{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20206/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20206","id":"gutenberg_20206","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20206","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity -- 20th century","Church"],"text":"Produced by Project Rastko, Nikolaj Velimirovic Project,\nRenald Levesque and the Online Distributed Proofreaders\nEurope at http://dp.rastko.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                               THE AGONY\n                             OF THE CHURCH\n\n                               BY THE REV.\n                       NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC, D.D.\n                    OF ST SAVVA'S COLLEGE, BELGRADE\n\n                          WITH FOREWORD BY THE\n                       REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.\n                  PRINCIPAL OF NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH\n                                 LONDON\n\n                      STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT\n                        32 RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.\n\n                                   1917\n\n                       Printed in Great Britain\n                   by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.\n\n\n\n\n                                 FOREWORD\n\n\nThe Eastern Church, the Church of the Apostles and the Mother of us all,\nin this book, speaks to her children in all lands and in all languages,\nand to us, with an authority and a wisdom and a tenderness all its own.\nThe author and the publishers are doing us a service of the very best\nkind in issuing it. May God's blessing rest upon it.\n\n\n\n\n                          PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD\n\n\nThe contents of this book was originally given in the form of lectures\nat St Margaret's, Westminster. There is, we think, a special fitness in\nthe lectures appearing in book form bearing the imprint of the Student\nChristian Movement, for though Father Nicholas has hosts of friends in\nGreat Britain now, when he first came here our Movement was perhaps the\nonly body which had the right to claim him as being already a friend.\nWhen the Student Christian Movement made its way to Serbia a few years\nago, Father Nicholas became one of its first friends and, the year the\nwar commenced and the following year, it was he who, on the Universal\nDay of Prayer for Students, preached by invitation of the Student\nMovement and its President, Dr. Marko Leko, to the students in the\nCathedrals of Belgrade and Nish. Members of our Movement, therefore,\nwill recognise that he comes under the category of persons so highly\nvalued in the Student Movement, namely, that of senior friend.\n\nBoth inside and outside the Student Movement to-day people are thinking\nof the Church. Much has been spoken and written about the Church of\nJesus Christ in our modern world, but not so much as to leave us unready\nto welcome this arresting and penetrating message from Serbia.\n\n\n\n\n                         INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS\n\n\nIf the official churches have had no other merit but that they have\npreserved Christ as the treasury of the world, yet they are justified\nthereby. Even if they have solely repeated through all the past\ncenturies \"Lord! Lord!\" still they stand above the secular world. For\nthey know at least who the Lord is, whereas the world does not know.\n\nChurches may disappear, but The Church never will. For not churches are\nthe work of Christ, but the Church. Moreover, if the Church disappears,\nas an institution, the essence of the Church cannot disappear. It is\nlike rivers, sea and water: when rivers disappear into the sea, the sea\nremains, and if the sea disappears into steam, water still remains.\n\nIf Christ ever meant to form the Church as an institution He meant to\nform it not as the end but as the means, like a boat to bring its\ninmates safely over the stormy ocean of life into the quiet harbour of\nHis Kingdom.\n\nLike the body in a bath, so the soul disrobes in the Church to wash. But\nas soon as we get out, we clothe our soul in order to conceal it from\nthe curious eye. Is it not illogical that we dare to show our\nimperfections to the Most Perfect, while we are ashamed to show them to\nthose who are just as imperfect, ugly and unclean as ourselves? The\nChurch, like a bath, reveals most uncleanness.\n\nThe initial and most obvious idea of the Church is collectiveness of sin\nand salvation. To pray alone and for one's self is like eating alone\nwithout regard to other people's hunger.\n\nWhen the sun sees a man of science, wealth or politics, kneeling at\nprayer with the poor and humble, it goes smiling to its rest.\n\nFull of beauty and wonders are all the Christian churches, but not\nbecause of their pretended perfections: they are beautiful and wonderful\nbecause of Him whose shadow they are.\n\nYou are a Christian? Then do not be afraid to enter any Christian church\nwith prayerful respect. All the Churches have sworn allegiance to the\nsame Sovereign. How can you respect a cottage, in which once abided His\nMajesty King Alfred, or Charles, while you would not go into a building\ndedicated to His Majesty the Invisible King of kings?\n\nThe real value of any Christian community is not to be found in its own\nprosperity but in its care for the prosperity of other Christian\ncommunities. So, for example, the value of the Protestants is to be\nfound in their loving care for the Roman Catholics, and vice versa.\n\nTaking the above standard, we find that all the Christian communities\nare almost quite valueless as to the spirit, i.e. as to their unusual\nloving care. Their actual value is more physical than spiritual, being\nas they are limited to the care for themselves. Exceptions are as\nrefreshing as an oasis in the desert.\n\nChurch and State are like fire and water. How to connect them? For if\nconnected, fire always dies down under water.\n\nThere are three ages in the history of the Church: the Golden Age, when\nthe Church was opposed to political governments; the Iron Age, when she\nwas politically directing Europe's kingdoms; and the Stone Age, when she\nhas been subdued to the service of political governments. What a\nhumiliation for the present generation to live in the Stone Age of\nChristianity!\n\nTrying to unite Church and State we are trying to unite what God\nseparated from the beginning of our era.\n\nTo separate the Church from the State does not mean, as many think, to\nseparate soul from body; it means to separate two quite opposed spirits\nunakin and hostile to each other, like Cross and Capitol.\n\nThe worm of comfort and human inertia has reconciled Christianity with\nsecular, pagan governments, and so paralysed the most divine movement in\nhuman history. Go to the bottom of all those clever advocacies for unity\nof Church and State, and you will meet, as their primus motor, the worm\nof comfort and human inertia.\n\nAll Churches and Christian institutions of the present time, however\nwonderful they may be, are only a dim prophecy of the coming Christian\nworship in truth and spirit. Through them we look now to the future as\nthrough a glass.\n\nChristianity is neither monarchical nor republican. It does not care\nabout institutions but about the spirit living in them. That institution\nis the best which is fullest of the Christian spirit. From this point of\nview, an autocracy may be better than a republic, and vice versa.\n\nThe true Christianity has been hidden from us as iron and coal were\nhidden from the men of the Stone Age. They walked over iron and coal but\nthey used stone and wood only. So we are walking over and around Christ,\nstill using in our daily life the pagan gods of old.\n\nIf there is to be a new geological epoch, with a new type of man, it\nwill be the Christian epoch. All the existing types have been made by\nrevolutions and influences of earth and water, or of air and fire. Now\nonly the Christian revolution--I mean literally and not\nallegorically--can produce a higher type of the human animal.\n\nMy friend, you are dissatisfied with the existing Churches, and you are\nanxious to form a new church, or sect, or some kind of religious\norganisation! How childish of you! The existing Churches are the most\nwonderful vessels--some in gold, others in silver or pottery--made by\nthousands of years and generations. I know your dissatisfaction comes\nbecause of the emptiness of those vessels and not because of their\nugliness. Well then, pour the divine wine into them and they will please\nyou just as the vessels in Cana of Galilee pleased the thirsty people\naround the table. No one of those people, being thirsty, ever thought of\nmaking new vessels for the wine, but to get wine as soon as possible\ninto the vessels. To pour wine into existing vessels, that is really the\nneeded miracle, my dear grumbler!\n\nPeople say: Read the Bible! Almost would I say: Do not touch it for five\nyears--read other literature during this period--and then read it again,\nand you will see its real greatness, power and sweetness.\n\nThe Christ's wounds have wrought more blessings in the world than the\nhealth of all the Roman Caears.\n\nThe Eucharist does not mean a memory only but also a prophecy. The\nprophecy of it is, that the whole earth will become Christ's body,\nChrist's flesh and blood, so that whatever we eat or drink we eat and\ndrink Him.\n\nHe ought to be our daily food. Regarding all our food through Christ it\nwill not seem to be a prey from nature but rather nature's sacrifice for\nus, reminding us of Christ's sacrifice, and through it of our own\ncalling to sacrifice.\n\nYou have to choose either to be proud or poor in spirit. The first will\nmean a noisy destruction, the second a quiet construction.\n\nThere exists no sublime and no mean thing in the whole world of which I\ncould not find a representation in myself, and none in which I were\nwholly unrepresented.\n\nThe beauty, glory and greatness of a field of golden wheat consists of\nan association of innumerable blades of wheat, with their insignificant\nbeauty, glory and greatness. If you have seen that, then do not repeat\nto me the old story of the beauty, glory and greatness of the human\nblade called Pythagoras, Caear or Napoleon.\n\nThe wealthiest and most powerful people, that we are wont to admire and\nimitate, were most pitied by Christ. To-day, as always, the most\ndifficult Christian mission is that among the rich.\n\nOur real value we never reveal through the using of our rights but\nthrough our capacity for service and sacrifice.\n\nEasier is it for a man to get his own rights than to lose his pride.\n\nSacrifice without murmuring makes of our stormy life a calm holy day. We\nfill all our days with the talk of the people who are loth to sacrifice\nand of those who dare to sacrifice. Disgust and admiration are two baths\nin which our hearts bathe from sunrise to sunset. By nothing is the\ndisgust towards a man more excited than by hearing: \"He is incapable of\nsacrifice.\" When this sentence is directed to ourselves, we feel as if\nwe had lost the whole battle of life.\n\nThe value of metaphysical systems is more for the scientific than for\nthe moral progress of mankind. Upon Hegel you could build a new science,\nbut upon St Paul only could you build a new social life and a new world\npolitics. Did you ever think that St Paul is the greatest prophet of a\nnew and desirable statesmanship?\n\nAll the Empires founded upon rights have perished and must perish. The\nfuture belongs to the Empire of St Paul, an Empire founded upon loving\nservice.\n\nIt is better in humbleness to belong to the worst of the Churches than\nproudly to separate one's self from the best of the Churches.\n\nAristocratic origin is as inscrutable as the darkness of the past night.\nA mighty aristocrat of to-day may be of the meanest soul-stuff, and the\nbeggar at his door of the noblest. But respect both of them equally,\nknowing that both of them are of the same royal origin. The Most High\nnames both of them His children. For the same reason respect asses and\nsheep and trees and stones.\n\nThe real crucifiers of Christ in our time are those who think Christ's\nGospel could not be taken as a base for world politics. Were not His\nlast words to the disciples: go to all nations? The last and supreme\nexpression of Christianity will be in the relations of nation to nation,\nas its starting expression has been the relations of man to man.\n\nInter-individualism has been the elementary school of Christianity.\nInter-nationalism ought to be its university.\n\nChristian ethics, i.e. cheerful service and sacrifice, is the noblest\nconsequence of real belief in God. Never a shorter line can bind our\nplanet with the centre of the Universe than the line going through\nChrist. It is the shortest way, as a straight line is the shortest\ndistance between two geometrical points.\n\nSlavery means obligatory service; freedom ought to mean willing service.\nOnly a man or a nation educated for willing service to their neighbours\nis a really free man or free nation. All other theories of freedom are\nillusions. Freedom asking for rights and not for willing service means\nan endless quarrel crowning with unhappiness all its champions. Neither\nPericles' republic nor Octavian's monarchy were the States of happiness,\nbut St Paul's pan-human state, with a single Magna Charta of willing\nservice, will be a State of Universal Happiness.\n\nEvery man is a battlefield of many unclean spirits, very bold in the\nabsence of Christ and very shy in His Presence. O how many of these\nspirits that find an easy habitation in us would make even the swine to\nrage and run down the steep place--into the sea!\n\nThe conception that the mentality of Machiavelli and Metternich,\nBismarck and Beaconsfield could be taken as a basis of politics, whereas\nChrist's mentality could not, is the conception even of many\ntheologians. Yet Christ survives all these politicians as an undying\npower, just because He is the fittest of all of them.