THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN RUSSIA
I welcome the opportunity that this chapter affords me of defining the
position taken by our Church in Russia, for it is just the same there as
in Germany, France, Belgium, and the other countries in our
jurisdiction. Many English Churchmen deprecate, while others strongly
resent, our having clergy, churches, and services on the Continent of
Europe at all. They consider it an interference with the Church of the
country, schismatical in its character, and a hindrance and impediment
to the reunion of Christendom. Some English clergy come, therefore, into
the jurisdiction of North and Central Europe from their own parishes,
and though their own Church may have its services there, ostentatiously
attend the services of the Roman Catholic Church. Young men coming out
for business, girls taking positions as nurses and governesses, and
others coming for health and enjoyment, are sometimes advised by their
clergy not to go near the English Church, but to attend Mass and
"worship with the people of the country."
What, I fancy, many of our brethren at home, clergy and laity alike,
fail very often to realize is the great difference between a temporary
and permanent residence abroad. Many of us know what it is to spend a
holiday in some simple and beautiful village--in the Black Forest, for
instance--amongst devout and good people, far away from one's own
Church, and where it is just as natural as anything can be, and
completes the friendly feeling between us, to go to church on Sunday and
worship with them. Even in an unfamiliar service we have our own Prayer
Books, and can read Collect, Epistle, and Holy Gospel, and be in spirit
and touch with our brethren worshipping in their own churches all over
the world.
There is something to be said, therefore, for sharing the worship of the
people of the place when passing through or making but a short stay,
though, even in holiday resorts or "Sports centres," the opportunities
which our Church, chaplain, and services offer are too precious and
important to be lost or undervalued. But there is nothing whatever to be
said for leaving a community of our own countrymen, permanently resident
in another land, without the ministrations of their own Church, if they
can possibly be supplied to them; and still less if, as in Russia and
some other places, the people can find the means of support themselves.
Will any of our brethren seriously maintain that, when families have to
leave this country and go to live on the Continent of Europe, they must
leave their own Church and be received into the Roman or Greek
Communion? Or, if not, will they consider that they ought to frequent
the services of those Churches as outsiders, never having the
experiences and helps afforded by the sacramental means of grace? It
must be one or the other. If abroad we are not to attend the services of
our own Church, then the only alternative is either to leave it
altogether or to live the maimed spiritual life of those who are without
the ministry of the Word and Sacraments.
And, moreover, if it is thought that one of the pressing duties of our
time is to follow our brethren across the ocean to Canada, though even
there the Roman Church claims to be the "Church of the country" in its
French-speaking territory, and to give them the ministrations of
religion, why are we not to follow them across the Channel, when they
leave their country for precisely the same reason, to extend its
business and commercial influence and to serve its interests in
diplomatic, consular, and professional life? To think at all carefully
over the situation is to see at once that our people in North and
Central Europe have just the same rights (and I don't ask for anything
more than that) to the services of their own Church as anywhere else in
the world.
Take, for instance, this typical case of a friend of mine living in one
of the cities of Europe, and now retired from business, but still living
on where he is so well known, and where he has many ways of making
himself of use. He was married young, and his bride went with him to
make her home abroad. They had their own Church there, and there they
took their children to be baptized and, when old enough, to worship, be
confirmed, and become communicants. There those children have been
married, and from there gone out into the world to make new homes. In
his house the clergy have been always made welcome, and have visited
them when sick, counselled them when necessary, and received much
valuable advice in return. Can any one be heartless enough, or foolish
enough, to say that there ought to have been no English Church in that
place at all, and that he and his young wife ought to have attended the
Church of the country, and with their descendants been lost to their
own?
Then there are girls at school, young men learning the language,
governesses, nurses, lads in the training stables, girls dancing on the
stage--these are well shepherded in Paris--and others. Are they to feel
in after life, "Just at the critical time, when I needed it most, my
Church was not there to give me the helping hand--and all might have
been so different if it had been!" I will not dwell upon all the
priceless opportunities afforded us abroad, where touch is more quickly
gained, and more easily maintained, of winning during sickness and at
other times those who have never been in touch with clergy or Church at
home, bringing them out into the light, gaining them for the Church, and
sending them home to "strengthen the brethren" there.
