Chapter VIII: The Russian Church

The Russian Church calls itself the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Orthodox Church. It is a national Church, and at the same time it is a branch of a great Christian community which includes many nations and peoples—namely, the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Russian Orthodox Church numbers at present over a hundred million adherents, eighty millions of which are Russian subjects; of the remainder about half are Slavs of old Turkey or of Austro-Hungary. Greeks, Roumanians, Bulgarians, and Serbs all belong to the Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church has missions in China, Japan, and North America.

Until the eleventh century the Eastern and the Western Churches formed one Church. In the eleventh century a schism broke this unity and divided a large fragment of the Eastern Church from the Western Church.

Even after the schism had taken place, even as late as the beginning of the twelfth century, intercommunion existed between the two Churches, and Russian princes and princesses of Kiev intermarried with members of the Latin Church. Efforts were made later to heal the schism, the most important of which were the second Council of Lyons in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439. At both these Councils union was proclaimed and accepted by the Greeks, but neither of them had any permanent result. The findings of the first of these two Councils soon became a dead letter; those of the second were repudiated as soon as the Greek delegates reached home, and the delegates were regarded as apostates. Thus the schism has lasted practically since 1054. It was fraught with deep moral and political consequences for the East, and especially for Russia. The cause of it was not really doctrinal or dogmatical. Points of dogma, and trivial points at that, were used as pretexts after the schism had become a _fait accompli_. The true cause of the schism was the immemorial rivalry between the Greeks and the Latins.

The schism between the Eastern and Western Churches ranks, Sir Charles Eliot says in his _Turkey and Europe_, with the foundation of Constantinople and the coronation of Charlemagne, as one of the turning-points in the relations of the East and the West. It was disastrous to Russia and to the Byzantine Empire. To the latter, because it crystallized and deepened an antagonism which prevented the East and West from combining against the common enemy, and thus proved one of the main causes of the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the establishment of the Turk in Europe. To Russia, because, isolated as she was already by her geographical situation, by this further isolation and rupture with the West she fell an easy prey to the hordes of barbarian invaders from Asia, and her national development was interrupted for centuries. As far as dogma is concerned, the differences between the two Churches are to this day trivial, and in earlier times they were slighter still. The Orthodox Church has the same seven Sacraments as the Catholic Church—namely, Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Unction, Holy Order, and Matrimony.

There is a certain difference in the administration of the Sacraments. The Orthodox baptize with a threefold immersion. Confirmation is administered immediately after baptism; and this was so in the West during all the thirteenth century. Auricular confession is regarded as indispensable by the Orthodox, but the Sacrament of Penance is less precise and more flexible than in the West. The Orthodox Church holds the dogma of Transubstantiation. That is to say, the Orthodox believe that the Holy Eucharist is the true body and blood of Jesus Christ under the outward appearances of bread and wine, and that transubstantiation takes place—namely, the change of the inward imperceptible substance into another substance; while all the species and accidents—that is to say, those qualities which are outwardly perceived by the senses, such as colour, taste or shape—remain unchanged. They reject all explanation of a typical or subjective presence. Holy Communion is given in both kinds to the laity; the Sacrament is administered by means of a golden spoon, in which particles of the bread of the Eucharist float in the consecrated wine. Infants receive Holy Communion after baptism. The Sacrament of Extreme Unction, called by the Russians _Soborovanie_ (that is to say, Unction without the extreme), is administered by several priests, and is not reserved for those _in extremis_; it is regarded less as a preparation for death than as a means of healing the sick.

With regard to Holy Order, no priest in Russia is allowed to marry after he is ordained. He is married before he is ordained, and marriage has become a necessary preliminary to Order.

The Orthodox Church proclaims the indissolubility of marriage, but in practice admits that the infidelity of one of the parties authorizes separation. Violation of the conjugal oath is regarded as annulling the sacrament, and only the injured party is allowed to remarry.