\n\nWhat an obscure philosophy it is which teaches that Moses and Mohamed\nhad some thing to do with politics and Christ has not!\n\nCarlyle and Emerson were over-anxious to recommend every great man as a\nleader of mankind more than Christ. It is the same as to say: men! take\ncandles and lamps to light your way in darkness, but be aware of the\nsun. How quite different are Dostoievsky and Tolstoi!\n\nI looked at men in prayer and I thought: Behold, the fallen angels! I\nlooked again at them in hateful quarrel and I thought: Behold, the risen\ndemons!\n\nAnimals are cruel but not vulgar. Yet both in cruelty and vulgarity man\nis on record. If forced to chose one of two evils, we should prefer to\nlook at cruelty rather than vulgarity.\n\nAll our to-days are spoiled by reminiscences about yesterday and sorrows\nabout tomorrow. Thus we are disindividualising and emptying all our\n\"to-days\" and degrading them to a misty meeting-place of yesterday and\ntomorrow.\n\nFrom the physical point of view the greatest thing in this life is its\nmystery. From the moral point of view the greatest thing in man is the\noptimistic interpretation of that mystery. There is no reasonable\noptimism outside of Christianity.\n\nNo man could be a tyrant unless he were a slave of some moral defects.\n\nNo nation could tyrannise over another nation unless it were tyrannised\nover itself by some illusions.\n\nNobody in the world is free but he who feels himself to be a prisoner of\nChrist. The greatest champion of freedom in human history called\nhimself: \"Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ.\"\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                   THE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH SOPHIA\n\n\nThe most magnificent sanctuary of the Eastern Churches is called St\nSophia (Holy Wisdom), whereas the most magnificent sanctuaries of the\nWestern Churches are called St Peter's, St Paul's, or St John's, etc. As\nevery hair on our head and every line on the palm of our hand has a\ncertain significance, so these dedications of the Church have doubtless\ncertain significance. And this significance is typical of the religion\nof the East and the West. Western Christianity, grown upon the soil of a\nyouthful individualism, preferred this or that apostle's personality and\ndedicated their best temples to him. The aged East, tired of\nindividualistic ambitions, tired of great men, flagellated by the\nphantom of human greatness, was thirsty for something higher and more\nsolid than any human personality. Adoration of great personalities being\nthe very wisdom of this world, the East stretched its hands to a\nsuperhuman ideal, to the Holy Wisdom. It is a psychological fact that\nyouth sees his ideal in personal greatness, progressed age in holiness.\nThe East asked for something more eternal than Peter, Paul or John.\nThere is wisdom, and there is holy wisdom. Philosophical or personal\nwisdom existed from the beginning of mankind, but Holy Wisdom entered\nthe world with Jesus Christ. Christ was the embodiment of God's wisdom,\nthe very incarnation of Holy Wisdom. This Wisdom stands above all human\nwisdom and revives and illuminates it. Holy Wisdom includes the\nessential wisdom of Peter, Paul, John, and any other apostle or seer, or\nany other thing or creature, as the ocean includes the water of many\nrivers. In the darkest times of dissension, uncertainty or suffering,\nthe Christian East did not rely so much upon the great apostles, either\nPeter, or Paul, or John, but looked beyond time and space to the Eternal\nChrist, The Logos of God, and asked for Light. And it looked to Eternity\nthrough this church in Constantinople, St Sophia, as the all-embracing\nand all-reconciling, holy symbol. Whenever Peter, or Paul, or John, or\nany other apostle, or prophet, became the ground upon which the\nbelievers quarrelled, it was in the Holy Wisdom that they sought refuge\nand healing from their intellectual one-sidedness and ill-will.\n\nYet if Holy Wisdom has only in the East a magnificent visible symbol,\nHoly Wisdom is none the less the very foundation, substance and aim of\nthe Western Church as well as of the Eastern, yea of the one, holy\nCatholic Church. For Christianity had been destined neither for the East\nalone nor for the West alone, but for the whole globe. And what means\nthe so-much abused word Catholic if not inclusiveness? Even such is,\ntoo, the meaning of the Divine wisdom as revealed in Christianity from\nthe beginning.\n\nI will try to show this inclusive wisdom of the Church, revealed from\nthe beginning, Firstly in the Church's Founder, Secondly in the Church's\norganisation, and Thirdly in the Church's destination.\n\n\n\n\n             THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM OF THE CHURCH'S FOUNDER\n\n\nBy His birth He included and bound together the lowest and the highest,\nthe natural and the supernatural: stable, manger, straw, sheep and\nshepherds on the one hand; stars, angels, magi and Davidic royal origin\non the other.\n\nBy His life He included the austerity of the Indian monks, of John the\nBaptist and the Nazarenes on the one hand; and on the other the\nConfucian moderate feasting, in the houses of friends, at the marriage\nfeast and on other solemn occasions.\n\nHis life-drama was interwoven into the lives of all classes of people:\nmen, women and children, Judaists and heathen, King Herod and the\nproconsul Pilate, priests and soldiers, merchants and beggars, learned\nsophists and ignorant fools, the sick and the healthy, the righteous and\nthe sinful, Jews and Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and all others who\ncould be met in Palestine, the very market of races and creeds.\n\nHe was by no means a party man like the Pharisees and the doctors of\nlaw. He called both the Pharisees and their enemies to follow Him. He\nwent to the temple to pray, but He also prayed alone in the desert. He\nkept the Sabbath and He broke the Sabbath by healing the sick and doing\ngood on this sacred day. He came not to destroy the Law, but He brought\nsomething which was higher than the Law and even included the law\nitself, i.e. love and mercy.\n\nHe rebuked people who used to pray and say. \"Lord, Lord!\" And yet He\nprayed very often Himself. He rebuked those who were fasting, and yet He\nused to fast Himself. What He really looked for was neither prayer nor\nfasting, but the spirit in which one prayed or fasted.\n\nHe commanded the people to give to Caesar things which were Caesar's,\nand to God that which was God's. He did not criticise this or that form\nof government, nor did He accentuate Monarchism, Republicanism, or\nSocialism as one form preferable to another. Under His scheme all forms\nof government were included as equally good or evil according to what\nplace they reserved for God, what gifts they duly gave to God, and by\nwhat spirit they were inspired.\n\nHe followed the customs of His nation, and did not break them or evade\nthem purposely. He took food according to the Law, and washed hands\naccording to the Law, and went to the Holy City and took part in worship\nin the temple (though He was \"greater than the temple\"), according to\nthe Law. It seems that He excluded no form of worship or social life,\nthough He despised the unclean and petty spirit with which the\nhypocrites filled these forms. And when it came to a dispute He, the\nMessenger of a new spirit, naturally tried to save rather the pure\nspirit even without a form than a form filled with an impure spirit.\nTherefore He felt bound to say: \"Not that which goeth into the mouth\ndefileth a man,\" or \"to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man,\" or\n\"thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,\" etc.\n\nEven so, too, He embraced all nationalities and races. Nothing was for\nHim unclean that God had created, nothing but unclean spirits. When the\nRoman centurion asked help from Him, He gave it. And when the people\nbeyond the Israelitish boundaries, from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,\ncried after Him, He did not listen to the exclusivistic warnings of His\ndisciples, but He distributed even there His divine mercy. He was\nmindful even of the people of Nineveh. And when He sent His disciples,\nHe sent them to \"all nations.\"\n\nFinally, He included the natural and the supernatural. He talked with\nspirits. He saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven. He stood amongst\nPeter, John and James on one side, and Moses and Elias on the other. All\nthe people saw lilies in the field and sparrows upon the roof, but He\nsaw more, He saw how, His Father clothed the lilies and how He fed the\nsparrows. He united the natural and the supernatural in His teaching.\n\n\"Love those who love thee\" was a natural teaching. But He added: \"and\nthose who hate and persecute thee,\" which was supernatural.\n\n\"Give to them who give to thee\" was a natural teaching. But He added:\n\"and to them who do not give to the\", which was supernatural.\n\n\"Bless those who bless thee.\" But He added: \"and those who curse thee,\"\nwhich was supernatural.\n\nAnd He united the natural and supernatural in His death. He suffered and\ndied in agony. He rose from the dead, descended to Hell and ascended to\nHeaven. For Him there was as little boundary between heaven and earth,\nbetween nature and supernature, as between Israel and Canaan, or as\nbetween man and man, or form and form.\n\nHis wisdom was inclusive from the beginning to the end. What did He ever\nexclude--save unclean spirits? His disciples were as exclusive as\nanybody could be, exclusive when judging and acting according to natural\nwisdom. But when they looked at Him, they were reconciled. He was the\nHoly Wisdom, in which everyone could find a mansion for himself, every\ndisciple, every nation, every form of worship, everything--but the\nunclean spirit.\n\n\n\n\n          THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM IN THE CHURCH'S ORGANISATION\n\n\nLet us look now to the Christian Church in the early time of her\nformation.\n\nJesus Christ gave the largest possible scheme on which to work and the\nlargest foundation to build upon. There is no other name in history upon\nwhich more has been constructed than upon His name. The primitive Church\nrealised it from the beginning, and declared it. She was inclusive from\nthe first, inclusive in her teaching and worship.\n\n(a) Inclusive in Teaching.--Christ was put in the centre of the world's\nhistory. He represented what was the best and highest in Eastern and\nWestern thought. The dream of Messias was the best and highest in the\nJewish conception. Well, Jesus was the Messias.\n\nThe expectation of a second Adam, the redeemer of the first, sinful\nAdam, was common among the peoples in Palestine and Mesopotamia. Well,\nJesus was the second Adam, the expected Redeemer, God's Messenger.\n\nEgypt had an intuition into the mystery of the Divinity as a Trinity.\nHowever rough may have been that idea, the Trinity being thought of as a\nhuman family of Father, Mother, and Son, still it existed very vividly\nin Egypt. And the people expected the coming of God's only Son, the\nthird person of their Trinity, not an imaginary being like Horus, but\nthe real son of Osiris in flesh and blood who would bring happiness to\nmen. Well, Jesus of Nazareth was this Son of God, and He as Christ was\nthe eternal sharer of the Divine Trinity.\n\nIndia was the cradle of the teaching of the Incarnation. The supreme\nGod, Brahma, had already been incarnated in many persons since the dawn\nof history. But the highest incarnation of Him was still to come. Well,\nJesus Christ was this highest incarnation of Brahma in human shape.\n\nThe cultivated polytheists did not like the idea of a monotonous\ntheology of one solitary God. They liked rather a divine company upon\nOlympus. Well, Christianity with its Trinity-teaching presented to them\na limited polytheism. God was not physically one, as in Judaism, nor\nmany, as in Hellenism. He was a Trinitarian Plurality in Unity. He was\nnot a grim hermit, but He had the riches of an eternal life.\n\nThe intellectual Greeks and Hellenists climbed to the idea of one God\nand of Logos, the Mediator between God and the world, through whom God\ncreated whatever He created, and who may be incarnated for the salvation\nof the fallen, suffering creation. Well, Jesus Christ could include in\nHis person this wonderful doctrine of Neoplatonism.\n\nThe mountainous Asia under Caucasus and Ararat, plunged into the mystery\nof Mithras, which was born out of the Zoroastrian dualistic religion of\nlight and darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Well now, Christ, the friend\nof humanity, revealed Himself as the God of light struggling against\nSatan, the enemy of humanity.\n\nRome, politically ruling the world, was longing for a sacred King, for a\nPrince of Peace, who should come from the East and bring to the people\nsome higher and truer happiness than that deceiving chimera of political\nbigness. Well, Christ should be this universal, sacred King, this Prince\nof Peace, and Messenger of a durable happiness. It is not true that\nChrist had His prophets among the people of Israel only. His prophets\nexisted in every race and every religion and philosophy of old. That is\nthe reason why the whole world could claim Christ, and how He can be\npreached to everybody and accepted by everybody. Behold, He was at home\neverywhere!\n\n(b) Inclusive in Worship.--Inclusive in doctrine, the primitive Church\nwas wisely inclusive in worship too. It would be nonsense to speak of\nChristian worship as of something quite new and surprising. There was\nvery little new and very little surprising in it indeed; almost nothing.