Most of our clergy, from Northern Russia to Southern France and the
Pyrenees, have their inspiriting stories to tell of the services they
have rendered to the Church at home in this way, and yet that Church, if
some of our brethren could have their way, would disown them. It won't
bear seriously thinking of, this objection to English Church work
abroad; and surely it rings more true to what we feel is the
Englishman's duty wherever he is, when we read that our countrymen,
after settling at Archangel in the sixteenth century, built their
warehouses and their Church at the same time, and wished, in their
adopted country, to worship GOD "after the manner of their fathers."
I have taken a little time to explain our continental position thus,
because it is the same in every country, is thoroughly understood, and
never, as far as I know, resented. We always make it perfectly clear
that we never wish to interfere with the Church of the country, nor the
religion of its people, but are there to shepherd our own. And it is a
curious thing that in Catholic Belgium, as it is called, with people
devoted to their Church, and with a clerical government such as they
have had for at least the last forty years, our Anglican clergy receive
from the Belgian government the same recognition, status, stipends,
grants for houses, etc., as are given to the clergy of the country.
But nowhere is the position of our Church more fully, sympathetically or
affectionately recognized than in Russia. Nowhere would it be felt, as
there, a grave and responsible neglect of duty on our part if we were to
leave our own people without the ministrations of their own Church. They
go further than this in sympathetic feeling, for they consider that
there is a special link and bond of union between our Church and their
own. An anonymous but evidently extremely well-informed writer about
Russia, over the _nom de plume_ of "Anglitchanin" in a leading
Review[13] a month or two ago, said, in the course of his article on
_Russia and the War_, "the English Church is said to be very like the
Greek Orthodox. It is not so in fact, but in Russia it is believed to be
so by _all classes of the population_. That is indeed the one thing
about England that they all know. I have known more than one peasant ask
me, 'Is England beyond Germany--far? or beyond Siberia? But your
religion is like ours.'
"The origin of this belief," he adds, "is to be found in the fact that
we are not Lutherans on the one side, and on the other do not
acknowledge the Pope."
They welcome our bishops and clergy to their services in their robes,
and attend ours in the same way. When the late Duke of Edinburgh married
the daughter of the Emperor Alexander, the service took place first in
the cathedral with the Russian rite, with Dean Stanley present in his
robes, and then a second time in the English Church with our own
service, with the Russian clergy present in the sanctuary. The Bishop of
London also loves to describe his reception at the great Troitsky
Monastery near Moscow, where he attended the services in cope and mitre,
and with pastoral staff, and was greeted by all the clergy present as
one of their own bishops; and the last time I heard him describe the
beautiful ceremonial, he added significantly, "I should not have been
received in that way at S. Peter's, Rome"; but who can say what may be
the outcome of this war? There has been a wonderful drawing together of
the French and English clergy, and perhaps we may soon have more
brotherly relations with the Roman clergy, even though we do not have
inter-communion.
When four of our English bishops went to Russia with a large party of
Members of Parliament and business men, three years ago, the chaplain at
Petrograd arranged a choral celebration of Holy Communion in his church,
and it was attended by some of the highest dignitaries of the Russian
Church, who were present in their robes and took part in the procession,
following the service as closely and intelligently as they could. No
clergy of our Church have ever gone to Russia to learn what they could
for themselves, or give lectures, or act as members of deputations, and
come into touch with the Orthodox clergy and been disappointed with
their reception; but, on the contrary, they have often been quite
astonished at the warmth of welcome offered them and the keen interest
shown towards them.
I had no idea until I had read what the _Contemporary Review_ has told
us that there is nothing so well known about England, throughout _all
classes_ of the population, as the similarity of the two Churches and
the religion they represent; but I can speak for the archbishops,
bishops, and clergy, that they have a real knowledge of the Church of
England and the character of its services, and a very sincere wish to be
on friendly and brotherly terms with its members, clergy and laity
alike. And I do not think there is one of them who would not consider it
a great compliment and most kind attention if any English Churchman
called upon him to pay his respects and show interest in his church and
work.
Their keen interest in our Church all over the empire, even in a humble
little village, is extraordinarily different from the almost complete
ignorance and indifference which prevails amongst our own countrymen as
to theirs, except amongst the members of one or two societies founded to
bring the two Churches into more real unity of spirit.
However, this, like so many other things, is to be entirely changed. We
are going to see and know more than we have ever done before of the way
in which "God is working His purpose out" in His Church, as we are being
brought into intelligent sympathy with a simply overwhelming part of
Christendom, as represented by the Orthodox Church of Russia and the
other Churches of the East.
