It was not until the decline of the glorious Byzantine Empire that the
Slavs embraced Christianity. For nine hundred years the Greeks were the
principal representatives, protectors, elaborators and explorers of
Christianity. When the Greeks visited the Slav country with their divine
message, the Slavs were heathens. Their heathenism was like a confusing
dream. Nature stood before them with its contradictory forces. The
primitive Slavs regarded all the forces of Nature encircling a human
creature as being alive and stronger than this creature. All the forces,
whether friendly or unfriendly to man, are man like, anthropomorphic, and
none of them are indifferent to human life and doings. The practical
conclusion come to was: men must give sacrifices to both of them, to the
good and to the evil; to the good in order to encourage them to be more
good, to the evil in order to induce them to be less evil. It was necessary
to pray equally to the good as to the evil gods. The best worship was the
best balance between the good and bad spirits; not to offend any of them,
but to be reconciled with all of them! Skilful diplomacy was indeed needed
in worshipping all the terrible, invisible representatives of the forces of
Nature seemingly fighting around man and because of man. And men are too
weak to take their part decisively in one or other fighting camp.
Everything useful or beautiful for men was regarded as being possessed by a
good god or spirit. Everything dangerous and unfriendly was considered to
be possessed by an evil god or spirit. The supreme god Perun, supreme
because the strongest, was considered as acting equally for good and for
evil. The curious fact is that the supreme divinity in every pagan theology
was imagined to be acting equally strongly for good and for evil, as Zeus
Jupiter, Wothan. You cannot call Zeus or Jupiter or Wothan or Perun a
_good_ god, but only a _mighty_ god. With Christianity came into the world,
including the Slav world, decisiveness, and every confusion disappeared.
The Slavs learned to know that they could not serve two masters, but only
one, and that they had not to balance between good and evil but to go
straightway on the side of _good_.
Reality as a Dream.
The Byzantine Emperors promised to the Serbs peace and land in their Empire
in the Balkans if they accepted the Christian faith. And the Serbs accepted
the Christian faith. The Emperors Basil and Constantine agreed to give
their sister in marriage to Vladimir, King of Kieff, if he would embrace
the Christian faith. And King Vladimir embraced the Christian faith. These
may be considered very petty motives! Yet this was not the price to tie the
mighty idol Perun on a horse's tail and to carry him into the water of
Dnieper. The principal motive was the striking reality of the Christian
foundation. The Christian message was like a dream ("We have been in
Heaven," reported the Russian delegates, returning from Saint Sophia)--the
Slavs loved dreams and poetry very much; but the Christian faith was stated
to be a reality, and the Slavs, as men the world over, considered reality
as more solid than any dream. Instead of a nightmare of youthful dreams, as
the Slav pagan theology was, came now a bright poetry warranted both as a
_past_ and _present_ reality.
It will remain as the greatest wonder in history how a poor Man, who
preached in Palestine for about two years, who scarcely had a hundred
followers at the end of His mission, who was crucified and died a shameful
death, whose cause seemed a quite desperate episode, scornfully rejected or
fearfully abandoned by all those who knew it--how this poor Man replaced
successively the mightiest gods the human imagination ever invented: Zeus
in Olympus, Jupiter in the Capitol, Wothan in the North, and at last also
Perun in Kieff. The secret lies, I think, in the reality of His human life,
in the mystery of His resurrection, and in the amazing enthusiasm with
which thousands of His followers afterwards suffered death for Him and His
cause.
However, Christ entered the Slav world in an epoch when, not only one man
after another bowed before Him, but nation after nation. He came to our
ancestors no more as a humble preacher, but as a Lord, under whose feet lay
already conquered Zeus, Jupiter and Wothan. He came to us, not from a poor
Bethlehem cottage, but from the most brilliant temple upon earth, from the
Saint Sophia in Constantinople. He came with a wonderful three-fold
mission, to serve, to fight, to reigning one word, to be "all in all." He
entered the Roman world as a humble servant. I am afraid He remained in
this world for ever only as a servant. But He entered the Slav world as a
Lord, and until to-day He remains there as the Lord.