The Orthodox have the same fundamental cycle of feasts as the Catholics. The Holy Liturgy is said according to two rites—those of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil.[13]

The Orthodox observe four great fasts: Advent, forty days from November 15 until Christmas Eve; Lent, beginning on the Monday after the sixth Sunday before Easter; thirdly, a period from the first Sunday after Pentecost until June 28; fourthly, the fast of the Mother of God from August 1 to August 15. According to the Orthodox fast, only one meal is allowed a day, and abstinence not only from meat, but from fish, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, and oil is required. The fasts are carried out by the poor with great strictness, and even among the wealthier classes there is more fasting and abstinence during Lent than in the West. Statues of our Lord or of saints are forbidden, but pictures and any images on a flat surface are allowed.

To sum up, the foundations of the Orthodox faith are: Belief in one God in three Persons, in the Incarnation of God the Son, the Redemption of Mankind by the sacrifice of His Life, the Church founded by Him with her Sacraments, the Resurrection of the Body, the Life Everlasting. They have a hierarchy; they accept the Deutero-canonical books of Scripture as equal to the others; they believe in and use seven sacraments; they honour, invoke, and pray to saints; they have a cult of holy pictures and relics; they look with infinite reverence to the Mother of God.

In all these main points, which I have here enumerated, there is no difference between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Catholic Church of the West. The two Churches originally separated on minor questions of discipline; they are at present separated by certain questions of dogma as well. But the great difference between the two Churches is the difference of constitution, which proceeds from the very fact of the separation. The first difference in dogma between the two Churches is the procession of the Holy Ghost. The Eastern Church refuses to add the word _filioque_ to the Nicean Creed. But even here, although the Orthodox do not admit that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, they have never explicitly stated a contrary belief; and although they deny that the twofold procession can be inserted in the Creed, they grant it allows of an orthodox interpretation. This is a purely theological dispute, and to this day it remains the chief point of difference between the two Churches. The two Churches differ in their conception of purgatory; the Orthodox pray for the dead, and believe in a middle state, where the dead sleep and wait passively; but they do not define the matter any further, and they reject all idea of the purification by spiritual fire. They deny that souls which have departed this life can expiate their faults, or at least the only expiation they admit are the prayers of the faithful and the Holy Mysteries.

The Orthodox deny the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception is that all mankind are from their conception tainted with Original Sin, except the Blessed Virgin, who by a special privilege and grace of God was preserved immaculate—that is, free from the stain of Original Sin from the first moment of her conception.

I repeat this definition because it is not generally known to Protestant Englishmen, who, as a rule, confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Incarnation of our Lord, and I know of cases where they obstinately maintain this belief in the face of evidence.

The doctrine, although not accepted in theory by the Eastern Church, is practically a part of their belief—that is to say, they never cease to call the Blessed Virgin All Immaculate, or Very Immaculate.

Finally, the Orthodox Church denies the dogma of Papal Infallibility. This is in reality the only difference between the two Churches which has any real importance, either religious or political, because it includes any other possible difference, and from it proceeds the difference in constitution and in political situation between the two Churches.

For Catholics the door on dogmatic definition has been left open indefinitely; for while holding, _de fide_, that the revelation made to the apostles was final and complete, new _definition_ of the revelation, as is seen in the creeds, as heresies arise, or as fuller expansion of doctrine, is admitted indefinitely.

On the other hand, the Orthodox believe that the time for definition has been closed, once and for all, and for ever. They believe that nothing can be added to the decisions of the first Seven Great Councils, which took place before the schism between the two Churches, and which contained, according to them, the infallible, final, complete, and unalterable definition of the Church and the dogmas of the faith. The Orthodox regard the first Seven Councils to have been infallible in the definition of dogma, exactly in the same way as Catholics consider the Pope to be infallible in his capacity of supreme Pastor of the Church, when speaking _ex cathedrâ_ he defines revealed truth and teaches points of faith or of morals. The Orthodox deny that the Pope has authority over the whole Church. The Russian and the Greek catechisms agree that the Church has no other head than Jesus Christ, our Lord—so far this agrees with the Catholic catechism—and that He is represented by no vicar on earth. The Orthodox regard the Pope as the Patriarch of the West, and legitimate first Patriarch (_primus inter pares_), but they reject his universal claim.

And as the first Seven Councils left some matters undefined and the Fathers of the Church did not foresee all possible contingencies, such matters remain undefined in the Orthodox Church.

Since the Orthodox Church possesses neither a spiritual sovereign nor an international capital, such as Rome, it naturally tends to decentralization, and hence the growth of national and independent Churches, which the Greeks call autocephalous.