Will there be many English Churchmen who will not be most deeply moved
when they read that the first _Te Deum_, after all these centuries, has
been sung in St. Sophia, in Constantinople? It will be a most inspiring
thing too to hear that the whitewash, always peeling off, which covers
up the mosaic picture of our _Lord_, has been cleared away, and He is
shown looking down in blessing while the Holy Communion is once more
celebrated in the great Church of Justinian.
We are all praying that _God_ will bring good out of evil, and overcome
evil with good, as this war draws on to its close, and many of us from
time to time think of the "good" it will be for humanity if a more
united Christian Church can be one of its first results. "Who will not
pray?" said Mr. W. J. Birkbeck, the one English layman who knows Russia,
its people, and its Church as few Englishmen or even Russians know them,
when addressing a great gathering in London last year, "that this
terrible conflict in which we are engaged will bring the Eastern and
English Churches closer to one another? We are mindful of the
considerable advances which have already been made in that direction,
and of the ever-increasing friendship which has arisen between the
English and Russian Churches of late years, and more especially during
the twenty years' reign of the Emperor Nicholas II. It is known that
even in the earliest years of his reign His Majesty more than once
expressed his wish that the two Churches should get to know one another
more closely, and that this was the best way to draw the two nations
together. It is known too that Queen Victoria, when she was told of
this, said, 'Yes, it is not only the best way, it is the only sure way.'
The visits of Anglican bishops at various times have all tended to
promote good feeling and mutual understanding, as did also the visit to
England of the late Archbishop Antonius of Finland, afterwards
Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee. The question of the reunion of our two Churches is one
that cannot be forced or rushed; it will never be brought about by
compromises, or by diplomatic shams. It will only come about when the
two Churches, after coming fully to know one another, find that both of
them hold the whole of that Faith which each of them, and not one only,
and all its members, and not some only, hold to be essential."
I hope it will not be uninteresting now if, as they are not many in
number, I describe briefly the places where English Church work is
carried on in Russia, and give some characteristic service at each.
At Petrograd the British Church, with the parsonage, library, and a
number of other suites of rooms, is a great block of buildings, formerly
a palace, owned and maintained by the British Factory, and with a staff
of three clergy. The church is the former ballroom of the palace, and is
a classical basilica, with rows of Greek pillars and capitals, and a
very impressive place of worship. If I single out one of the beautiful
services I have known I shall choose the Evensong on the Feast of the
Epiphany last year, when I preached on the last day of my stay, and had
what one might call a Sunday congregation. It was grand to see that
large congregation on a weekday, so far away from home.
[Illustration: _The Bishop and Russian Chauffeur in the midst of the
Steppes on the way to Atbazar._]
Three other places are served from Petrograd--Helsingfors, Narva, and
Schlusselberg. Helsingfors has a small community of girls engaged in
teaching and nursing, and the one Englishman who lives there with his
wife, a Mr. Reid, is a Professor of English in the Finn University.
One has to go there and return during the night, and during my day there
I had a Confirmation in the Art School, most carefully and reverently
prepared, and in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Reid had all the girls for a
reception, at which I was able to chat with them individually and speak
to them about the important and responsible trust they had in being
allowed to lay the foundations of character in young lives. At midnight
they were all on the station to say good-bye, bright English girls with
sparkling eyes and happy faces. Who could not go away deeply thankful
that they were not allowed to feel in that remote place that they were
forgotten by their Church?
Narva is a great manufacturing community with a large staff of
Englishmen, also a long journey away, and it so happens that they are
nearly all Nonconformists there, but they value our services, and
enjoyed mine with them, followed as it was by a special evening of music
and recitations, about sixty being present.
Schlusselberg is a large factory for printing cotton goods for Asia,
half a day's journey up the Neva, where we always have an evening
service followed by Holy Communion next morning. It is the only place I
have yet known where all the community, about forty, have been present
at the evening service, and next morning been _all_ present again as
communicants, but with one added to their number, a man who had been
away the night before.
Moscow has a church and parsonage and large courtyard, as will be seen
in the illustration; almost startlingly like, it seems in that ancient
capital, to a bit of a London suburb. But as I saw it on Christmas Eve
last year it was Russian enough, the great courtyard was full of
_troikas_ and sledges, and the clear air musical with tinkling bells as
the people came driving in from far and near, clad in warm furs, for the
service. That Christmas Eve, with its carols and the old hymns, helped
one to realize what it means to have an English church and clergyman in
a community like that of Moscow. The chaplain conducts all the services,
does all the work of the community, and visits over a large
neighbourhood outside, single-handed.
