The present time should be one of self criticism. The European race now needs this self-criticism more than any other race, and the Christian Church needs it more than any other religion in the world, for before this War the European race set itself up as the critic of the defects and insufficiencies of all other races, and the Christian Church exalted herself over all other religions "as high as the heaven is exalted over the earth." The other races and religions thought that behind this proud criticism of Christian Europe there must be at least a well-possessed security for the world-peace. Of course it was an illusion. On no continent was the peace of mankind more endangered than in Europe, the very metropolis of Christianity and Christian civilisation. And it has been so not only during the last few years, it has been the case during the last thousand years, that Europe has represented a greater contrast to peace than any other continent. During the last thousand years history can report more wars, more bloodshed, and more criminal unrest in Christian Europe than in the heathen countries of the Far East—China, Japan, and India. It is a very humiliating fact, both for the white race and for its religion, but, nevertheless, it is a fact. This humiliating fact should rouse us in the present painful times to the consideration of our own defects and insufficiencies. Europe is sick, and her Church is sick too. How can a wounded man be healed unless his wounds are unveiled? Europe's soul is sick, therefore her body is so sorely suffering and bleeding. Well, Europe's soul is nothing else than Europe's religion, but the religion of Europe to-day is not Europe's guide and lord, it is Europe's most obedient servant.
Patriotism and Imperialism—qualities more physical than spiritual—were the worst enemies of the primitive Church, as I tried to show in my previous chapters. Well, Patriotism and Imperialism have been the most prominent qualities of modern Europe. Now compare the primitive Church with the modern Church: the primitive Church fought most tenaciously and heroically against the exclusive Patriotism of the Jews and against the Imperialism of the Romans, and the modern Church serves very obediently modern Patriotism and Imperialism! I wish I were wrong in what I am stating now, but, alas! the facts are too obvious, both the facts of this War, and the facts of previous peace.
Here are the facts:
When Austria mobilised against Serbia and declared War, the Church in Austria did not protest against it, but, on the contrary, she supported the Vienna Government with all her heart and means.
It is well known how much the Church of Germany, both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, unanimously and strongly supported the War policy of the Kaiser's Government—the very policy of a blind exclusiveness and a regardless Imperialism.
The Governments of Russia and Great Britain declared War against their enemies without consulting their respective Churches, yet the Churches of both countries have done their best to help their "country's cause."
The Churches of France, Italy, Serbia, Rumania, Belgium, and Bulgaria have been at the disposal of the War Governments of their countries.
Now we have almost the same denominations of religion on each fighting side (it is, however, significant that the whole Anglican Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are on the side of the Allies), so that we cannot say it is a War of Protestants against Catholics, nor of the Orthodox against the Modernists, nor of the Episcopalians against the Presbyterians, nor even of the Christians against Mohamedans (because on both sides we have Christians and Mohammedans). No, we cannot say that, for it is not a War of one Church against the other, nor of one religion against another; it is a War of Patriotism against Patriotism, of Patriotism against Imperialism, and of Imperialism against Imperialism. The Churches are only the tools of Patriotism or Imperialism. Not one of the Churches has stated her standpoint as a different one from the standpoint of its respective Government. The Churches have simply adopted the standpoint of the Government. They seemed to have no standpoint of their own concerning this War between nations. As if the War were quite a surprisingly new event in history!
When the Austrian Government declared war on Serbia, the Church of Austria adopted the standpoint of the Austrian Government as the right one. The Serbian Church adopted the standpoint of the Serbian Government, of course, as the right one. So it happened that the Churches in Austria and Serbia prayed to the same God, and against each other.
The Church of Germany stood up against the Church of Russia because the German Government stood up against the Russian Government. Neither could the Church of Germany raise any protest against the warlike German Government, nor could the Church of Russia say anything to cancel what the Russian Government had already said. And so it happened that the Churches of Germany and Russia prayed to the same God for each other's destruction.