The Russian Church was the first to establish its independence, and the example of Russia was followed by Greece, Servia, and Roumania.

In 1872 Bulgaria, in obedience to its national interests, seceded from the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, in order to be no longer classed with the Greeks; for, according to the Turkish system, all those who submitted to the jurisdiction of Constantinople were officially classed as “Greeks.”

Thus the Bulgarians formed an autonomous Church in the domains of the Ottoman Empire, alongside of the Greek Church, before Bulgaria constituted a State, and for so doing they incurred the anathema of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and were condemned as heretical, since the patriarchate maintained that the delimitation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction should correspond to political delimitation, and that in the same political state there could only be one Church. Bulgaria’s action, therefore, was contrary to church canon—that is, heretical. Nevertheless its independence was recognized by the Sultan, and the Bulgarian Church was established under an Exarch of its own, while Russia, without making any definite pronouncement, nevertheless never accepted the anathema of Constantinople.

A few years later Bulgaria became an independent principality, and had the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate been limited to the principality of Bulgaria, the Œcumenical Patriarchate would have been logically bound to recognize it; but according to the firmans of the Sultan, the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate extended beyond the frontiers of Bulgaria, and included the dioceses of Thrace and Macedonia, which nominally belonged to the Sultan and were a bone of contention between the Greek and the Slav influence. Thus the Greco-Bulgarian schism continued. This question has now once again sprung into importance. The dioceses of Macedonia and some of those in Thrace, which were under the religious jurisdiction of Bulgaria, and under the political dominion of the Porte, are now, as the result of the latest wars in the Balkans, and of the Treaty of Bucharest, partly in the hands of the Servians, and partly in the hands of the Greeks. Hitherto the Bulgarian Exarchate was the nucleus around which all the elements of Bulgarian nationality in Macedonia were gathered; but now, owing to the second Balkan War, the Bulgarians in Macedonia come under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Servia, and are in fear, consequently, of losing their nationality, since the Bulgars fear that neither their churches nor their national schools will succeed in maintaining their existence in the new Greek and Servian territory. The consequence was, that some of the Bulgars in those parts of Macedonia talked of secession from the Orthodox Church, and submission to the Church of Rome, or of embracing Protestantism, as the best means of preserving their nationality.[14]

In spite of these differences, the Russian Church and the independent Churches of the East form in reality one, for if they lack unity of organization, they possess unity of creed, and the unity of creed is ensured by its immutabilty, which renders unnecessary all international authority or periodical congresses. Since matters of dogma have been discussed once and for all, or have been left vague and undefined indefinitely, there is nothing for such an authority to define, and nothing for such a congress to discuss. And the panegyrists of the Orthodox Church are proud of the lack of central authority and the organization of the Churches according to States, which they consider combine unity of creed with ecclesiastical independence, according to Homayakov’s formula, “Unity of freedom in love.”

But if the nationalization of the Oriental Churches is a source of strength, it is at the same time a source of weakness, for the result of the national constitution of the Orthodox Churches, and of their having no spiritual head, has been that many of its branches have been secularized, and of this the Russian Church is a signal example.

The Orthodox Churches, and especially the Russian Church, were thrown open to the civil power, the power of the State, and became subordinate to it.

The Russian Church became subject to the State. It is often said that such a circumstance is a guarantee of political liberty and of liberty of thought; but neither the history of Russia nor that of the Greek empire furnishes us with examples to the point. Both in the history of Russia and of Byzantium we are confronted with two phenomena—intellectual stagnation and political despotism—to which the Church seems to have contributed, since being subject to the State she had no means of resisting civil authority, and the power of the State was left without a single check. The civil authority had the support of ecclesiastic authority, and the temporal authority was backed up by the spiritual power; no obstacle was raised in the path of autocracy.

The alliance of Church and State kept down the intellectual growth of the nation within, and prevented the invasion of new ideas from without. The result of the alliance was stagnation and isolation. And in the East there was no common clerical language, as Latin in the West, to help civilization, for the Greek Church did not impose its language on its sister Churches, but left to each the use of its own tongue.

This peculiar constitution of the Russian Church, as Sir Charles Eliot puts it, “has produced in Russia an almost Mohammedan confusion of Church and State, or at least of religion and politics.”