Warsaw is the next capital to take, much before us of late, and perhaps
with a great place yet to fill in future history. It is the centre of
Christian work amongst the Russian Jews, as I shall have to explain more
at length in my next chapter; but there is also a British community to
whom the chaplain ministers, and which perhaps numbers, all told, about
a hundred, with one or two outlying places reckoned in. The service I
remember most at Warsaw, and shall always associate with it, was the
dedication or consecration--the two abroad mean the same thing--of their
church. We had it on a Sunday morning, with a very large congregation,
and very impressive it was to take, so far away, as our little copies of
the service told us, "The Order of Consecration as used in the Diocese
of London." There were some Old Catholics present, and they were deeply
impressed with the scriptural character of a service which carried us
back to the days of David and Solomon. I dare say it was true of all
there, as one of them said, that they had never seen the consecration of
a church of their own before, and had had to come to Russia for it when
they did.
We have only two other places in our jurisdiction--as the shores of the
Black Sea fall to the Diocese of Gibraltar--Libau and Riga.
Libau is a Baltic port in Courland, a German-speaking place, where there
is an extremely small British community, but where there are a fair
number of British ships in the course of the year. The establishment
consists of two flats side by side, one of which supplies the chaplain
and his wife with a comfortable home; and the other, which communicates
with it, provides an institute, with papers and a billiard-table, etc.,
for the sailors, and a beautiful little chapel opening out of it. When
last there we had a reception, or social, in the institute, followed by
a service; after which we came back into the institute, and I had a talk
with the seamen and apprentices and one or two young fellows in the
business houses. I need not ask the reader if he thinks that little
church ought to be there or not.
Riga is a great port, also on the Baltic, and its beautiful church, with
a great spire, is close to the banks of the river. It has a splendid
position and is tremendously appreciated and well supported by a fairly
large and prosperous community. The service to mention here was my
Confirmation on the Russian Whitsun Day last year but one. Every one
comes to a Confirmation abroad, and it was to us at Riga a real
anniversary of the great gift of the HOLY SPIRIT. It was in the
afternoon, and we had had the Holy Communion at eight and Morning
Service at eleven as at home--but the Confirmation was at three, and was
_the_ service of the day.
It makes a great difference when a large congregation can really be
brought to pray during the short space of silence usually kept for the
purpose. They most certainly prayed that afternoon at Riga, and many
told me in touching language what an experience it had been to them.
These are _great_ opportunities abroad. A man in middle life told me
once, also abroad, what the confirmation of his daughter had been to him
that day after he had been led specially to pray in the service; and he
added, "I've never been at a Confirmation before this since my own at
Charterhouse, and I can only wish that it had meant more to me at the
time."
There is one other place to mention, the port which is historic for us
in more senses than one just now--Archangel. It is not actually upon the
White Sea, but a little distance up the Dvina, and is frequented by a
good number of British ships in the summer when the sea there is free
from ice. There is a church and a rectory, but no community at all, and
so the Russia Company send a chaplain there for the summer months to
visit the men aboard ship and hold services for them ashore.
The Anglican Church in Russia, therefore, for I have described every
place in which it is at work, is not a very large community, but I can
claim that it is zealous, earnest, efficient, and thoroughly
representative, and I feel sure that it will be admitted that it is
doing a real and good work for Russia as well as for ourselves. I have
often brought home to myself the real significance of an interest or
influence by asking myself what I should do without it. And if one only
just thinks, "What would our countrymen do in Russia? how would they
hope to knit up real and lasting ties, if their Church were not there?"
there would be, to my mind, no answer which could be adequately
expressed in words.
I hope to be able, when the war is over, to appoint a chaplain whose
work it shall be to travel over those great spaces in European and
Siberian Russia and visit very small communities where it is impossible
for a permanent chaplain to find enough to do.
These will rapidly increase now as the country and its people become
better known to us. The first Church of England Service ever taken in
Siberia is a very good instance to give of such opportunities. It was in
1912, at Ekaterinburg, just beyond the Urals, and in the government of
Perm, a large and growing town of 80,000 people, where our British
community is represented almost entirely by one family named Yates,
paper manufacturers, whose first mill was built there fifty years ago.
It now consists of Mr. and Mrs. Yates, their brothers, children, and
grandchildren.
Ekaterinburg is a distributing centre for the Bible Society, and their
agent--earnest, energetic, and capable--is one of the best-known and
respected Englishmen in Siberia. He it was who had prepared for my
coming, arranged for me to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Yates, and invited
every one within reach--"I've sounded the big drum," he said--and with
governesses, English wives of Russians, a young fellow and his wife
teaching roller-skating, and one or two others--some having travelled
long distances to get there--we must have numbered about thirty in all.