The Churches of France, England, Belgium, and Italy have fully recognised the justice of the Governments of France, Belgium, and Italy concerning the War of those countries against other countries, whose justice on the other hand has been fully recognised by their Churches. And so it has happened that during the last three years the most contradictory prayers have been sent to God in Heaven from the "One, Holy, Catholic Church" on earth.
The Churches of the different countries adopted the standpoint of those countries which governed them. What is the consequence if a Christian Church adopts the standpoint of a worldly Government as the true one? It means practically nothing else but that the said Church recognises that standpoint as the Christian one.
Now, if the German policy is right, the German Church is right, and consequently, the Russian Church is wrong; and, on the other hand, if the Russian policy is right the Russian Church is right, and, consequently, the German Church is wrong. The same, if the Serbian Patriotism, which dictates the Serbian policy, is right, then the Serbian Church, too, is right; and if the Austro-German Imperialism is right, then the Austro-German Churches are right, and the Church in Serbia wrong. Of course the same could be said for other belligerent Churches, i.e., the justice or injustice of the Church of England depended on the justice or injustice of the English Government, and the same about the French, Belgian, and Italian Churches, which are dependent on the justice or injustice of their respective Governments. The same is true not only of the so-called established Churches, but of the Disestablished as well. The great fact remains: no Church whatever did protest against the War action taken by the respective Governments; no Church whatever refused to do the War work she was asked to do, and, finally, no Church whatever opposed her views to the views of the Governments. In one word, no Christian Church now existing has declined to be the very obedient servant either of Patriotism or Imperialism. Future generations will be, I hope, more truly Christian than we have been—they will be shocked to read in the history of the greatest and bloodiest conflict in the world's history, that the worldly Governments, and not the Christian Church, formulated the truth; in other words, that the politicians and soldiers were bearers and formulators of the truth, and that the Church was only a follower and supporter of that truth, this truth having to wage War in consequence, i.e. the disobedience of all God's ten Commandments—not to speak of the New Testament—which truth must be condemned by the Church as untrue. Following to the extreme the ideals of Patriotism and Imperialism, the Churches partially did not shrink even from preaching War as a legal thing. The court preacher of the Kaiser, preaching in the Domchurch at Berlin after the Allie's refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Germany, said: "We have spoken to our enemies (read, the enemies of German Imperialism), and they did not listen to our words; well, let our guns talk now until our enemies are compelled to listen to us!" That is the voice of a great Church. Yet this voice has not remained unaccompanied with similar warlike and unchristian voices from other great and small Churches.
Why did not the Church—the educator of Europe for the space of nineteen hundred years—why did she not protest against this War?
Because she was too weak everywhere; and, even if she had protested, her voice would not have been listened to.
But why was the Church so weak as to be silent at a most fatal moment in history, and to have to listen to the Foreign and War Offices to know what the truth was?
Because she was not a united, universal Church, like a lofty mountainous continent despising all the storms of an angry ocean around. She was weak, because she was cut in pieces and had become like an archipelago of small islands in a stormy ocean.
The Churches were not prepared to protest, they were prepared only to surrender to any temporal power. Therefore, they surrendered altogether, without making any effort, to Patriotism and Imperialism.
But what led to the Churches' surrender? It was through their internal quarrels; through their fruitless controversies and paralysing mutual accusations and self-sufficiency.
For instance:
The Eastern Church proudly insisted on her superiority over all other Churches, because she preserved faithfully and unchangingly the most ancient traditions of Christianity, and because she had an episcopal decentralised system of Church administration, which has been capable of adapting itself to all political and social situations. She reserved perfection only for herself, and was prodigious in criticising other Christian communities. She became an isolated island.
The Roman Church has had nothing to do with any other Church, living in her isolation and raising higher and higher the walls which separated her from other Churches. She has a wonderful record of missionary work in Europe and outside; she has a minutely organised centralisation, with an infallible autocrat at the head; and she has an enlarged dogmatic system, larger than any other Church. She pointed out again and again her superiority to all other Christian communities, and claimed for herself the exclusive right to speak in the name of Jesus Christ. Thus she became an isolated island.
