THE BIBLE.
A learned father of the ancient rite made some remarks to me on the
Bible in Russia, which live in my mind as parts of the picture of this
great country.
I knew that our Bible Society have a branch in Petersburg, and that
copies of the New Testament and the Psalms have been scattered,
through their agency, from the White Sea to the Black; but, being well
aware that the right to found that branch of our Society in Russia was
originally urged by men of the world in London upon men of the same
class in St. Petersburg, and that the ministers of Alexander the First
gave their consent in a time of war, when they wanted English help in
men and money against the French, I supposed that the purposes in view
had been political, and that this heavenly seed was cast into
ungrateful soil. I had no conception of the good which our Society has
been doing in silence for so many years.
"The Scriptures which came to us from England," said this priest,
"have been the mainstay, not of our religion only, but of our national
life."
"Then they have been much read?"
"In thousands, in ten thousands of pious homes. The true Russian likes
his Bible--yes, even better than his dram--for the Bible tells him of
a world beyond his daily field of toil, a world of angels and of
spirits, in which he believes with a nearer faith than he puts in the
wood and water about his feet. In every second house of Great
Russia--the true, old Russia, in which we speak the same language and
have the same God--you will find a copy of the Bible, and men who have
the promise in their hearts."
In my journey through the country I find this true, though not so much
in the letter as in the spirit. Except in New England and in Scotland,
no people in the world, so far as they can read at all, are greater
Bible-readers than the Russians.
In thinking of Russia we forget the time when she was free, even as
she is now again growing free, and take scant heed of the fact that
she possessed a popular version of Scripture, used in all her churches
and chapels, long before such a treasure was obtained by England,
Germany, and France.
"Love for the Bible and love for Russia," said the priest, "go with us
hand in hand, as the Tsar in his palace and the monk in his convent
know. A patriotic government gives us the Bible, a monastic government
takes it away."
"What do you mean by a patriotic government and a monastic government,
when speaking of the Bible?"
"By a patriotic government, that of Alexander the First and Alexander
the Second; by a monastic government, that of Nicolas. The first
Alexander gave us the Bible; Nicolas took it away; the second
Alexander gave it us again. The first Alexander was a prince of gentle
ways and simple thoughts--a mystic, as men of worldly training call a
man who lives with God. Like all true Russians, he had a deep and
quick perception of the presence of things unseen. In the midst of his
earthly troubles--and they were great--he turned into himself. He was
a Bible-reader. In the Holy Word he found that peace which the world
could neither give nor take away; and what he found for himself he set
his heart on sharing with his children everywhere. Consulting Prince
Golitsin, then his minister of public worship, he found that pious and
noble man--Golitsin was a Russian--of his mind. They read the Book
together, and, seeing that it was good for them, they sent for
Stanislaus, archbishop of Mohiloff, and asked him why people should
not read the Bible, each man for himself, and in his native tongue? Up
to that time our sacred books were printed only in Bulgaric; a
Slavonic speech which people used to understand; but which is now an
unknown dialect, even to the popes who drone it every day from the
altar steps. Two English doctors--the good Patterson and the good
Pinkerton--brought us the New Testament, printed in the Russian
tongue; and, by help of the Tsar and his council, scattered the copies
into every province and every town, from the frontiers of Poland to
those of China. I am an old man now; but my veins still throb with the
fervor of that day when we first received, in our native speech, the
word that was to bring us eternal life. The books were instantly
bought up and read; friends lent them to each other; and family
meetings were held, in which the Promise was read aloud. The popes
explained the text; the elders gave out chapter and verse. Even in
parties which met to drink whisky and play cards, some neighbor would
produce his Bible, when the company gave up their games to listen
while an aged man read out the story of the passion and the cross.
That story spoke to the Russian heart; for the Russ, when left alone,
has something of the Galilean in his nature--a something soft and
feminine, almost sacrificial; helping him to feel, with a force which
he could never reach by reasoning, the patient beauty of his
Redeemer's life and death."
"And what were the effects of this Bible-reading?"
"Who can tell! You plant the acorn, your descendants sit beneath the
oak. One thing it did for us, which we could never have done without
its help--the Bible drove the Jesuits from our midst--and if we had it
now in every house it would drive away these monks."