They prepared a little temporary altar in the large drawing-room, with
an _ikon_, flowers, etc., and we had Holy Communion, a morning and
evening service, our dinner and supper together, and a priceless
experience of the unity which thankfulness and fellowship always bring
with them when realized in common prayer and worship.
From Ekaterinburg I went a day's journey to another town, in a part of
the country to which very few English travellers ever go, and there the
small community consisted of one family only, though they were three
generations. We were only a dozen altogether, and some might think it
was hardly worth taking up a bishop's time for three days to go and see
one family. But the head of that family had been there between forty
and fifty years, and never had our Church's service during that time,
nor received Communion. The grandchildren had never seen or heard the
service before, and they were the children of a Russian father,
attending a Russian school. I made my address simple so that they could
understand it, knowing that the others could if the children did, and I
had one or two opportunities of conversation with them, which they
greatly welcomed. Late at night I left, all the party accompanying me to
the station to see me off; and after we had said, "Good-bye," and they
had left, the mother of those children came back quietly and said:--
"Bishop, I felt I must come back just to tell you this. In the winter,
after having tried so long to keep my boy and girl English in their
ideas, I felt hopeless and gave up the struggle; but I want you to know
that in the service to-day I've had the strength and courage given me to
begin again."
[Illustration: _The British Community at Atbazar, Siberia, after Morning
Service during the Bishop's Visit._]
Is it not worth while to have a travelling chaplain go about and find
such experiences as that waiting for him in many places? Can any one
possibly think that those who have to live on the Continent of Europe,
because of some fanciful ideas of intrusion upon the jurisdiction of
another Church, should be deprived of the services of their own, and
find, as they inevitably do find, that they are ever accepting for
themselves a lowered standard and a dimmer ideal?
I remember a girl whom I had confirmed in Switzerland coming at a later
visit to tell me that, after six months of happy life as a communicant,
she had begun to "fall away," and now seemed to have "lost all
interest." What was she to do? On being questioned, it appeared that at
the end of those six months she had gone to stay with a family in the
country, where there was no English church within any possible distance,
and she said:--
"I missed the services at first, but I _found gradually that I could do
without them_; and so I grew not to mind." I advised her, wherever she
was in future, when not able to attend a service, carefully to use the
Communion Office at eight o'clock, and think of all those who were in
church, and realize her unity with them, and reverently and slowly think
over all the special parts of the service, and she would find herself
eager enough to go to church at the usual time when opportunity again
presented itself, as she would have wished every time she was reading
the service that she was having the complete experience. She would not
"find that she could do without it." Spiritual things are spiritually
discerned. And if we drop away from those means of grace which help us
to be spiritually minded, there will certainly in time be little, if
any, spiritual experiences to show.
This chapter is not, like the others, concerned with Russian people and
affairs; but I have ventured to write it because without it English
Churchmen would not be able to understand fully the influence we are
exercising upon Russian life and thought even now, and which, in far
fuller measure, we are expecting to exercise in the time to come.
The Duma (I was assured in 1911 when calling at the Ministry of the
Interior in Petrograd) have been preparing a Bill for some time to give
the Anglican Church in Russia a legal status and recognition such as it
has never yet had! We shall be glad and thankful enough to have it, but
I am far more happy and grateful in the thought of the real _spiritual_
influence our Church possesses and exercises, even without that legal
status, both in the permanent chaplaincies and in those distant places
visited from time to time.
Just as in its legislation, it is not so much the law as it stands which
determines the state of things social in Russia, as the trend and aim
and purpose of every new enactment, and the present actual life of the
people. All that is in one direction in Russia. Government becomes ever
more and more constitutional. It is the same with respect to religious
life and prospects. There has been no change whatever in the actual
formal and legal relations of the Russian and Anglican Churches; but
surely and evidently, in sympathy, mutual knowledge, regard, and
respect, every year, they are drawing more closely and affectionately
together.
I cannot close this chapter without expressing my deep and grateful
appreciation of the help and support given to our work by the Russia
Society. It is no longer a trading company but still possesses large
funds and, it seems to me, they must all be spent in support of our
Anglican Church in Russia. It is impossible even to think of what that
work would be without the help given to us by the Russia Society, and
the British Factory in Petrograd.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] _Contemporary Review_, November, 1914.