\nThe first Church met for prayer in the Jewish temple. Wherever the\napostles came to preach the new Gospel they went to the old places of\nprayer, to the temples of Jehovah. Their Christian spirit did not revolt\nagainst the old forms of worship. Later on the naked Christian spirit\nneeded to be clothed, and it was clothed. But when Israel looked to\nChristian worship they recognised much--forms, signs, vestments and\nadministration--to be like their own. And not only Israel, but even\nEgypt, India, Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome, yea, the Pagans of\nNorth and South. If Nature could speak, it could say how much it lent of\nits own to Christian worship.\n\nA student of ancient history one day asked me: \"How can I recognise the\nChristian religion as the best of all, when I know how much it borrowed\nfrom the ancient religious forms of worship? How poor it looks without\nall that!\"\n\nI said: \"Just this wonderful power of embracing and assimilating gives\nevidence of the vitality and universality of Christianity. It is too\nlarge in spirit to be clothed by one nation or one race only. It is too\nrich in spirit and destination to be expressed by one tongue, by one\nsign, or one symbol, or one form. In the same sense as Christian\ndoctrine was prepared and prophesied by the religions and the\nphilosophies before Christ, in the same sense Christian worship was\nprepared and prophesied as well. Whenever the Christian spirit is strong\nthe Church is not afraid of worship being strange, and ample, and even\ngrotesque. The weaker the Christian spirit, the greater exclusiveness in\nworship. Some people say: It is wicked to use pagan architecture for the\nChurch, and incense and fire, and music, or dance, or bowing, or\nkneeling, or signs and symbols, in Christian worship, because it is\npagan.\" Yes, all this is pagan indeed, but it is Christian too if we\nwish it to be. The Latin language was pagan, but now it is Christian\ntoo. The English language was a vehicle of Paganism as well, now it is a\nvehicle of Christianity. The human body was itself pagan too, but the\nEternal Christ, God's Holy Wisdom, entered it and filled it with a new\nspirit, and it ceased to be pagan. We in the East sometimes use for our\nsacerdotal vestments Chinese silk made by pagan hands in China, or\nchalices and spoons and little bells and chains made by the Moslems, or\nprecious stones gathered and scents prepared by the fire or\nstone-worshippers of Africa, and no one of us should be afraid to use\nthem when worshipping Christ, as Christ Himself was not afraid to touch\nthe most wretched human bodies or souls with His pure hands.\nChristianity cannot be defiled, using for its worship the works of pagan\nhands, but pagan people are hereby taking a share in Christian worship,\nphysically and unconsciously, waiting for the moment when they will\nshare in it spiritually and consciously as well. Every piece of Chinese\nsilk in our vestments is a prophecy of the great Christian China. But\nthis belongs to the following paragraph.\n\n\n\n\n          THE INCLUSIVE WISDOM IN THE CHURCH'S DESTINATION\n\n\nJudaism was destined for the people of Israel only. The Christian Church\nwas destined for the people of Israel too, but not for them only. She\nincluded Greeks as well.\n\nThe Greek polytheism of Olympus was destined for the Hellenic race only.\nThe Christian Church was destined for the Hellenic race too, but not for\nit only. She included Indians as well.\n\nBuddha's wisdom was offered to the monks and vegetarians. Monks and\nvegetarians the Christian Church included in her lap, but also married\nand social people too.\n\nPythagoras founded a religious society of intellectual aristocrats. The\nChristian Church from the beginning included intellectual aristocrats\nside by side with the ignorant and unlettered.\n\nThe Persian prophet, Zoroaster, recruited soldiers of the god of light\namong the best men to fight against the god of darkness. His religious\ninstitution was like a military barracks. The Christian Church included\nboth the best and the worst, the righteous and the sinners, the healthy\nand the sick. It was a barracks and a hospital at the same time. It was\nan institution both for spiritual fighting and spiritual healing.\n\nThe Chinese sage, Confucius, preached a wonderful ethical pragmatism,\nand the profound thinker, Lao-Tse, preached an all-embracing\nspiritualism. Christian wisdom included both of them, opening Heaven for\nthe first and showing the dramatic importance of the physical world for\nthe second. Islam--yes, Islam had in some sense a Christian ambition: to\nwin the whole world. The difference was: Islam wished world-conquest;\nthe Church, the world's salvation. Islam intended to subdue all men and\nbring them before God as His servants: The Church intended to educate\nall men, to purify and elevate them, and to bring them before God as His\nchildren.\n\nAnd all others: star-worshippers, and fire, and wood, and water, and\nstone, and animal-worshippers had a touching sense of the immediate\ndivine presence in nature. The Church came not to extinguish this sense\nbut to explain and to subordinate it; to put God in the place of demons\nand hope instead of fear.\n\nThe Church came not to destroy, but to purify, to aid and to assimilate.\nThe destination of the Church was neither national nor racial, but\ncosmic. No exclusive power was ever destined to be a world-power. The\nultimate failure of Islam to become a world-power lies in its\nexclusiveness. It was with religion as with politics. Every exclusive\npolicy is foredoomed to failure: the German as well as the Turkish and\nthe Napoleonic. The policy of the Church was designed by her Divine\nFounder: \"He that is not against us is for us.\" Well, there is no human\nrace on earth wholly against Christ and wholly unprepared to receive\nHim. The wisdom of the Christian missionaries therefore is to see first\nin what ways Providence has prepared a soil for Christian seed; to see\nwhich of the Christian elements a race, or a religion, already\npossesses, and how to utilise these elements and weld them into\nChristianity. All that--in order to make Christianity grow organically,\ninstead of pushing it mechanically.\n\nIn conclusion let me repeat again: the wisdom of the Church has been\ninclusive. Inclusive was the wisdom of her Founder, inclusive the wisdom\nof her organisation and of her destination. Exclusiveness was the very\nsickness and weakness of the Church. That is why we in the East in the\ntime of sickness of the Church looked neither towards Peter, nor Paul,\nnor John, but towards the Holy Wisdom, the all-healing and\nall-illuminating. For St Sophia in Constantinople, the temple dedicated\nto Christ the Eternal, includes in itself the sanctuaries of Peter, Paul\nand John; moreover, it is supported even by some pillars of Diana's\ntemple from Ephesus and has many other things, in style or material,\nwhich belonged to the Paganism of old. Indeed, St Sophia has room and\nheart even for Islam. The Mohamedans have been praising it as the best\nof their sanctuaries!\n\nI speak thus to you because I am sure you will not misunderstand me. And\nbecause I know you, the British, to be a race of the world-wide spirit,\nI dare to make this appeal to you.\n\nLook to the Holy Wisdom! Look beyond Peter, and Paul, and John--through\nthem and still beyond them! Every Church has her prophet, her apostle,\nher angel. Look now over them all to the very top of the pyramid, where\nall the lines meet!\n\nEither Christianity is one, or there is no Christianity. Either the\nChurch is universal, or there is no Church.\n\nThere lived once upon a time twelve men as different as any twelve men\ncould be. And the Holy Wisdom united all of them into one spiritual\nbody. Such was the first Church of the twelve, and such ought to be the\nlast Church of the milliards: different in all her parts, but cemented\nby the Holy Wisdom into one glorious building. Christ, God's Holy\nWisdom, includes all of us, why should we exclude each other? He was\nsent for the salvation of China and Japan and India as well as for that\nof the Jews and Greeks. Well, let us quarrel no more about the\n\"circumcision\" while a milliard of human beings are still waiting to\nhear for the first time the name of Jesus Christ--yea, for the first\ntime after two thousand years! Let the present time be the new Pentecost\nfor us all. I speak to you, the British: don't look around you and wait;\nit is yours to start. All the peoples of earth are looking towards you\nand listening to you. Don't be too shy to start.\n\nTo start what? To start a revival of the primitive wisdom of the Church,\ni.e. to confess and declare:\n\nThat Christianity in its integrity is one and indivisible;\n\nThat Christianity is not a precious stone preserved in a box called the\nChurch of England, or the Church of the East, or Rome, but that it is\nthe common good of mankind, destined for all continents and all races;\n\nThat there is no constituent of the present European civilisation, but\nthe Christian religion, which could stop the brutal struggle among men,\nin one form or another, and guarantee a Godlike peace profitable for\nthe whole of mankind.\n\nAll of us, small or great nations, are now looking to you with respect,\nnot only for the victory over a revived anachronical Paganism in Central\nEurope, but also for a formulation of the new ideal, of saving power for\nall men.\n\nGreat is our expectation indeed, but it is justified by your gifts,\ngiven to you by Providence. Therefore let your hearts be larger than\nyour Empire and your national Church, and the respect of mankind towards\nyou will be warmed by love. Surely there can not be built a greater\nEmpire than yours, humanly speaking. The only greater Empire than yours\nwill be Christ's Empire. And if you are longing for something greater\nthan your present possession, you are indeed longing for this universal,\npan-human Empire of Christ. Otherwise you would be sticking either at a\nstagnancy or at something impossible. Both would be unwise: nature\ntolerates no stagnancy and punishes experiments with the impossible.\n\nBut who am I to teach you? \"A reed (from the wilderness) shaken with the\nwind\"? Not I but the present despair of the world teaches you. I am only\na loud amongst many suffocated cries from West and East, from North and\nSouth, directed to you: lift up your hearts and listen! God is now doing\na great thing through you, and the whole world is expecting a great\nthing from you. What is this great thing? How to reach it? Pray and\nlisten! One thing only is sure, that this great thing will come neither\nfrom any Foreign Office nor from any War Office, but from the living\nChristian Church. Yes, she is still living, although she looks dead. She\nis only sleeping. But Christ is standing beside her now, calling: \"Rise,\nye daughter! Talitha Cumi!\"\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n                        THE DRAMA OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nThe Church is a drama. She represents the greatest drama in the world's\nhistory, yea, she personates the whole of the world's history. She\noriginated in an astounding personal drama. Humanly speaking, in the\nlife of Jesus Christ during the three years of His public work there was\nmore that was dramatic, from an outside and inside point of view, than\nin the lives of all other founders of religion taken together. And\nspeaking from a soteriological and theological point of view, His\nlife-drama had a cosmic greatness, involving heaven and earth and both\nends of the world's history. Wonderful was the life of Buddha, but his\nteaching was still more wonderful than his life. Very striking was the\nlife of Mohammed, the life of a pious and romantic statesman, but his\nwork quickly overgrew his personality. Five years after Mohammed's\ndeath, Islam numbered more followers than Christianity five hundred\nyears after Golgotha. But the life-drama of Jesus was and still is\nreckoned as the most marvellous aspect of Christianity: not His teaching\nor His work, but His life.\n\nWell, was not His life-drama typical and prophetic for His Church? His\nChurch had to live through all those agonies, external and internal,\nthat He Himself lived through. She had to go through sunshine and\ndarkness, through angelic concerts and devilish temptations, through\ndeath and resurrection. In one word, she had to live His life, again and\nagain, treading sometimes quickly, sometimes reluctantly, her path,\nalways asking for light and comfort from her visions of Him. I say the\nvisions of Him, because those visions were omnipotent, including in\nthemselves words and works.\n\nThere is an impressive picture now circulating in London of an English\nsoldier lying wounded in agony on the battlefield. Well, what would a\nBuddhistic painter put as a simile of consolation for the man in agony?\nWhat else if not a Buddha's sentence or word? And what would a\nMohammedan painter put on the picture to console the expiring soldier if\nnot also a sentence or word from the Koran or an imaginative view of the\nParadise which is waiting for him? And you know what a Christian painter\ndepicted--the vision of the Crucified! the soldier lying beneath this\nvision grasping with his hand Jesus' bleeding feet; this vision of the\nCrucified is greater than any sentence, any word, yea, it includes all\nthe words of sympathy and of consolation. On another occasion the\nChristian painter would paint another appropriate vision, and a painter\nof another religion or philosophy would write another appropriate word.\nTherefore, it is difficult to learn the Christian religion without\npictures, or to teach it without visions.\n\n\n\n\n                THE DRAMATIC FORMATION OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nIt was a quarrel, as usual, among men about God and bread, when Jesus\ninterrupted them. Peter never thought to fish anything else all his life\nbut fishes, nor Pilate to sentence to death anyone but criminals, nor\nthe Jewish patriots that they were losing their greatest opportunity,\nnor the heathen of Britannia that they were contemporaries with the very\nGod in flesh of their posterity. How many times did it happen that Jesus\nduring the first thirty years of His life was present in the temple when\na Rabbi read the prophetic passages on the Messiah! Reading the\nScriptures the poor Rabbi measured the distance between himself and the\nMessiah by thousands of years, and 10--the Messiah in person was\nlistening to his reading!