The story of the battle of the Bible Society and the Order of Jesus
may be read in Joly, and in other writers. When that Order was
suppressed in Rome, and the Fathers were banished from every Catholic
state in Europe, a remnant was received into Russia by the insane
Emperor Paul, who took them into his favor in the hope of vexing the
Roman Court, and of making them useful agents in his Catholic
provinces. Well they repaid him for the shelter given--not only in the
Polish cities, but in the privatest recesses of his home. Father
Gruber is said to have been familiar with every secret of the palace
under Paul. These exiles were a band of outlaws, living in defiance of
their spiritual chief and of their temporal prince; but while they
clung with unslackening grasp to the great traditions of their
Society, they sought, by visible service to mankind, the means of
overcoming the hostility of popes and kings. No honest writer will
deny that they were useful to the Russians in a secular sense,
whatever trouble they may have caused them in a religious sense. They
brought into this country the light of science and the love of art
then flourishing in the West; and the colleges which they opened for
the education of youth were far in advance of the native schools. They
built their schools at Moscow, Riga, Petersburg, Odessa, on the banks
of the Volga, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. They sought to be
useful in a thousand ways; in the foreign colony, at the military
station, in the city prison, at the Siberian mine. They went out as
doctors and as teachers. They followed the army into Astrakhan, and
toiled among the Kozaks of the Don; but while they labored to do good,
they labored in a foreign and offensive spirit. To the Russ people
they were strangers and enemies; subjects of a foreign prince, and
members of a hostile church. Some ladies of the court went over to
their rite; a youth of high family followed these court ladies; then
the clergy took alarm, and raised their voices against the strangers.
What offended the Russians most of all was the assumption by these
Jesuits of the name of missionaries, as though the people were a
savage horde not yet reclaimed to God and His Holy Church. Unhappily
for the fathers, this title was expressly forbidden to the Catholic
clergy by Russian law, and this assumption was an act of disobedience
which left them at the mercy of the crown.
But while the Emperor Paul was kind to them, these acts were passed in
silence, and Alexander seemed unlikely to withdraw his favor from his
father's friends. The issue of a New Testament in the native speech
brought on the conflict and insured their fate.
Following the traditions of their Order, the Jesuits heard the
proposal to print the Bible in the Russian tongue, so that every man
should read it for himself, with fear, and armed themselves to oppose
the scheme. They spoke, they wrote, they preached against it. Calling
it an error, they showed how much it was disliked in Rome. They said
it was an English invasion of the country; and they stirred up the
popes to attack it; saying it would be the ruin, not only of the Roman
clergy, but of the Greek.
Alexander's eyes were opened to the character of his guests. The Bible
was a comfort to himself, and why should others be refused the
blessing he had found? Who were these men, that they should prevent
his people reading the Word of Life?
A dangerous question for the Tsar to ask; for Prince Golitsin was
close at hand with his reply. The worst day's work the Jesuits had
ever done was to disturb this prince's family by converting his nephew
to the Roman Church. Golitsin called it seduction; and seduction from
the national faith is a public crime. When, therefore, Alexander came
to ask who these men were, Golitsin answered that they were teachers
of false doctrine; disturbers of the public peace; men who were
banished by their sovereigns; a body disbanded by their popes. And
then, in spite of their good deeds, they were sent away--first from
Moscow and Petersburg, afterwards from every city of the empire. Their
expulsion was one of the most popular acts of a long and glorious
reign.
The Jesuit writers lay the blame of their expulsion on the Bible
Societies.
From other sources I learn that the New Testament was free until
Alexander's death, and that the copies found their way into every city
and village of the land. With the death of Alexander the First came a
change. After the conspiracy of 1825, the new Emperor listened to his
black clergy, and the Bible was placed under close arrest.
The Russian Bible Society was called a Russian parliament. All parties
in the state were represented on the board of management; Orthodox
bishops sitting next to Old Believers, and Old Believers next to
Dissenting priests. The Bible, in which they all believed, was a
common ground, on which they could meet and exchange the words of
peace. But Nicolas, ruling by the sword, had no desire to see these
boards pursuing their active and independent course; and his monks had
little trouble in persuading him to replace the Bible by an official
Book of Saints.