We are quite conscious that our religion is not solely Christ's work. Every
drop of blood of a Christian martyr is a stone in the work. Every suffering
man with heroic Christian hopes, and every dying human being with
optimistic Christian belief is a collaborator of Christ, or is a founder of
our Church. The Church is not at all solely Christ's work, she is the
collective work of many and many millions who, in the name of Christ,
decisively took part in this mystic race of earthly life. That is just what
Christ wanted and prophesied. That is why He washed the feet of His
disciples.
The work of Tolstoi is the work of a man; Slav Orthodoxy is the work of the
generations. Orthodoxy was first defined by the Christian Jews and Greeks
during the first eight hundred years. During the other thousand years
Orthodoxy was enriched by the Slav Bible, _i.e.,_ by Slav religious
experiences, by Slav martyrs, saints, heroes, by Slav sins and repentances,
by Slav struggles and convulsions for Christ. It is a very large record, a
very large Bible indeed, a wonderful drama, quite new, fresh, original,
although in old forms and words, and signs. Still Slav Orthodoxy is not
self-sufficient. She would become by human inertia self-sufficient, unless
Providence sent her punishment from time to time. Tolstoi was for Orthodoxy
a punishment. He was like a whirlwind which pulls down many things but at
the same time purifies the unhealthy air. He was not at all a demon, but a
man sent by God to help our Church; and he helped very much indeed--as all
the sects and critics of Christianity from the beginning have helped the
Christian cause, ridiculing and exposing the Christian Paganism manifested
in ecclesiastical pride, in superstitions, prejudices, intolerance, etc.
What are the present needs of Slav Orthodoxy? Oh, her needs are great, her
thirst is immense. She does not need so much what Tolstoi proposed for her,
or what Harnack could give her, neither does she thirst after the stricter
and clearer juristic definitions, nor after a "sweet reasonableness," as
Matthew Arnold expressed Christ's being, a new theology or a new worship.
She needs more Christian dramas blended in one. She needs more of Christ on
earth, more votes for Christ, all the votes for Christ instead of dividing
them between Olympus and Golgotha. She needs to be united with all other
Churches in one Christ-like body and spirit, in order that all the pieces
of a broken mirror may be recomposed and that Christ could see in it His
whole face. She is thirsty for more stigmata, more suffering, more sins.
Yes, she is thirsty for more sins, I say, and more virtues; she likes to
have all the sins and all the virtues of the world confessed and recognised
as the common burden and common good. She is thirsty for a communion of
sins and virtues among men, she is thirsty to call you _brothers_. She is
thirsty to cry in exaltation to every man under the sun: "Poor child, give
me just your sins (you don't need them) and I will give you my virtues, in
order that I may be ashamed of your sins and you may be proud of my
virtues."
For centuries Slav Orthodoxy seemed to the Western world like an immobile
tortoise with a multi-coloured shell and with no great probability of its
being inhabited by a living being. The outside world looked at this
multi-coloured, hard and unchangeable shell, sometimes with love, sometimes
with horror--always with an intense curiosity and almost always with a
doubt that there could be any living thing in it. I will try to show you
that there was and still is a living being contained therein, with many
more movements, dissatisfactions, convulsions, longings and sufferings than
it seems possible could exist.