\n\nAll the controversies in the synagogues and in the streets of Jerusalem\nwere merely repeated platitudes, when a man appeared in Galilee, who\nclaimed the highest authority and showed the greatest humility at the\nsame time. The Law was the highest authority for the Jews, and the\nEmperor of Rome the highest authority for Pilate. But Jesus declared\nhimself to be the bearer of an authority which was incomparably higher\nthan any authority existing on earth. He did not beg either Andrew or\nPeter or John and James, to follow Him; He commanded them: \"Follow Me!\"\nSpeaking with authority He gained the confidence of His first followers,\nand showing humility He also gamed their love. Authority and\nhumility--two qualities which not often were united in the character of\nthe church-leaders, a good reason why many of them were feared and many\nothers pitied, instead of being respected and loved as Jesus was\nrespected and loved by the first Church. For fear and pity are the\ndegenerate forms of respect and love.\n\nWhat we call the first Church represented in reality the smallest Church\nin number as well as in time and space, but the richest in its dramatic\nchanges and conflicts.\n\nSome few fishermen were called by Christ, and this call meant real\nbaptism for them. He let Himself be baptised but He did not baptise His\ndisciples otherwise than by His personal calling to them to follow Him;\nPentecost was their \"confirmation.\" The history of the first Church\ncomprised a time not of some hundred years but of some hundred days.\nWhen Andrew and Peter followed Jesus the formation of the Church\nstarted. There were already two gathered in His name and conducted by\nHim in person. As a matter of fact, they followed Jesus at first merely\nwith their eyes and feet, but with their hearts they still followed\nMoses and the Law. The Twelve Disciples were at first nothing more than\ntwelve insignificant grains of sand placed upon a big rocky foundation\nof a palace, which had to be built. Only after their confirmation by the\nHoly Spirit did they become the real pillars of the palace. They were\nuncertain about their Master and everything He said, and they quarrelled\nabout many things. I think they represented through their differences\nnot one church but twelve churches, but by their common respect and love\nfor their Master they represented one Church only. What a prophetic\nimage of the Church of Christ, say, after nineteen hundred years!\n\nNow as long as the living Jesus was with the first Church she was all\nright. His life was the source of her life; His authority and power\nmeant her existence and unity. But when the Shepherd was smitten the\nsheep were scattered. When the followers of Christ saw Him powerless and\ndead they denied Him and fell back to their natural instinct of\nself-defence, and the first Church died with the death of Christ. It was\nlike the green corn in the field smitten by a flail to the very root.\nThe owner of the corn walks in the field and looks with despair on his\nperished corn. But it happens often that after a few days the field\nbegins under the sunshine to flourish anew, and the corn grows\nbeautifully and brings forth plenty of fruit.\n\nMary of Magdala and the other Mary brought this first sunshine over the\nsmitten corn. \"He is alive!\" This was the tidings of the women on the\nsecond morning after His death. This tidings about the living Lord Jesus\ncon-verted Peter and the other disciples again to Christianity. \"He is\nalive\"--that was the greatest word ever uttered by any human tongue\nsince the Church was founded. Yea, through this very word the drooping\nChurch was brought again to life. Whatever utterances Peter made during\nChrist's life were as dead as stone compared with Mary Magdalene's\ntidings of the living Lord after the catastrophe of His death. The\nbeautiful and true words: \"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living\nGod,\" had no meaning whatever for the future of Christianity in\ncomparison with the certainty that the dead Christ had risen, i.e. that\nHe was Lord even over death. Therefore if I could be convinced that a\ngrain of good as small as the mustardseed should result from the strange\nquarrels about the primacy of this or that Church--or this or that\nbishop--I would be very sorry that there did not exist a Church founded\nupon the memory of Mary Magdalene. For Mary Magdalene, and not St Peter,\nexpressed the first the absolutely decisive revelation, churchmaking and\nworld-changing. \"He is alive\" was this decisive revelation.\n\nPentecost was the crown of the first Church and meant her victory over\nall her internal conflicts and her final armament for the coming\ndramatic struggle in the world. The Church, which kept herself after\nGolgotha on the defensive, inwardly against doubt and fear, outwardly\nagainst the regardless persecution of men, now, after Pentecost,\nundertook again her offensive against all her enemies, and became again\nthe Church militant as she was before Golgotha when the Lord led her in\nperson. This is the second Church, to which also we all belong.\nHistorically, this Church is the second, but organically and\ndogmatically she is absolutely one with the first Church. Let us see now\nwhat were.\n\n\n\n\n           THE EXTERNAL CONFLICTS OF THE MILITANT CHURCH\n\n\nFor the quantity and quality of the conflicts are the conditions of the\ndramatic life of a person as well as of a society. Well, the Christian\nChurch had plenty of the most extraordinary conflicts, external and\ninternal. Among the gravest external conflicts I reckon her conflicts\nwith Patriotism and Imperialism.\n\nThe first Christians were persecuted most fiercely by the exclusive\nJewish patriots, as all good Christians always have been persecuted by\nexclusive patriots. For it is an essential characteristic of a true\nChristian not to be an exclusive patriot, exalting his own nation and\ndespising all others. Oppression and suffering are the best soil for a\ntoo excited Patriotism. Such a soil was Israel in the time of Christ and\nthe first Church. All parties were united against Christ and His\nfollowers upon national and patriotic grounds; the Pharisees, the\nScribes, the Sadducees and the ignorant people, believers and\nsceptics--they all accused Christ of \"perverting the nation.\" They\naccused St Paul of the same crime. Yet St Paul it was who dealt with the\nquestion of Jewish Patriotism very courageously and minutely.\n\nPatriotism is a natural quality, but Christianity is supernatural.\nPatriotism is a provincial truth, but Christianity is a pan-human truth.\nPatriotism means love of one's country or one's generation, Christianity\nmeans love of all countries and all generations. Christianity includes a\nsound and true Patriotism, but excludes untrue and exaggerated\nPatriotism as it excludes every untrue thought and feeling. Of course an\nexalted Patriotism in a frame of hatred all around excludes the\nChristian religion and is its most dangerous enemy. St Paul, who\nremained a true patriot till the end of his life, thought, as we all\nshall think, that Christianity never can damage the just cause of a\ncountry, but, on the contrary, it gives to a patriotic cause a universal\nnimbus and importance, putting it direct before the Eternal Judge, and\nliberating it from small anxieties, little faith and unworthy actions.\nHe who is numbering every day our hair, and feeding the sparrows, and\nclothing the grass in the field--He is a greater warrant for our\npatriotic justice than any of our exaggerated calculations and\nsentiment about our country and our nation. Alas, no European nation has\nright to blame the Jews because of their persecution of Christianity in\nthe name of their Patriotism. There exists no country in Europe which\nhas not at some time in the name of a false Patriotism either directly\npersecuted or abased the Church, or at least subordinated her to the\ncause of the country or put her in the service of its local and temporal\ncause. The purest Christianity in the nineteenth century had a struggle\nagainst patriotic and nationalistic exclusiveness not much less dramatic\nthan the primitive Church, struggling in Judasa against Judaism and in\nGreece against Hellenism. The national hero-saints were exalted in\nEurope over the merely Christian saints: in France, Jeanne d'Arc; in\nRussia, Serge of Radonez; in Germany, Luther; among the Serbs, St Savva,\nand St Peter of Cettinje.\n\nAnother enemy of the Church from the beginning was Imperialism. First of\nall Roman Imperialism. Christ's second \"crime,\" for which He was brought\nbefore Pilate, was His disregard of Caesar. And Caesar was the symbol of\nthe Roman world-dominion. Therefore, one Caesar after the other did\ntheir best to exterminate this dangerous Christian sect. Therefore,\namong hundreds of religions only Christianity practically was prohibited\nin the Roman Empire, as a religio illicita. No wonder! All other\nreligions which swarmed in Rome were tolerated as naive curiosities by\nthe people who had lost their own religion. But Christianity was marked\nas an enemy from the first. Not only a corrupted Caesar, like Nero,\npersecuted the Church, but the wise ones like Trajan and Diocletian, and\nthe wisest, like Marcus Aurelius. There were plenty of pretexts to\nexcite the public mind: burnings, earthquakes, diseases, etc. It was\nTrajan who prohibited by an edict the Christian secret clubs, Hetoerias,\nas dangerous to the State. And it was the philosopher Marcus Aurelius\nwho sentenced to death the Christian philosopher, Justin, on\nImperialistic grounds.\n\nRome was armed to the teeth and the Church had no arms at all except an\nardent belief and the inspired word. Rome drew the sword against the\nunarmed Christians, and the Christians armed only with Jesus Christ, and\nwith empty hands, took the challenge. The enemies knew each other from\nthe beginning. Rome's conviction was: better to lose the soul than the\nEmpire; and the Christians' was: better to save the soul than to get an\nEmpire. The Roman persecutors were every day sure of their victory,\nslaughtering defenceless men and women, or throwing them ad bestias,\nwhereas the martyrs saw their victory as a distant vision, and still\nrejoiced. \"The prison was like a palace to me,\" exclaimed St Perpetua.\nAnd Saturus, another martyr, spoke to his executors: \"Mark our faces\nwell, that you may know us again in the day of judgment.\" Such was the\nspirit of the primitive Church in her duel with pagan Imperialism.\n\nIslam was another kind of Imperialism against which the Church fought.\nIf the Roman Imperialism was cool, calculating, without any fanaticism,\nIslam was a unique form of religious, fanatical Imperialism, having in\nview world-conquest and world-dominion, like Rome and yet unlike Rome.\nHere the Church fought with the sword against the sword. Before the\ndefinite fall of the Roman Empire the crusades of Christianity against\nIslam began, and it has not been finished until this day. Very dramatic\nwas this struggle in Palestine, under Western crusaders, in Spain and\nRussia. But I think the most dramatic act of this dramatic conflict\nhappened in the Balkans, especially in Serbia, during the last five\nhundred years.\n\nThe conflict with Islamic Imperialism was not yet at an end when a\nFrench, and English, and Russian, and German Imperialism were\nformulated. We may call it by one name, European Imperialism, although\nevery species of it is different. What was the Church's attitude towards\nthe European imperialistic formulae? Did she agree with them? Or did she\noppose and protest as she did against Rome and the Crescent? No, she\nneither agreed nor disagreed as a whole, but partially she agreed or\ndisagreed. Yet the true Church of Christ reserves the world-dominion\nonly for Christianity in its most spiritual and perfect form and\nexcludes every other dominion of man over men. The present cataclysm of\nEurope may show the world that no earthly king is destined for dominion\nover our planet, but Christ, the Heavenly King of souls.\n\n\n\n\n                 THE INTERNAL CONFLICTS OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nDramatic was the external course of Church history, fighting against\nexclusive Patriotism and Imperialism, dramatic too, her internal\nstruggles for a true doctrine and an ethical ideal.\n\n1. The Struggle for a True Doctrine.--The central problem for the living\nChurch has always been: Who was Jesus? and how to worship Him? The\nrestless spirit of humanity endeavoured to define the details both in\nHis relation to God and to the world. The Church did not define her\ndoctrine in advance, but bit by bit, pragmatically, according to the\nquestions and doubts raised in the Christian communities. The refused\nsolutions of a raised question were called heresy, the adopted solution\nby the Church was called orthodoxy. No heresy came merely as an abstract\ntheory, but every one was a dramatic movement, an organisation, a camp,\na deed--and not merely a word. That made the struggle against it more\ndifficult. Docetism, Nicolaism, Gnosticism, Chiliasm, Manichaism,\nMonatism, Monarchism, Monophysitism, Monotheletism, Arianism,\nNestorianism--every one of these terms means both a theory and a drama.\nThe Church had to correct the opinion of the heretics for herself, and\nto fight against them for themselves.\n\nThe doctrine of the Church was regarded by the heretics as incorrect or\ninsufficient, and by outsiders as wicked. Celsus, an Epicurean writer,\ndespised the Christian doctrine as of \"barbarous origin.\" The people of\nSmyrna being aroused against the Christians and their bishop, Polycarp,\ncried: \"Away with the Atheists!