But this state of things did not come about all at once.

Christianity reached Russia through Byzantium at a time (988 A.D.) when the Eastern Church was still in communion with Rome, after a temporary schism between the East and West; a Russian Metropolitan held the see of Kiev, and was appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. During this period the Russian Church was a province of the Byzantine Patriarchate.

Then came the Tartar invasion and the migration of the Russian princes to the basin of the Volga, and finally to Moscow. Moscow had a Metropolitan who was still suffragan of the Greek patriarch, but elected by his clergy and chosen by his sovereign. This was the second phase of the Russian Church during which it gradually acquired its independence. Moscow became a kingdom, and at the death of Ivan the Terrible, in 1589, Russia demanded a Patriarch. In 1589 Job, the Metropolitan of Moscow, was consecrated Patriarch. This was brought about by Boris Godunov, in the reign of Feodor, the successor of Ivan the Terrible (1589).

Thus began the third phase of the history of the Russian Church—the phase of its independence. The Russian Church was henceforward independent of Constantinople.

There were ten Patriarchs of Moscow in succession. At first they played a powerful and important part in Russian history, and helped to save Russia from foreign dominion.

The culminating point in the history of the independent Church was reached when in the reign of Alexis, in 1642, Nikon became Patriarch.

The Patriarchate of Nikon had two great and far-reaching results—firstly, a conflict with the civil authority which ended in his defeat and deposition from the patriarchal throne, and in a consequent loss of prestige to the patriarchate; and secondly, a schism which tore the Russian Church in two, and which was the result of a wise reform—the revision of the text of liturgical books, into whose text, owing to continuous copying and recopying, inaccuracies had crept.

Nikon spoke with great energy against the supremacy of the State over the Church. Six years after his consecration, he was brought before a Council, condemned and deposed, thanks to the intrigues of the Boyars. His revision of the texts was accepted by the Council, but not by a great part of the Russian people, who clung obstinately to the old unrevised books and called themselves “Old Believers.” Hence arose the great schism of the Russian Church. The “Old Believers,” were persecuted and became fanatical. Besides the revision of the texts, Nikon changed one or two trifling details of ritual in the liturgy. This was enough to convulse Russia. Later on, all enemies of foreign innovations flocked to the camp of the “Old Believers,” endured any persecution, however severe; and the net result of this, at the present moment, is that there are 25,000,000 Russians who live in schism from the Russian Church.

The fall of Nikon established once and for all the authority of the State over that of the Church, and the great schism weakened the authority of the Church, owing to the secession from it of a great part of the nation. The patriarchate was shaken and weakened; but weak as it was, it appeared too strong to suit the taste of Peter the Great, who abolished it in 1721.

In its place he established the Holy Directing Synod. Thus began the fourth phase of the Russian Church, which has lasted until to-day.

There is nothing necessarily anti-liberal in the existence of a synod, and it is not peculiar to the Russian Church. Greece, Roumania, and Servia administer their Churches by means of a synod. Its tendencies depend necessarily on the manner of its election, the nature of its guarantees, the laws and customs of the country in which it exists.

The Holy Synod consists at the present day of executive members and assistants, of permanent and temporary members. Among the permanent members are the Metropolitans of Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and the Exarch of Georgia. The temporary members consist of four or five archbishops, bishops or archimandrites, the emperor’s chaplain, and the head chaplain of the forces. All the members are appointed by the Emperor, and in addition to these ecclesiastics, the Emperor appoints a delegate who is called the Procurator-General. The procurator is a layman, and represents the civil authority. His duty is to see that ecclesiastical affairs are carried out in accordance with the imperial ukases. No act of the synod is valid unless he confirms it. He has the right of veto, should its decisions be contrary to the law. Practically, therefore, but not theoretically, he controls the synod; and in his turn he carries out the will and obeys the orders of the Emperor.

It would be a great mistake, however, whatever may be the result of this institution in practice, to call the Emperor of Russia the head of the Russian Church. He makes no such claim, and Russian orthodoxy recognizes only one Head of the Church, our Lord, and only one infallible authority speaking in His name, the Seven First Œcumenical Councils. The Emperor may be the autocratic master of the Church; he is not the head of it. His authority is from the outside only. In questions of dogma he has no authority at all. He is regarded as the temporal defender and guardian of the Church; his authority, and consequently the authority of the State, concerns the administration of the Church solely, and even here his power is limited by tradition, canon law, and the œcumenical character of the Church.

