he was but carrying out the doctrine accepted and taught in the Russian Church. As for the people, it would have been indeed surprising had they not shared in the doctrine of the church, and still more so had they attempted any opposition to it. In fact, as might be supposed, there was no lack of writers who set themselves to make the people appreciate the advantages of every description which they enjoyed under the religious autocracy of the czars.
This state of things could not, however, last indefinitely; and it was the Emperor Nicholas himself who, by some of his measures, contributed to hasten its end. At the commencement of his reign it was desired to exclude the foreign element from teaching, and to substitute for it the national only. Professors were lacking; and, to form these, the government thought it well to send out young men at its own expense to learn in the German universities that which they would subsequently have to teach the Russians. Besides, for many years past Russia has entered into active and frequent relations with the rest of Europe; the regulations which bound Russians, if not to the glebe, at least to the soil of their country, have been relaxed; travelling has been facilitated; travellers have been able with less difficulty to penetrate into the country, and its own inhabitants to go abroad and observe what is passing in the rest of the world.
And what has resulted from all this? Many things; and, first of all, the following: “The future propagators of learning and civilization,” says the Père Gagarin, in a remarkable pamphlet,[130] “were sent to Berlin, where they lost no time in becoming fervent disciples of the Hegelian ideas. It was in vain that serious warnings reached St. Petersburg of the fatal direction these young men were pursuing. For reasons which perhaps some future day may explain the warnings were wholly unheeded; and in a short time the chairs of the principal universities were filled by these dangerous enthusiasts, whose newly-imported ideas made rapid progress. School-masters, professors, journalists, the writers who had been formed in the universities, successively became the apostles of the doctrines which they had adopted. Neither censures, nor the watchfulness of the custom-house, nor the active surveillance of an ubiquitous and anxious police, availed to put a stop to the propagation of revolutionary notions, protected as they were by eccentric formulas, unintelligible to all who were not in the secret of the sect. It was not until 1848 that the eyes of the government began to be opened; but it had no efficacious remedy at hand. It multiplied regulations, of which the object was to hinder the diffusion of modern science and ideas; but was destitute of salutary principles to offer as a substitute for the unhealthy teaching of which it now recognized the dangers. The system of national education, which had so miserably failed, had been based upon ‘orthodoxy,’ autocracy, and nationality, and was now resulting in the triumph of German ideas, in the atheism of Feuerbach, and in radicalism and communism of the most unbridled description.”
That we may not unjustly charge the Emperor Nicholas with being solely responsible for these results, it must also be said that other Russians, who had at any rate travelled at their own expense, and foreigners who had come to settle in Russia, assisted in propagating the same doctrines. If books are not printed without some reasonable hope that they will be read, and if the number of publications in which certain ideas are particularly developed proves the favor with which they are received, it would be only too easy to make a statistical statement of alarming significance, showing the favor with which the most revolutionary doctrines are received by the Russians. Books printed in the Russian language are evidently addressed to Russians only, this language not having hitherto acquired a place in that part of education which is called the study of modern languages; and we can prove the existence of numerous publications in the Russian language, appearing some in London, some in Berlin, some at Leipsic, some at Geneva, and elsewhere also, in which the most communistic doctrines find their apology. Amongst others we may notice the publication at Zurich of a periodical review entitled V'pered! (Forward!), which wars against all belief in the supernatural and against every kind of authority. It matters little that the writings of which we speak themselves penetrate with difficulty into Russia; it is not to be supposed that the fact of having, when abroad, read this review or anything similar closes to Russians [pg 548] the return to their country. The book remains outside; but its teaching enters with them.
Let us now return to the consideration of the Russian Church. The radical ideas of which we have been speaking are plainly incompatible with the religious autocracy of the czars; and nevertheless Russia offers us the spectacle of men imbued with these ideas, and even manifesting them openly without, who suddenly recover their orthodoxy as soon as they recross the frontier of their country.
Under pain of deserving the reproach of cowardly hypocrisy, these Russians cannot support the existing state of things, liberty of conscience being too intimately allied with their principles. The reader will judge whether it is not wholly immoral that men who have ceased to believe in anything should, in order to escape legal consequences, present themselves in the “orthodox” churches for confession and communion!... Now, as far as we are aware, none of the pains and penalties against those who, being born of “orthodox” parents, fail to practise the state religion, or to fulfil their duty of annual confession and communion, have hitherto been abolished; still less are the penalties abolished to which all are liable who propagate doctrines contrary to those of the official church.
But the Russian atheists and rationalists of every shade of opinion are not the only persons who have a supreme interest in requiring, together with liberty of conscience, the abolition of the penalties to which they would be liable if the same rigor were observed towards them as towards those Russians who have become Catholics. For the czars, not satisfied with calling themselves and with being the head of the “orthodox” church, have also arrogated to themselves the right of direction with regard to all the religious sects of the empire.