\" the heathen misunderstood the Church\ndoctrine and called the Christians atheists, as Montanus, a Christian\nheretic, misunderstood the Church doctrine and regarded Jesus only as\nhis own Percursor and himself as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit. But\nthe Church did not care either for the pressure from without or from\nwithin, she went on her way cheerfully, struggling and believing,\nshowing to the world her saints and martyrs as her argument and Christ\nas the guarantee of her ultimate victory.\n\nThe Church had also a dramatic struggle with the philosophers. She\nrather was inclusive concerning the different opposed systems. John of\nDamascus based his theology upon Aristotle, like Thomas Aquinas, and\nGregory of Nyssa based his own upon Plato, as the Scottish School did in\nthe nineteenth century. Pantheism and Deism were both against the\nChurch. Pantheism thought God immanent, Deism thought God transcendent.\nThe Church had already in its creeds the true parts of both of these\nsystems. She taught that God is by His essence transcendent to this\nworld, which is His image, but immanent in the world pragmatically, or\ndramatically, i.e. visiting this world and acting in this world.\n\nMaterialism and spiritualism excluded each other, but both held the\nChurch in contempt as a \"rough philosophy for the people.\" Yet the\nChurch included the true parts for both, not by asserting anything about\nthe atoms but by recognising two different worlds, the world of bodies\nand the world of spirits, in a dramatic union in this transitory\nUniverse.\n\nIn the same way the Church cut off the extremities and one-sidedness in\nempiricism and supernaturalism, in rationalism and mysticism, in\noptimism and pessimism. All these systems represented the human effort\nto solve the riddle of our life without taking any notice of the Church\nand her wisdom. And all failed to become the universally accepted truth,\nbut all of them helped the Church unconsciously to her own orientation\nand strength. The Church collided with any extreme philosophy. Her\nwisdom was broad as life, simple as life on the one hand, and manifold\nas life on the other; mystical as the starry night and pragmatic as a\nweekday.\n\n2. The Struggle for an Ethical Ideal.--The primitive Church was \"of one\nheart and of one soul,\" or, in the words of a very early document, it\nwas among the Christians: \"A life in the flesh but not according to the\nflesh\" (Epist. ad Diognet.). But the restless human spirit soon dug out\ndifficult questions and conflicts concerning the ethical life of the\nChurch members. Of course the Lord Himself was the supreme moral ideal,\nbut men felt themselves to be too small and too narrow to grasp this\nideal both in its purity and its broadness and inclusiveness. Therefore\nwe see not only in the primitive Church but throughout Church history\nextreme and exclusive propositions to solve the problem. For instance,\nasceticism with celibacy and flight from the world was regarded by some\npeople in the primitive Church as the highest ideal of morality. The\ndeserts were populated with the ascetics. The same ideal has been\nstrongly accentuated in Russia even in the nineteenth century. On the\nother hand, chastity has been preferred as an ideal by many others.\n\nAnother problem was: what were more salvatory, faith or works? Or\nanother: whether we are saved or condemned by God's predestination or by\nour free will (libertarian, arbitrarian, Augustinianism, and\nPelagianism; Jansenism and Ultramontanism)? Or another: in our moral\nperfection how much is God's grace operating and how much our human\ncollaboration? Or another: what part worship plays in our salvation (the\nproblem known in theology as opus operatum)? Or another: what should be\nthe normal relation of the Church and State, the Church and social life,\nthe Church and education, the Church and the manifold needs and\ntribulations of mankind?\n\nAll these problems, and many others here unmentioned, moved every part\nof the Christian Church in the East and West. Your Church history too is\nfull of a moving and dramatic struggle for light in all these problems,\nfrom the day when the first Roman missionaries brought the new Gospel to\nyour country up to our days.\n\nThe Church, inclusive in wisdom, has had the most dramatic history in\nthe world. Struggling against Patriotism, she pleaded for humanity; and\nstruggling against Imperialism, she pleaded for spirituality. And again:\nstruggling against heretics, she pleaded for unity, and struggling\nagainst worldly philosophers, she pleaded for a sacred and pragmatic\nwisdom. She looked sometimes defeated and on her knees before her\nenemies, but she rose again and again like the phoenix from its ashes.\nIn her dramatic struggle through the world and against the world the\ninternal voice of her Founder comforted and inspired her. The harder\nstruggles she fought the louder was the comforting and inspiring voice.\nThe more comfortable she made herself in this world, the less was His\nmagic voice heard. His life was a scheme of her life: his crucifixion\nand resurrection a prophecy of her history to the world's end. Whenever\nshe became satisfied with herself and with the world around her she was\novershadowed and eclipsed. Whenever she feared struggle and suffering\nshe became sick, on the dying bed. He then stood, meek and sorrowful, at\nher bed and called: Arise, my daughter!\n\nThe Church's craving for comfort is indeed her craving for death. Like a\nnoble knight who descends into a prison to liberate the enchained\nslaves, to whom the prison is painful and liberation still more painful,\nso is the Church's position in this world. But how regrettable should it\nbe if the noble knight accommodated himself in the prison among the\nslaves and forgot the light from which he had descended and to which he\nought to return! \"He is one of ourselves,\" the slaves will say. So might\nsay to-day all the worldly institutions about the Christian Church in\nthis valley of slavery: \"She is one of ourselves.\" She is destined to\nquicken the world end, and she is postponing it. One millennium is past,\nanother is near by, yet the Church does not think of the world end: she\nloves this world; that is her curse. The world still exists because of\nthe Church's hesitation and fear. Were she not hesitating and fearing\nshe had been dramatically struggling and suffering, and a new heaven and\na new earth should be in sight. Why has the Church stopped being a\ndrama? Why is she hesitating and fearing? Doubts and comfort have\nweakened the Church. The most tragical religion has climbed from\nGolgotha to Olympus and is now lying there comfortably, in sunshine and\nforgetfulness, while Chronos, appeased, continues to measure the time by\nthousands of years, as before.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER III\n\n                         THE AGONY OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nThe present time should be one of self criticism. The European race now\nneeds this self-criticism more than any other race, and the Christian\nChurch needs it more than any other religion in the world, for before\nthis War the European race set itself up as the critic of the defects\nand insufficiencies of all other races, and the Christian Church exalted\nherself over all other religions \"as high as the heaven is exalted over\nthe earth.\" The other races and religions thought that behind this proud\ncriticism of Christian Europe there must be at least a well-possessed\nsecurity for the world-peace. Of course it was an illusion. On no\ncontinent was the peace of mankind more endangered than in Europe, the\nvery metropolis of Christianity and Christian civilisation. And it has\nbeen so not only during the last few years, it has been the case during\nthe last thousand years, that Europe has represented a greater contrast\nto peace than any other continent. During the last thousand years\nhistory can report more wars, more bloodshed, and more criminal unrest\nin Christian Europe than in the heathen countries of the Far\nEast--China, Japan, and India. It is a very humiliating fact, both for\nthe white race and for its religion, but, nevertheless, it is a fact.\nThis humiliating fact should rouse us in the present painful times to\nthe consideration of our own defects and insufficiencies. Europe is\nsick, and her Church is sick too. How can a wounded man be healed unless\nhis wounds are unveiled? Europe's soul is sick, therefore her body is so\nsorely suffering and bleeding. Well, Europe's soul is nothing else than\nEurope's religion, but the religion of Europe to-day is not Europe's\nguide and lord, it is Europe's most obedient servant.\n\n\n\n         THE CHURCH THE SERVANT OF PATRIOTISM AND IMPERIALISM\n\n\nPatriotism and Imperialism--qualities more physical than spiritual--were\nthe worst enemies of the primitive Church, as I tried to show in my\nprevious chapters. Well, Patriotism and Imperialism have been the most\nprominent qualities of modern Europe. Now compare the primitive Church\nwith the modern Church: the primitive Church fought most tenaciously and\nheroically against the exclusive Patriotism of the Jews and against the\nImperialism of the Romans, and the modern Church serves very obediently\nmodern Patriotism and Imperialism! I wish I were wrong in what I am\nstating now, but, alas! the facts are too obvious, both the facts of\nthis War, and the facts of previous peace.\n\nHere are the facts:\n\nWhen Austria mobilised against Serbia and declared War, the Church in\nAustria did not protest against it, but, on the contrary, she supported\nthe Vienna Government with all her heart and means.\n\nIt is well known how much the Church of Germany, both the Protestant and\nthe Roman Catholic, unanimously and strongly supported the War policy of\nthe Kaiser's Government--the very policy of a blind exclusiveness and a\nregardless Imperialism.\n\nThe Governments of Russia and Great Britain declared War against their\nenemies without consulting their respective Churches, yet the Churches\nof both countries have done their best to help their \"country's cause.\"\n\nThe Churches of France, Italy, Serbia, Rumania, Belgium, and Bulgaria\nhave been at the disposal of the War Governments of their countries.\n\nNow we have almost the same denominations of religion on each fighting\nside (it is, however, significant that the whole Anglican Church and the\nEastern Orthodox Church are on the side of the Allies), so that we\ncannot say it is a War of Protestants against Catholics, nor of the\nOrthodox against the Modernists, nor of the Episcopalians against the\nPresbyterians, nor even of the Christians against Mohamedans (because on\nboth sides we have Christians and Mohammedans). No, we cannot say that,\nfor it is not a War of one Church against the other, nor of one religion\nagainst another; it is a War of Patriotism against Patriotism, of\nPatriotism against Imperialism, and of Imperialism against Imperialism.\nThe Churches are only the tools of Patriotism or Imperialism. Not one of\nthe Churches has stated her standpoint as a different one from the\nstandpoint of its respective Government. The Churches have simply\nadopted the standpoint of the Government. They seemed to have no\nstandpoint of their own concerning this War between nations. As if the\nWar were quite a surprisingly new event in history!\n\nWhen the Austrian Government declared war on Serbia, the Church of\nAustria adopted the standpoint of the Austrian Government as the right\none. The Serbian Church adopted the standpoint of the Serbian\nGovernment, of course, as the right one. So it happened that the\nChurches in Austria and Serbia prayed to the same God, and against each\nother.\n\nThe Church of Germany stood up against the Church of Russia because the\nGerman Government stood up against the Russian Government. Neither could\nthe Church of Germany raise any protest against the warlike German\nGovernment, nor could the Church of Russia say anything to cancel what\nthe Russian Government had already said. And so it happened that the\nChurches of Germany and Russia prayed to the same God for each other's\ndestruction.\n\nThe Churches of France, England, Belgium, and Italy have fully\nrecognised the justice of the Governments of France, Belgium, and Italy\nconcerning the War of those countries against other countries, whose\njustice on the other hand has been fully recognised by their Churches.\nAnd so it has happened that during the last three years the most\ncontradictory prayers have been sent to God in Heaven from the \"One,\nHoly, Catholic Church\" on earth.\n\nThe Churches of the different countries adopted the standpoint of those\ncountries which governed them. What is the consequence if a Christian\nChurch adopts the standpoint of a worldly Government as the true one? It\nmeans practically nothing else but that the said Church recognises that\nstandpoint as the Christian one.\n\nNow, if the German policy is right, the German Church is right, and\nconsequently, the Russian Church is wrong; and, on the other hand, if\nthe Russian policy is right the Russian Church is right, and,\nconsequently, the German Church is wrong. The same, if the Serbian\nPatriotism, which dictates the Serbian policy, is right, then the\nSerbian Church, too, is right; and if the Austro-German Imperialism is\nright, then the Austro-German Churches are right, and the Church in\nSerbia wrong. Of course the same could be said for other belligerent\nChurches, i.e., the justice or injustice of the Church of England\ndepended on the justice or injustice of the English Government, and the\nsame about the French, Belgian, and Italian Churches, which are\ndependent on the justice or injustice of their respective Governments.\nThe same is true not only of the so-called established Churches, but of\nthe Disestablished as well. The great fact remains: no Church whatever\ndid protest against the War action taken by the respective Governments;\nno Church whatever refused to do the War work she was asked to do, and,\nfinally, no Church whatever opposed her views to the views of the\nGovernments. In one word, no Christian Church now existing has declined\nto be the very obedient servant either of Patriotism or Imperialism.