Dogma is equally outside the domain of the Holy Synod, and even disciplinary measures come before the Holy Synod as before a commission of inquiry, the final decision remaining with the Church.

Such is the teaching of the Russian Church with regard to relations of Church and State, and the position of the Emperor with regard to the Church.

Yet in spite of this, there is no Church where the influence and the authority of the State is so deeply felt as in the Russian Church; for in practice the Church is governed through the Holy Synod, and not through the bishops, for the synod overrules the bishops, and in practice, and in spite of the theory, the procurator overrules the synod, and the procurator is the civil authority in the flesh. The Russian Church is consequently, in practice, a State Church, and many of its earnest members have never ceased to deplore the fact.

Russian books dealing with theological questions in the past are full of this bitter and oft-reiterated complaint; but I will quote what an apologist of the Russian Church wrote as short time ago as November 1912, showing that the complaint of the past is if anything more vital now than ever. In an article on the Russian public and religion, S. Bulgakov says that a faithful and powerful ally of the atheism of the _intelligentsia_ is without doubt the secular character of the Church, its ruinous dependence on the State under the synod _régime_, and owing to the absence of self-government. He also says that one of the reasons of the alienation from the Church, not only of the _intelligentsia_ but of the people, is the bureaucratic caste of the Church administration, the access of officialdom and arbitrary power to the fields of freedom and love. “It is not,” he writes, “a question of any corruption or distortion of dogma; on the contrary, the Russian Church adheres with devotion to the dogmas of the Universal Church.

“The main lever by which the State directs the Church at present is the episcopacy, which, contrary to canon, is appointed by, and consequently to a certain extent picked out by, secular authority. The Holy Synod is likewise chosen from these bishops, and by secular authority also.... The bishops, who should remain all their life in their dioceses, have been commuted into ecclesiastical governors, changing dioceses more quickly than the governors change provinces.... Theoretically, the Orthodox Church should be self-governing from top to bottom, but the painful reality reveals on the contrary so great a paralysis in the public life of the Church, as to give the outside observer the impression that nothing is here but ecclesiastical governors, under the direction of the procurator of the Holy Synod and the secular authority that is behind him, with a clergy stripped of all rights.”

Such a statement sums up what has been constantly said in the past, and what is being said with increasing vehemence in the present by earnest members of the Russian Church, who recognize with sorrow the almost total alienation of the Church from the educated classes, and look forward with apprehension to the day when the indifference of the educated and the street-corner atheism of the half-educated shall spread to the peasantry. But, on the other hand, the very fact that such statements are made shows that side by side with the growth of rationalism there is a movement in the opposite direction as well.

Many years ago, in the days of the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation, educated Russia was divided into two camps—the Slavophils and the Westernisers. The leaders of the Westernism were Bielinsky and Herzen; those of the Slavophils, Homyakov, a poet and the father of the Ex-President of the Duma; and others.

The Westernisers saw in rationalism and atheism the last word of Western culture, and made a religion out of socialistic Utopias, and at the same time took part with a fervent enthusiasm in the struggle for political freedom. Orthodoxy and the Church were to them an expression of despotism and reaction.

The Slavophils, who were, in their most flourishing epoch, by no means political reactionaries, and being more cultured than their opponents, were saturated with the philosophy, art, and religion of the West, nevertheless revered the religious character of the sovereign’s authority, based Utopias on it likewise, and, in contradistinction to the cosmopolitan ideal of the Westernisers, for whom nationality did not exist except ethnographically, made a cult of nationality which for them was inseparable from religion and orthodoxy. There was the same difference between their ideals as there is now between those of Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Blatchford; only whereas in England Mr. Chesterton has but few followers, the Slavophils were expressing the inarticulate aspirations of the great mass of the Russian people.

Slavophilism was represented by many men of genius, such as Dostoievsky the novelist and Vladimir Soloviev the philosopher.

