In no other Churches are there so many repetitions, in no other so many
symbols, as in the Orthodox Church. The whole worship is a continual
repetition for thousands of years. In Byzantium was fixed the image of
Christ, His mission, His worship. The whole system of belief and worship
came, fixed and accomplished, over to us Slavs. To keep that system intact
for ever was the first duty taught us by those who brought it. Its tendency
was to impress the image of Christ in the imagination and heart of the
generations as much as possible and always in the same way. We are living
in a world of evil; Christ is leader of the struggle against this evil. Men
lived thousands of years wavering between good and evil, worshipping good
and evil. Now they must be for good. They are educated and accustomed to
weighing things for themselves. Therefore it has become necessary to ask
them every day, every hour even, to confess that they are with Christ. They
must _repeat_ it again and again, in prayers, in signs, in symbols, until
it becomes a new custom, a new education, a new blood and spirit, a new
man, a new earth. They must be reminded in every place and at all times
that they are soldiers of Christ and not of Perun. Churches, shrines,
chapels, ikons, candles, processions, priests, bells, monasteries,
travelling preachers, every day's saints, fast seasons--everything is the
repetition of the same idea, namely, that Christ is the ruler of life and
we are His followers. Christ must be expressed everywhere, indoors and
outdoors. Many Englishmen have remarked that the Bible is read very seldom
in the home in Russia and Serbia. That is true. People read the Bible more
in symbols, pictures and signs, in music and prayers, than in the Book, Our
religion is not a book religion, not even a learned religion. _It is a
dramatic mystery_. The Bible contains the words, but in this dramatic
mystery there is something higher and deeper than words. Slav Christianity
is something greater than the Bible. Looking at an ikon, a Russian _mujik_
perceives the Bible incarnated in a saint's life-drama. Mystery of sin,
mystery of atonement, mystery of heroic suffering, mystery of the daily
presence of Christ among us in holy wine, in holy bread, in holy water, in
holy word, in holy deed, in every sanctified substance, even in matter as
in spirit, mystery of communion of sins and of virtues--all are recorded
once in the Bible, and all are recorded and repeated also in our daily
life--that is what we call our Slav Orthodoxy. We take the mystic outlines
of the Bible and do not care about the details. In those mystic outlines we
put our daily life, with its details of sins and sufferings. We conceive
the Christian religion neither so juristic as the Roman Catholics, nor so
scientific as the Protestants, nor even so reasonable and practical as the
Anglicans, but we conceive it rather as dramatic.