\nFuture generations will be, I hope, more truly Christian than we have\nbeen--they will be shocked to read in the history of the greatest and\nbloodiest conflict in the world's history, that the worldly Governments,\nand not the Christian Church, formulated the truth; in other words, that\nthe politicians and soldiers were bearers and formulators of the truth,\nand that the Church was only a follower and supporter of that truth,\nthis truth having to wage War in consequence, i.e. the disobedience of\nall God's ten Commandments--not to speak of the New Testament--which\ntruth must be condemned by the Church as untrue. Following to the\nextreme the ideals of Patriotism and Imperialism, the Churches partially\ndid not shrink even from preaching War as a legal thing. The court\npreacher of the Kaiser, preaching in the Domchurch at Berlin after the\nAllie's refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Germany, said: \"We\nhave spoken to our enemies (read, the enemies of German Imperialism),\nand they did not listen to our words; well, let our guns talk now until\nour enemies are compelled to listen to us!\" That is the voice of a great\nChurch. Yet this voice has not remained unaccompanied with similar\nwarlike and unchristian voices from other great and small Churches.\n\n\n\n\n                  THE LITTLE ISLANDS AMIDST THE OCEAN\n\n\nWhy did not the Church--the educator of Europe for the space of nineteen\nhundred years--why did she not protest against this War?\n\nBecause she was too weak everywhere; and, even if she had protested, her\nvoice would not have been listened to.\n\nBut why was the Church so weak as to be silent at a most fatal moment in\nhistory, and to have to listen to the Foreign and War Offices to know\nwhat the truth was?\n\nBecause she was not a united, universal Church, like a lofty mountainous\ncontinent despising all the storms of an angry ocean around. She was\nweak, because she was cut in pieces and had become like an archipelago\nof small islands in a stormy ocean.\n\nThe Churches were not prepared to protest, they were prepared only to\nsurrender to any temporal power. Therefore, they surrendered altogether,\nwithout making any effort, to Patriotism and Imperialism.\n\nBut what led to the Churches' surrender? It was through their internal\nquarrels; through their fruitless controversies and paralysing mutual\naccusations and self-sufficiency.\n\nFor instance:\n\nThe Eastern Church proudly insisted on her superiority over all other\nChurches, because she preserved faithfully and unchangingly the most\nancient traditions of Christianity, and because she had an episcopal\ndecentralised system of Church administration, which has been capable of\nadapting itself to all political and social situations. She reserved\nperfection only for herself, and was prodigious in criticising other\nChristian communities. She became an isolated island.\n\nThe Roman Church has had nothing to do with any other Church, living in\nher isolation and raising higher and higher the walls which separated\nher from other Churches. She has a wonderful record of missionary work\nin Europe and outside; she has a minutely organised centralisation, with\nan infallible autocrat at the head; and she has an enlarged dogmatic\nsystem, larger than any other Church. She pointed out again and again\nher superiority to all other Christian communities, and claimed for\nherself the exclusive right to speak in the name of Jesus Christ. Thus\nshe became an isolated island.\n\nThe Anglican Church repudiated the papal authority. She repudiated as\nwell the Eastern worship of the saints and use of ikons on the one side,\nand on the other she repudiated all the extremes of Protestantism in\nteaching, worship and administration. She thought in that way to be the\nabsolutely true Christian organism, incomparably better than any other\nall around. Thus the Anglican Church became an isolated island too.\n\nThe Protestants of the Continent, and of England and Scotland, thought\nto save the Christian religion in its integrity by bringing it back to\nits primitive simplicity. By repudiating the Pope and the Bishops, by\nshortening the Christian dogmatic, and by reducing worship to a minimum,\nthey boasted of restoring the true Church of Christ and His Apostles.\nEverything which was an addition to their simplicity was regarded by\nthem either as unnecessary, or even as idolatrous and false. Thus the\nPresbyterian and Protestant Nonconformist Churches became isolated\nislands.\n\nBut the more the morselling of Christianity went on, the more dangerous\nbecame the raging ocean around it, so that now the Christian Archipelago\nseems to be quite covered with the stormy waves. The Church, therefore,\nis in an agony everywhere. Even if the Church had no responsibility upon\nher shoulders for the present bloodshed in Europe, she would be in\nagony, just because the whole Christian world is in agony, but much more\nso because a great deal of responsibility for it must rest on her\nshoulders.\n\n\n\n\n                            SELF-CASTIGATION\n\n\nThe Christian monks of old used to castigate themselves when a great\nplague came over the world. They used to consider themselves as the real\ncause of the plague, and did not accuse anybody else. Well, this extreme\nmethod ought to be used now by the Churches, for the good of mankind and\nfor their own good. It would be quite enough to bring the dawning of a\nnew day for Christianity if this self-castigation of the Churches were\nonly a self-criticism.\n\nIf, for instance, the Eastern Church would say: Although I have\npreserved faithfully and unchangingly the most ancient traditions of\nChristianity, still I have many faults and insufficiencies. I have much\nto learn from the Roman Church, how to bring all my sections, all my\nnational and provincial branches into closer touch; and from Anglicanism\nI have to learn the wonderful spirit of piety, expressed not only in old\ntimes, but even in quite modern times through new prayers, new hymns,\nnew Psalms, added to the old ones; and from Protestantism I have to\nlearn the courage to look every day to the very heart of religion in its\nsimplest and most common expressions.\n\nOr, if the Roman Church would use this self-criticism, saying: My\nconcentration is my strength and my weakness. Perhaps, after all, my\nPope is more a Caesaristic than a Christian Institution, making more for\nworldly Imperialism than for the Spirituality of the world. I have to\nlearn from the Christian East more humility, and from Anglicanism more\nrespect for human freedom and social democracy, and from Protestantism a\nmore just appreciation of human efforts and results in science and\ncivilisation generally.\n\nOr, if the Anglican Church would use self-criticism like this, and say,\nI am, of course, an Apostolic Church, but I am not the only Church. I\nhave to learn from the Eastern Church something, and from the Church of\nRome something, but, above all, I have to learn that they are the\nApostolic Churches as well as I, and that I am, without them, too small\nan island, and unable to resist alone the flood of patriotic and\nimperialistic tendencies. And from the Protestants I have to learn to\nput the living Christ above all doctrinal statements and liturgical\nmysteries.\n\nOr, if the Protestants of all classes would abandon their contemptuous\nattitude towards so-called ecclesiasticism and ritualism, and criticise\nthemselves, saying: We have had too much confidence in human reason and\nhuman words. Our worship is bare of every thing but the poor human\ntongue. We have excluded Nature from our worship, though Nature is\npurer, more innocent and worthier to come before the face of God than\nmen. We have been frightened by candles and incense, and vestments, and\nsigns, and symbols, and sacraments, but now we see that the mystery of\nlife and of our religion is too deep to be spoken out clearly in words\nonly. And we have been frightened by the episcopal administration of the\nChurch, but now we see that the episcopal system is a golden midway\nbetween the papal and our extremes. Besides, we have gone too far in\nour criticism of the Church tradition and of the Holy Scriptures. We\nhave to learn to abstain from calling the Eastern Church idolatrous and\nthe Roman Church tyrannical, and the Episcopal Church inconsistent. We\nhave our own idolatries (our idols are: individualism, human reason, and\nthe human word); and we have our own tyranny (the tyranny of criticism\nand pride); and we have--thank god--our own inconsistencies.\n\nSuch a self-criticism would mean really a painful self-castigation,\nbecause it would mean a reaction from a policy of criticism and\nself-sufficiency which has lasted a thousand years, ever since the 16th\nJuly 1054--the very fatal date when the Pope's delegates put an\nExcommunication Bull on the altar of St Sophia's in Constantinople. The\nprimitive monks, who practised self-castigation because of the\nworld-evil, experienced a wonderful purification of soul, a new vision\nof God, and an extraordinary sense of unity with all men, living and\ndead. Well, that is just what the Church needs at present; a\npurification, a new vision of God, and a sense of unity.\n\n\n\n\n                            A COMMON ILLUSION\n\n\nThe present agony of the Church has resulted from an illusion which has\nbeen common to all the Churches, i.e. that one of the Churches could be\nsaved without all other Churches. It is, in fact, only the enlarged\nProtestant theory of individualism, which found its expression,\nespecially in Germany, in the famous formula: \"Thou, man, and thy God!\"\nIt is an anti-social and anti-Christian formula too, quite opposed to\nthe Lord's Prayer: \"Our Father,\" which is in the plural and not in the\nsingular possessive. This prayer is a symbol of our salvation: we can be\nsaved only in the plural, not in the singular; only collectively, not as\nindividuals: i.e. we can be saved, but I cannot be saved. I cannot be\nsaved without thee, and thou canst not be saved without me. For if thou\nart in need I can be saved only by helping thee; and vice versa, if I am\nin need, thou canst save thyself only by saving me. And we all, and\nalways, are in need of each other. Peter could not be saved without\nAndrew, and John and James, nor could the others be saved without Peter.\nThat is why Christ brought them all together, and educated them to live\nand pray together, and spoke to them in assembly as to one being. If\nChrist's method were like the German Protestant method, \"Thou, man, and\nthy God!\" He would really never have gathered the disciples together,\nbut He would have gone to Andrew and saved Andrew first; and then to\nPeter and saved Peter; and then to John and James and the others, and\nsaved them individually, one by one. That is just what He did\nnot--because He could not do it. He knew, and He said (speaking of the\ntwo Commandments), that God is only one constituent of our salvation,\nand that the other constituent is our neighbours. What does that mean,\nbut that I cannot be saved without God and my neighbours? And my\nneighbours! The whole of mankind must become the mystical body of Christ\nbefore any one of us is saved. If ninety nine of us think we are saved,\nstill we must wait in the corridor of Heaven until the one lost sheep is\nfound and brought in; the door of Heaven does not open for one person\nonly. And speaking in larger circles we may say: If ninety-nine Churches\nthink they are saved, still they must wait in the corridor of Heaven\nuntil the one retrograde Church has become the member of the mystical\nbody of Christ. The door of Heaven is open for Christ only and for\nnobody else. And the mystical Christ does not mean one righteous man\nonly, or two, or twelve, or one Church denomination, or one\ngeneration--no. It means milliards and milliards of human beings. All\nthe Churches are inbuilt into His body. This building is yet far from\nbeing finished, still it is much larger and more magnificent than we\nthink. It is larger than a denomination, it is loftier than our nation,\nor our race, or our Empire; yea, it is stronger than Europe.\n\nConsequently, the Church of England cannot be saved without the Church\nof the East, nor the Church of Rome without Protestantism; nor can\nEngland be saved without Serbia, nor Europe without China, nor America\nwithout Africa, nor this generation without the generations past and\nthose to come. We are all one life, one organism. If one part of this\norganism is sick, all other parts should be suffering. Therefore let the\nhealthy parts of the Church take care of the sick ones. Self-sufficiency\nmeans the postponement of the end of the world and the prolongation of\nhuman sufferings. It is of no use to change Churches and go from one\nChurch to another seeking salvation: salvation is in every Church as\nlong as a Church thinks and cares in sisterly love for all other\nChurches, looking upon them as parts of the same body, or there is\nsalvation in no Church so long as a Church thinks and cares only for\nherself, contemptuously denying the rights, beauty, truth and merits of\nall other Churches. It is a great thing to love one's Church, as it is a\ngreat thing to love one's country, but it is much better to love other\nChurches and other countries too. Now, in this time, when the whole\nChristian world is in a convulsive struggle one part against the other,\nnow or never the consciousness of the desire for one Church of Christ on\nearth should dawn in our souls, and now or never should the\nappreciation, right understanding and love for each part of this one\nChurch of Christ on earth should dawn in our souls, and now or never\nshould the appreciation, right understanding and love for each part of\nthis one Church begin in our hearts.\n\nStick to your Church: it is a beautiful and a holy Church, but,\nnevertheless, break up every sort of disgraceful exclusiveness from\nother Churches. That is the way to bring the Church out of the present\nagony and weakness. That is the best way for you to serve your own\nChurch and your own nation. And the Crucified does not ask any other\nservice from your Church in the present world agony.