Its tradition has not died out, and although the majority of the _intelligentsia_ may be adherents of the opposite school, yet the descendants of the Slavophils have many notable representatives among the minority (whose names I have already cited) in philosophy, art, and literature; and a universal characteristic of them is their interest in religion.

The ordinary Russian street-corner atheist sees in the Church nothing but an instrument of clerical obscurantism and political reaction. He looks at the matter from the outside, and, from his point of view, the opinion is excusable.

But the descendants of Slavophilism look at the Church from the inside. They know from experience the blessing of the Sacraments, the majesty of an immemorial tradition, the glory of a mystical and liturgical Church whose ritual and liturgy is one of inexpressible richness, depth, and beauty. Even to the most indifferent agnostic the Russian Church affords a spectacle of surpassing æsthetic interest, and if he is musical an incomparable source of wonder and delight in the quality of its sacred song.

As far as ritual and ceremony is concerned, the practice and custom of the first centuries of Christianity, which were in many cases simplified by Rome, before they were curtailed or rejected by the Reformation, have been preserved intact in the East. Nothing is more false than the idea which often prevails in some quarters that the rites of the early Church were simple, and grew more and more complicated towards the Middle Ages. The rites of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries were long and complicated, and were gradually simplified by the Latins. The proof is the ceremonial of the Eastern Churches, which has remained exactly where it was in the fourth and fifth centuries. Mass, for instance, in the Coptic Church, lasts five hours or longer. Low Mass, which was one of the simplifications introduced by Rome, is unknown in the Greek and Russian Churches. Every Mass is a high Mass, intoned and accompanied by plain song, in the presence of the faithful, and generally only on Sundays and holy days. The same liturgy and rite is observed by the Uniate Catholics, whether Greeks, Ruthenians, Poles, etc. The liturgy is sumptuous, and at the same time austere. There is only one altar, which is separated from the congregation by a large screen called the _iconastasis_—that is to say, the screen which bears the holy images—which has doors which are opened and shut during Mass, and beyond which the priest alone, and the Emperor when he receives Communion on the day of his coronation, has the right to penetrate. Behind these doors, which are shut before the consecration, the most solemn part of the Mass is consummated. No organ or any other instruments are allowed in the Eastern Churches, and, as in the Sistine Chapel when the Pope says Mass, only the human voice is heard.

As far as liturgical song is concerned, the Russians have far surpassed the Greeks, from whom they received it. The liturgical music consists of plain song, and of original chants called _raspievi_, which date from the Middle Ages. The singing of the Church choirs in Russia is without comparison, the finest in the world. The bass voices reach to notes and attain effects resembling the 36-foot bourdon stops of a huge organ, and these, blent with the clear and bold treble voices of the boys, sing

“An undisturbed song of pure concent.”

The best Russian choirs sing together like one voice. They attain to tremendous crescendoes, to a huge volume of thunderous sound, and to a celestial softness and delicacy of diminishing tone. There is no finer chorus singing. The Russians are extremely particular and appreciative of religious music. Every kind of institution, including banks, has its private choir; and I know of a case where a banker chose his clerks simply and solely according to the quality of their voices, so as to form a choir who could sing in church.

The finest choirs in Russia are those of the Emperor, St. Isaak’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, of the Cathedral of the Assumption, and the Church of St. Saviour, and the Tchudov Monastery at Moscow; and the finest religious ceremonies are those which take place at Moscow during Holy Week and on the eve of Easter.

Religious music in Russia has its roots in the heart of the people. And whatever in the future may be the influence of rationalistic tendencies and materialistic theories, of superficial indifferentism or ill-digested science, the Russian people at the present moment love their liturgy and the ceremony, ritual, and music of their worship. The Church still plays an overwhelming part in national life. And for the peasant, the Church is not only a place of mystery, sweetness, and consolation, but his window opens on to all that concerns the spirit—it is his opera, his theatre, his concert, his picture gallery, his library.

The Russian people still flock to the shrines of the Saints, and walk hundreds of miles on foot to visit holy places. A peasant woman once asked me to lend her two roubles, as she was going on a journey. I asked her where she was going to, and she said, “Jerusalem.”

A pilgrim in a Russian crowd is as constant a factor as a soldier, a student, or the member of any other profession. The churches are still crowded in Russia, and they have that attribute without which a Church is not a Church—they smell of the poor.