I
In the Middle Ages, when Christianity was still young, there was much
more hospitality than to-day. The crusader and the palmer needed no
introduction to obtain entertainment at a strange man's house. The
doors of castle or cottage, of monastery or cell, were always on the
latch to the wanderer, and not only to those performing sacred dues
but to the vagabond, the minstrel, the messenger, the tradesman, even
to crabbed Isaac of York.
Since those days it has become clear that the thirty pieces of silver
not only sold the author of Christianity but Christianity itself. As
my Little-Russian deacon said, "Money has come between us and made us
work more and love less. We are gathered together, not for love but
for mutual profit. It is all the difference between conviviality and
gregariousness." The deacon was right, and when one comes upon
the Middle Ages, as yet untouched, in Russia, one reflects with a
sigh--"The whole of Europe, even England, was like this once." One
says with Arnold--
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Day by day, as we live, we see the disintegration of that which
Christianity means, the shattering of that brotherly love that makes
men nations and nations the children of God. Not without truth did
Shylock say of his money that he made it breed. The pieces of silver
have bred well; they jingle to-day in the pockets of millions of
betrayers.
These thirty pieces did not pass out of currency, though the land that
they bought was left desolate. They passed from hand to hand among
the covetous throughout the first centuries of Christianity. The Jews
clung to them as if they were life itself; but the early Christians,
having something very much better than money to live for, coveted them
not. And as long as the money remained with the Jews Christianity
flourished. The two symbols opposed one another, and there was no
question but that the Cross triumphed. Only when the Christians turned
their backs on the Cross and hankered after the silver did the eternal
nature of the betrayal manifest itself. When the Saracens began to be
fought, not only by swords and faith but by the aid of Jewish money,
and with the pomp and circumstance of war, then already Judas had been
to the priests. When the knight or baron bequeathed the thirty Jewish
pieces to the monastery Judas was already kissing the Master. When the
hand that held the Cross loosened to take the silver, when the monks
took the treasure of Earth and relinquished the treasure of Heaven,
Jesus was already taken. It was but a short way to the crucifixion.
The silver profiteth no man.
Where are the thirty pieces of silver now? Where are they not? When
the rich holiday-maker comes scattering money in peaceful mountain
valleys; when the peasant's son, infected by the idea of money, comes
to town for his thirty shillings a week; when for the want of another
thirty shillings he refuses to marry; when to save his mind some
evangelical society--so called--accepts thirty shillings "charity";
when the millionaire leaves thirty thousand pounds to the hospitals to
save his body; when a minister is paid three hundred pounds a year to
save his soul; when a member of Parliament receives thirty pounds a
month to remedy his social wrongs; when the love of the country girl
he should have married is won by some rich man who thinks he can pay
for it--on all these occasions and yet more, to examples innumerable,
the curse of Judas shows itself, till every brick of our evil
industrial cities is shown mortared round in bright silver hate.
* * * * *
As I write these lines one question is very urgent in the minds of
Englishmen, that of the disestablishment and partial disendowment of a
church. Once more the thirty pieces appear to be in the coffers of the
church and they are attracting the curse. There is only one way for
that church; it is to give up to the spoiler not only that which
is demanded of it but all the material wealth it possesses, its
endowments, estates, houses, palaces, sacred edifices; to lay down
everything and be simply, for the moment, a church in the hand of God.
As for disestablishment, the sooner Christians dissociate themselves
from secular names and titles the better. The Christian church is one
established for ever, upon a rock, and those who compose that church
are they who love their neighbour as a brother.
We have hope of new life, otherwise it were folly to write at all. The
great distress which the modern commercial life causes the individual
soul is perhaps a blessing in disguise; it causes the individual to
pause and think, causes him to rebel, to try and imagine a way to true
salvation. For, despite Progress and the benefit our posterity is
supposed to be going to derive from it, it is an undisguisable fact
that life, the wonderful and strange gift given to the individual
perhaps once in an eternity, is being used without profit, without
pause, without wonder. We are like people who have lost their memories
on the way to a feast, and our steps, in which is only dimly felt
the remembrance of a purpose, take us nowhither. We loiter in musty
waiting-rooms, are frustrated by mobs, and foiled by an eternal
clamour. We have forgotten the feast and occupy ourselves in all
manner of foolish and irrelevant ways. Only now and again, struck
by the absurdity of our occupations, we grope after our lost
consciousness and feel somehow that somewhere out beyond is our real
destination, that somewhere out there a feast is proceeding, that a
cover is laid for us and dishes served, that though we are absent the
master calls a toast to us and sends messengers to find us.
* * * * *
The _somewhere-out-beyond_ has for me been Russia. I do not suggest
that it is Russia for every one. There are many tables at the feast,
and the messenger sent after the absent must tell of those who sit at
his own table. I think there is the same wine and the same fare at all
tables. I tell of the hospitality of Russia, the hospitality of mind
and of hand found amongst a simple people.
In October 1911 I arrived as a pilgrim at the monastery of Novy Afon,
or, to translate the Russian into more recognisable terms, New Athos,
and I obtained the hospitality of the monks.
There are three sorts of monasteries in Russia, one where there is
great store of gold and precious stones as in Troitsky Lavra near
Moscow, another where there are ancient relics and ikons of miraculous
power as at Solovetz, and a third where there is neither the
distinction of gold nor of relics, where the power of the monks lies
in their living actual work and prayer. To the last-named category
belongs Novy Afon.
It is very likely that the immense wealth of the other monasteries may
invite the hand of the spoiler. Even now the monks are notorious for
drunkenness and corruptibility: the institutions are moribund, and
there is no doubt that if revolution had overturned the Tsardom the
rich monasteries like the Troitsky would have been sacked. Perhaps
even Novy Afon and many another spiritual mother would have shared
a common fate with their depraved sisters. That is as may be. The
Revolution did not succeed and could not, because the common peasantry
still prayed in the temples which the Revolutionaries would have
destroyed. The living church of Russia required its buildings even
though the caretakers of these buildings were in some cases false
stewards.
But there is no question of false stewards at Novy Afon. It is a place
where a Luther might serve and feel no discontent, a place of new
life. It looks into the future with eyes that see visions, and
stretches forward to that future with hands that are creative; an
institution with no past but only a present and an idea, not acting by
precedent or tradition but taking its inspiration straight from life's
sources.