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER IV\n\n                     THE VICTORY OF THE CHURCH\n\n\n                         WHAT IS THE CHURCH?\n\n\nWhat is the Church, psychologically viewed?\n\nThe Church is:\n\n1. A school of the Christian spirit. That is her first task in the\nworld.\n\n2. She is the Body of Christ. That is her official and physical\ndetermination--her firm, her name.\n\n3. She is the living Christ Himself, i.e. Christ's body (consisting of\nall the human bodies inside the Church organisation), and Christ's\nspirit (filling all the human bodies inside the Church). That is her\nideal, her end, her Horeb.\n\nWhat is the Church, sociologically viewed?\n\nThe Church is:\n\n1. A Theocracy. That is her general virtue, which she shares with all\nthe religions in history.\n\n2. She is a Christocracy. God is the abstract Ruler of Humanity, but\nChrist is the pragmatic God, leading, enlightening, encouraging and\ninspiring Humanity. That is the Church's special charter, special way,\ndifferent from the charters and ways of other religions.\n\nShe is a Sanctocracy. The saints ought to lead mankind--not the great\nmen of the world, but the saints. But when all men become saintly, no\nspecial leaders will be needed: no authority, no state, no law, no\npunishment. All men will do their over-duty, and all will be happy in\ntheir neighbour's happiness. The fight for right is an inferior stage in\nhuman history. It is a savage fight. But there will come a fight for\nover-duty. It will be a smiling, pleasant fight.\n\nWhat is the Church, historically viewed?\n\nThe Church is:\n\n1. A heresy regarding Judaism and Paganism, a real, deep heresy. Not so\ndeep was the outward gulf as the inward. Outwardly, this heresy made a\nthousand compromises with Judaism and Paganism. That did not matter. But\ninwardly it was a new, an absolutely new and most uncompromising spirit\nwith anything in the world.\n\n2. She was a heresy regarding the whole practical life of mankind:\npolitics, society, art, war, education, nationalism, imperialism,\nscience. She meant the most obstinate conflict between what exists and\nwhat ought to exist. Therefore her martyrdom is quite comprehensible.\n\n3. She was built up and applied to human life by the Graeco-Hebrew\nspirit. Yet she has become the European religion, par excellence, almost\nexclusively European. That is her historical development and fate.\nEurope's acceptance of Christianity is nominally definite. No other\nAsiatic religion (all great religions are Asiatic) has had any notable\nsuccess in Europe. Yet Europe's mission of Christianity has been no\nsuccess. St Paul has done more for the Christian mission than the whole\nof modern Europe. Historically, Christianity has been and has remained\nuntil now the religion of the European race only.\n\nWhat is the Church viewed from the point of view of the world war?\n\nThe Church is:\n\n1. The only keeper of the secret of the present war. The present war is\nthe result of the de-christianisation of Europe, and de-christianisation\nof Europe's Church. The Church only is conscious of this fact and keeps\nsilent. She has no courage to accuse because she has no courage to\nself-accuse.\n\n2. She is the only thing which makes European civilisation not lower\nthan the civilisation of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and China. The ruins of\nthose ancient civilisations are more magnificent than the actual\nconstructions of Europe. But the Church gives Europe a special nimbus\nand a special excellency over those ancient worlds. Secular Europe does\nnot know that, but the Church knows it and keeps silent. She cannot\nannounce it because she has sinned. Her sins keep her tongue-tied.\n\n3. Nothing is sure to survive the present catastrophe of Europe, but the\nChristian Church. None of the European potencies has the idea for the\nreconstruction of the world, for durable and Godlike world-peace, but\nthe Church.\n\nSocialism, Masonry, Philanthropy, Rousseauism,--all these are only small\nunits of the great treasury that the Christian Church hides under her\nclouds and dust of errors and miseries. All non-Christian systems and\nschemes mean, my own interest first and then thine, or first I and my\nnation and my race, and then thou and thy nation and thy race, or, my\nhappiness and, along with it, thy happiness. The Christian idea hidden\nin the Church is a revolutionary one, the most revolutionary idea in the\nworld. The Christian idea is, thou and thy nation and thy race first,\nand then me and my nation and my race; or, thy happiness first and in\nthy happiness my happiness. Saintliness above everything, the true\nsaintliness including goodness and sacrifice. That is the fundamental\nidea of the Church. That is the only constructive, Godlike treasury that\nEurope still possesses, the sleeping, never used, never tried treasury.\nThe Church is the keeper of this treasury. This treasury must survive\nthe old Europe and the old Church, the de-christianised Europe and the\nde-christianised Church.\n\n\n\n\n                  THE POVERTY OF EUROPEAN CIVILISATION\n\n\nThe poverty of European civilisation has been revealed by this war. The\nugly nakedness of Europe has brought to shame all those who used to bow\nbefore Europe's mask. It was a silken shining mask hiding the inner\nugliness and poverty of Europe. The mask was called: culture,\ncivilisation, progress, modernism. All was only vanitas vanitatum and\npovertas povertatum. When the soul fled away, what remained was empty,\nugly and dangerous. When religion plunged into impotence, then:\n\n    Science became a mask of pride.\n    Art--a mask of vanity.\n    Politics--a mask of selfishness.\n    Laws--a mask of greediness.\n    Theology--a mask of scepticism.\n    Technical knowledge--a poor surrogate for spirituality.\n    Journalism--a desperate surrogate for literature.\n    Literature--a sick nostalgy and a nonsense, a dwarf-acrobacy.\n    Civilisation--a pretext for imperialism.\n    Fight for right--an atavistic formula of the primitive creeds.\n    Morals--the most controversial matter.\n    Individualism--the second name for egoism and egotism.\n\nChrist--a banished beggar looking for a shelter, while in the royal and\npharisaic palaces lived: Machiavelli, the atheist; Napoleon, the\natheist; Marx, the atheist; and Nietsche, the atheist, imperially ruling\nEurope's rulers.\n\nThe spirit was wrong and everything became wrong. The spirit of any\ncivilisation is inspired by its religion, but the spirit of modern\nEurope was not inspired by Europe's religion at all. A terrific effort\nwas made in many quarters to liberate Europe from the spirit of her\nreligion. The effort-makers forgot one thing, i.e. that no civilisation\never was liberated from religion and still lived. Whenever this\nliberation seemed to be fulfilled, the respective civilisation decayed\nand died out, leaving behind barbaric materialism in towns and\nsuperstitions in villages. Europe had to live with Christianity, or to\ndie in barbaric materialism and superstitions without it. The way to\ndeath was chosen. From Continental Europe first the infection came to\nthe whole white race. It was there that the dangerous formula was\npointed out: \"Beyond good and evil.\" Other parts of the white world\nfollowed slowly, taking first the path between Good and Evil. Good was\nchanged for Power. Evil was explained away as Biological Necessity. The\nChristian religion, which inspired the greatest things that Europe ever\npossessed in every point of human activity, was degraded by means of new\nwatchwords; individualism, liberalism, conservatism, nationalism,\nimperialism, secularism, which in essence meant nothing out\nde-christianisation of the European society, or, in other words,\nemptiness of European civilisation. Europe abandoned the greatest things\nshe possessed and clung to the lower and lowest ones. The greatest thing\nwas--Christ.\n\nAs you cannot imagine Arabic civilisation in Spain without Islam, or\nIndia's civilisation without Hinduism, or Rome without the Roman\nPantheon, so you cannot imagine Europe's civilisation without Christ.\nYet some people thought that Christ was not so essentially needed for\nEurope, and behaved accordingly without Him or against Him. Christ was\nEurope's God. When this God was banished (from politics, art, science,\nsocial life, business, education), everybody consequently asked for a\nGod, and everybody thought himself to be a god, and in truth there it\nfailed, not on theories in Europe proclaiming, openly or disguisedly,\neveryone a god. So the godless Europe became full of gods!\n\nBeing de-christianised, Europe still thought to be civilised. In reality\nshe was a poor valley full of dry bones. The only thing she had to boast\nof was her material power. By material power only she impressed and\nfrightened the unchristian (but not antichristian) countries of Central\nand Eastern Asia, and depraved the rustic tribes in Africa and\nelsewhere. She went to conquer not by God or for God, but by material\npower and for material pleasure. Her spirituality did not astonish any\nof the peoples on earth. Her materialism astonished all of them. Her\ninner poverty was seen by India, China, Japan, and partly by Russia.\nWhat an amazing poverty! She gained the whole world, and when she looked\ninside herself she could not find her soul. Where has fled Europe's\nsoul? The present war will give the answer. It is not a war to destroy\nthe world but to show Europe's poverty and to bring back her soul. It\nwill last--this war--as long as Europe remains soulless, Godless,\nChristless. It will stop when Europe gets the vision of her soul, her\nonly God, her only wealth.\n\n\n\n\n                   THE CHRISTIANISATION OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nThe Church must first awaken out of her sleep and her European\nemptiness, and then Europe will come again to life. The Church has\nfailed, not because she was not Europeanised, but just because she was\ntoo much Europeanised. Instead of inspiring Europe she was inspired by\nEurope, i.e. emptied by the empty Europe. The soul obeyed the body and\nbecame the body itself. All the secular watchwords entered the Church\nand the Church watchwords were eclipsed. Liberalism, conservatism,\nceremonialism, right, nationalism, imperialism, law, democracy,\nautocracy, republicanism, socialism, scientific criticism, and similar\nthings have filled the Christian theology, Christian service, Christian\npulpits as the Christian Gospel. In reality the Christian gospel has\nbeen as different from all these worldly ideas and temporal forms as\nheaven is different from earth. For all these ideas or forms were\nearthly, bodily, dustly--a convulsive attempt to change unhappiness for\nhappiness through the changing of institutions. The Church ought to have\nbeen indifferent towards them, pointing always her principal idea,\nembodied in Christ. And her principal idea meant never a change of\nexternal things, of institutions, but a change of spirit. All the ideas\nnamed were secular precepts to cure the world's evil, the very poor\ndrugs to heal the sick Europe outside of the Church and without the\nChurch.\n\nYet the Church only possessed the true remedy, although she became\nforgetful of it, because she herself got sick, and instead of giving the\nworld the necessary remedy she looked about to take it from the world.\nWeakened in her position in the world and forgetful of her external\nvalue, the Church, or some parts or parties of the Church, made even\ncoquetry with the current and transitory potencies in order to make her\nposition stronger. Yet the fact stood in history as big as a mountain\nthat the Church always failed when making concessions of her spirit to\nany temporary power, and when not making concessions as to the visible\nforms and transitory shapes of human societies.\n\nNeither Ritualism nor Liberalism helps anything without the true\nChristian spirit. The modern Ritualism and Liberalism are absolutely\nequally worthless from the Christian point of view, being so hostile to\neach other as they are, filled with the unclean spirit of hatred,\nunforgiveness, despising and even persecuting each other. They are\nequally unchristian and even antichristian. Measured by the mildest\nmeasure they are a new edition of the Judaistic Pharisaism and\nSadduceeism. The Ritualists cling to their ritual, the Liberals cling to\ntheir protest against the Ritualists. But the true spirit by which both\nof them move and act and write and speak is the unclean spirit of hatred\nand despite of each other, the very spirit which excludes them both from\ncommunion with Christ and the saints. The Church has been equally\nde-christianised by Ritualists and Liberals, by Conservatives and\nModernists, by bowers and by talkers. The Church must be now\nre-christianised amongst all of them and through all of them.\n\nLet the Church be the Church, i.e. the community of the saints. Let the\nworld know that the Church's mission on earth is not to accumulate\nwealth, or to gain political power or knowledge, or to cling to this\ninstitution or to that, but to cleanse mankind from its unclean, evil\nspirits, and to fill it with the spirit of saintliness. Let the Church\nfirst change her spirit and then urge the whole of mankind to change\ntheirs.\n\nLet the Ritualists know that however devout they might be, still they\ncan call the Protestants their brothers. The most devout have been often\nkillers of their neighbours and killers of Christ.\n\nLet the learned doctors of Protestantism think that however learned they\nmight be, still they are foolish and ignorant enough to be\nself-satisfied. It is doubtful whether the most elaborate sermon of a\nProtestant doctor smells more beautifully than incense. The most learned\ntheologians in Germany and elsewhere have whole-heartedly supported the\ncriminal enterprise of the warlike and criminal scientia militans. The\ndeepest learning and the meanest spirit have often shown in history a\nvery brotherly alliance. Christianity is not that.\n\nLet the Pope be congratulated for his tenacious keeping of the idea of\nTheocracy. But let him consider this idea only as the starting-point in\nthe social science of the Church. His Theocracy has been refused because\nit was not at the same time Christocracy and Sanctocracy. The saints in\nChrist are alone infallible. Let the Vatican be filled with saints, and\ninfallibility then will not need to be preached and ordered but only to\nbe silently shown. Nobody believes infallibility upon authority, but\neveryone will accept it upon Saintliness.\n\nThe way of authority is a fallible way.\n\nThe way of knowledge is quite as fallible.\n\nBut the way of saintliness is infallible.\n\nEvery spirit is fallible but the spirit of saintless. The Church is\ninfallible not by any talisman but by her saintliness. The Bishop of\nRome or of Canterbury will be infallible only if they are saints. The\nsaints are detached from everything and attached to Christ, so that\nChrist incarnates His spirit in them. Not we, but Christ in us, is\ninfallible.\n\nLet the people of the Eastern Church stick to their Christian ideal of\nsaintliness. Their interpretation of the Christian spirit may be the\nbest and truest. Yet the ideal must become flesh. Let them not be proud\nof their not having pride, and exclusive because God chose them to\nunderstand the bottomless deepness of the esoteric Christianity. By\npride towards the proud and by exclusiveness they may spoil and darken\ntheir ideals and remain in the dark.\n\nLet all the Churches feel their unity in the ideal spirit of\nsaintliness. But if that is difficult for them, let them first feel\ntheir unity in sinfulness, in committed sins and crimes, in their\nnakedness and poverty. Just to start with, this first step seems\nabsolutely necessary. Never any great saint became saintly unless he\nfirst thought himself equal in impurity and sinfulness with all other\nhuman beings. The Churches must go the way of the saints. Their way is\nthe only infallible one.\n\n\n\n\n             THE ONLY NECESSARY EXCLUSIVENESS OF THE CHURCH\n\n\nWhen you deeply search in history about the causes of the strength of\nthe primitive Church and of the weakness and decay of the modern Church,\nyou will come to a very clear and simple conclusion.\n\n1. The primitive Church was inclusive as to its forms, but exclusive as\nto its spirit.\n\n2. The modern Church has been exclusive as to its forms, but inclusive\nas to its spirit.\n\nThe primitive Church was very puritanic concerning the Christian spirit.\nShe was not particular as to the vessels in which to pour the new wine,\nbut she was extremely particular as to the wine itself. She borrowed the\nvessels in Judaea, Alexandria, Athens, Rome, but she never borrowed wine.\nThe Christian spirit and the pagan spirit were just like two opposite\npoles, like white and black, or day and night. The Church was conscious\nof it, and jealously watchful that no drop of any foreign spirit should\nbe mixed with the precious spirit of the New Gospel. There existed no\nthought of compromise, and no idea of inclusiveness whatever regarding\nthe spirit. The terrific conflict of Christianity and Paganism through\ncenturies sprang from the irreconcilability of two different spirits.\nWere the Church as inclusive as to the spirit as she was to forms,\ndoctrines, customs and worships, conflicts never would arise--but then\nneither would Christianity arise.\n\nThe modern Church is particular as to its institutions, but not\nparticular at all as to its spirit. The Roman Emperors never would\npersecute the modern Church, for they would easily recognise their own\nspirit included in her. Nor would the Pharaohs from Egypt persecute\nmodern Christianity. Nor would Areopagus or Akropolis be puzzled so much\nhad St Paul preached to them the modern European Christianity with its\ncomplicated spirit of all kinds of compromises with Heaven and Hell,\ncompromise with the State, Plutocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism,\nConquest, War, Diplomacy, Secular Philosophy, Secular Science, Agnostic\nParliaments, Tribal Chauvinism, Education, Officialism, Bureaucracy,\netc., etc. All these things have their own spirit, and every such spirit\nis partly or wholly included in the spirit of the Church, i.e. of modern\nChristianity. None of the Christian Churches of our time makes an\nexception as to this inclusiveness of all kinds of spirits. Even\nProtestantism, which claims the simplicity of its Christian ritual and\nadministration, represents a lamentable mosaic of spirits gathered from\nall the pagan corners of secular Europe and mixed up with the Christian\nwine in the same barrel.\n\nThe Church of the East excommunicated thousands of those who crossed\nthemselves with two fingers instead of using three fingers. The Church\nof the West burnt thousands of those who did not recognise the papal\norganisation of the Church as the only ark of salvation. Yet there is\nrarely to be found in the Church annals an excommunication on the ground\nof chauvinism or brutal egoism. No one of the world conquerors--neither\nNapoleon nor Kaiser William--have been excommunicated by the Church. It\nsignifies an extreme decadence of the Church. And this decadence\npenetrates and dominates our own time. Speaking on the reunion of the\nChurches the peoples of the East are anxious to know--not whether the\nChurch of the West has preserved the unmixed Christian spirit in its\nintegrity, but whether this Church still keeps Filioque as a dogma, and\nwhether she has ikons, and whether she allows eggs and milk in Lent. And\nthe people of the West are anxious to know whether the Eastern Church\nhas a screen quite different from their own screen at the altar, and\nwhether she has been always tenaciously exclusive in teaching, worship\nand organisation. Who of us and of you asks about the integrity of the\nChristian spirit? If St Paul were amongst us he would ridicule our\ncontroversies on Filioque and all the trifles concerning Church\norganisation and the external expressions of Christianity. He would ask:\nWhat happened with the spirit he preached? What happened with this\nspirit which excommunicated de facto the Jewish narrow Patriotism and\nthe Roman Imperialism? Have we still this exclusive spirit which moved\nthe world effecting the greatest revolution in History? I am sure he\nwould have to repeat with good reasons to every Church and to everyone\nof us: \"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.\"\n\nWell, we must come again to this source of Christian strength and\ngreatness, which is Christ's spirit. A new revival, yea, regeneration of\nChristianity, could be possible only in a united Christian Church; and\nthe union of the Church is possible only upon the ground of the\nprimitive Church, which was inclusive in teaching, worship and\norganisation, but exclusive in spirit. On the day when we all exclude\nfrom ourselves the Jewish and Greek and Roman spirit, and retain only\nthe pure Christian spirit, we shall be at once ready to include each\nother's Church into one body, into one Christianity. We must be clear\nabout it, and we must confess that the divisions of the church are due\nto the invasion of a foreign spirit, an unclean spirit, into the Church.\nWhen the Church cleanses herself from this foreign unclean spirit she\nwill be victorious over herself, and from this victory to the ultimate\nvictory of Christianity over our planet will be a very short distance.\n\n\n\n\n                          ECCLESIA TRIUMPHANS\n\n\nHow can the church get her past strength again and triumph over the evil\ninside and outside her walls?\n\nIf she were united she could get it by waiting for the ruin of\nEurope--i.e. of a house which is divided in itself--which is not very\nfar off. But she the Church--is divided too. She is fighting with and\nfor the European parties, and against herself. Consequently, in waiting\nfor the ruin of Europe she is waiting for her own ruin. Therefore she\nmust make up her mind lest it is too late. Horribile dictu--she must\nstart a dramatic movement in order to get her soul back.\n\nFirst of all she must become again a heresy towards Europe and European\nsecular, antidivine civilisation, just as she was a heresy towards the\ntheocratic Israel and semi-theocratic Greece and Rome. Theoretically,\nshe must stick to Theocracy, historically, to Christocracy, and\npractically to Sanctocracy. She must loose herself from all the chains\nbinding her either to the chariot of any dynasty or of any oligarch or\npresident, or whatever political denomination it may be, and insist upon\nthe Holy Wisdom to lead humanity. It ought to be absolutely indifferent\nto the Church what political denomination, or social creed, or\ninstitutional shape a human society shall have as long as this is\nfounded upon any other ideal but saintliness. The Church ought to know\nonly two denominations--politics and social life, inter-human as well as\ninternational and inter racial-racial relations in trade and business,\nin education and family life--i.e. saintliness and unsaintliness. If you\nask what saintliness ought to mean, Christianity has not to argue but to\nshow you the saintliness in the flesh. Christ the saintly Lord, St Paul\nand St John, Polycarp and Leo, Patrick and Francis, Sergius and Zosim,\nSt Theresa and hundreds of other saints. And if somebody thinks still\nthat a few thousands of Christian saints are not a sufficient argument\nto show that saintliness is practicable, then the Church has still not\nto give her ideal up and to take as her ideal thousands of great and\nsmall Napoleons and Bismarcks, and Goethes and Spencers, or Medics and\nCromwells or Kaisers and Kings--no, in the latter case it would be much\nnicer for the Church to point out the saintly men outside of Christian\nwalls, like St Hermes and St Pythagoras, or St Krishna and St Buddha, or\nSt Lao-Tse and St Confucius, or St Zoroaster and St Abu-Bekr. Better\neven is unbaptised saintliness than baptised earthliness.\n\nSaintliness includes goodness and sacrifice, and excludes all the\nearthly impure spirits of selfishness, pride, quarrels and conquests.\nTherefore, when the Church returns to her fundamental ideal, she will\nreturn to her elementary simplicity in which she was so powerful as to\nmove mountains and empires and hearts at the beginning of her history.\nThat is what the world needs now just as much as it needs air and\nlight, i.e. an elementary spiritual power by which it could be moved,\ncleared up, purified and brought out of its chaos to a solid and\nbeautiful construction.\n\n\n\n\n                       HOLY CHURCH IN HOLY EUROPE\n\n\nEurope has been eclipsed because her Church--her soul--has been\neclipsed; the Church has been eclipsed because her principal ideal has\nbeen eclipsed. The principal ideal of the Church is saintliness. This\nideal, plunged down into darkness like a sun into ashes, must come out\nagain to illuminate the Church and Europe. Europe has tried all the ways\nbut the way of the Church, the European Church has tried all the ways\nbut the way of Christ. Well, then, Europe must try the only way left,\nwhich is saintliness. The Church must give an example to Europe.\n\nEurope has been materialistic, heroic, scientific, imperialistic,\ntechnical, secular. At last she has to be holy. Whatever she has been,\nshe has been unhappy and restless, and brutal and criminal, unjust and\ngluttonous. Soldiers and traders, despots and robbers, popes and kings,\ngluttons and harlots, have ruled Europe, but not yet the saints, the\nholy wizards. The Church's duty has been to provide Europe with such\nholy wizards. She has failed because she has been obscured by Europe, as\na fine soul often is obscured by a heavy and greedy body. The body, one\nthought, the soul, another, until their thought became one and the same,\ni.e. the bodily thought. Now, after a bitter experience, the soul must\ncome to its rights. Europe and Europe's Church have not henceforth to\nthink two different thoughts, but one and the same, and this one thought\nhas not to be a bodily one but a spiritual one. The aim of the Church as\nwell as of Europe has to be God, Christ, saintliness. If this thing is\ngiven to the Church and Europe, everything else will be easily given. A\nHoly Church in Holy Europe!\n\nA holy Europe only can be a missionary Europe. No other mission has\nEurope on other continents but a Christian one. It was an illusion to\nspeak about Europe's mission in the wide world without Christ. Well, but\nonly a Christlike people can be a missionary of Christ. How could an\nunholy Europe preach the Holy One?\n\nDo you think that the Arabs, who gave Europe knowledge, are expecting\nfrom Europe knowledge? No, they expect Europe's goodwill.\n\nOr do you think that India, whose history is a history of saints, is\nanxious to accept German materialistic science, individual philosophy,\nand a destructive and shallow theology? No, they expect from Europe more\nsaintliness than they have had in their history. And that is just very\ndifficult for Europe to give them.\n\nOr do you think that Chino-Japanese civilisation has anything worth\nmentioning to borrow from Europe but Christian ideals? No, nothing that\ncould make them happier than they have been.\n\nWell then, let Europe kill her pride and self-conceit in this war and\nbecome humble and meek. The Church ought to give an example to secular\nEurope: an example of humility, goodness, sacrifice--saintliness.\n\nBut which of the Churches ought to give this example for the salvation\nof Europe and of the world? Yours, if you like. Why not just your\nAnglican Church? But whichever undertakes to lead the way will be the\nmost glorious Church. For she will lead the whole Church and through the\nChurch Europe and through Europe the whole world to holiness and\nvictory, to God and His Kingdom.","title":"The Agony of the Church (1917)","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":18503}