The Anglican Church repudiated the papal authority. She repudiated as well the Eastern worship of the saints and use of ikons on the one side, and on the other she repudiated all the extremes of Protestantism in teaching, worship and administration. She thought in that way to be the absolutely true Christian organism, incomparably better than any other all around. Thus the Anglican Church became an isolated island too.
The Protestants of the Continent, and of England and Scotland, thought to save the Christian religion in its integrity by bringing it back to its primitive simplicity. By repudiating the Pope and the Bishops, by shortening the Christian dogmatic, and by reducing worship to a minimum, they boasted of restoring the true Church of Christ and His Apostles. Everything which was an addition to their simplicity was regarded by them either as unnecessary, or even as idolatrous and false. Thus the Presbyterian and Protestant Nonconformist Churches became isolated islands.
But the more the morselling of Christianity went on, the more dangerous became the raging ocean around it, so that now the Christian Archipelago seems to be quite covered with the stormy waves. The Church, therefore, is in an agony everywhere. Even if the Church had no responsibility upon her shoulders for the present bloodshed in Europe, she would be in agony, just because the whole Christian world is in agony, but much more so because a great deal of responsibility for it must rest on her shoulders.
The Christian monks of old used to castigate themselves when a great plague came over the world. They used to consider themselves as the real cause of the plague, and did not accuse anybody else. Well, this extreme method ought to be used now by the Churches, for the good of mankind and for their own good. It would be quite enough to bring the dawning of a new day for Christianity if this self-castigation of the Churches were only a self-criticism.
If, for instance, the Eastern Church would say: Although I have preserved faithfully and unchangingly the most ancient traditions of Christianity, still I have many faults and insufficiencies. I have much to learn from the Roman Church, how to bring all my sections, all my national and provincial branches into closer touch; and from Anglicanism I have to learn the wonderful spirit of piety, expressed not only in old times, but even in quite modern times through new prayers, new hymns, new Psalms, added to the old ones; and from Protestantism I have to learn the courage to look every day to the very heart of religion in its simplest and most common expressions.
Or, if the Roman Church would use this self-criticism, saying: My concentration is my strength and my weakness. Perhaps, after all, my Pope is more a Caesaristic than a Christian Institution, making more for worldly Imperialism than for the Spirituality of the world. I have to learn from the Christian East more humility, and from Anglicanism more respect for human freedom and social democracy, and from Protestantism a more just appreciation of human efforts and results in science and civilisation generally.
Or, if the Anglican Church would use self-criticism like this, and say, I am, of course, an Apostolic Church, but I am not the only Church. I have to learn from the Eastern Church something, and from the Church of Rome something, but, above all, I have to learn that they are the Apostolic Churches as well as I, and that I am, without them, too small an island, and unable to resist alone the flood of patriotic and imperialistic tendencies. And from the Protestants I have to learn to put the living Christ above all doctrinal statements and liturgical mysteries.
Or, if the Protestants of all classes would abandon their contemptuous attitude towards so-called ecclesiasticism and ritualism, and criticise themselves, saying: We have had too much confidence in human reason and human words. Our worship is bare of every thing but the poor human tongue. We have excluded Nature from our worship, though Nature is purer, more innocent and worthier to come before the face of God than men. We have been frightened by candles and incense, and vestments, and signs, and symbols, and sacraments, but now we see that the mystery of life and of our religion is too deep to be spoken out clearly in words only. And we have been frightened by the episcopal administration of the Church, but now we see that the episcopal system is a golden midway between the papal and our extremes. Besides, we have gone too far in our criticism of the Church tradition and of the Holy Scriptures. We have to learn to abstain from calling the Eastern Church idolatrous and the Roman Church tyrannical, and the Episcopal Church inconsistent. We have our own idolatries (our idols are: individualism, human reason, and the human word); and we have our own tyranny (the tyranny of criticism and pride); and we have—thank god—our own inconsistencies.
Such a self-criticism would mean really a painful self-castigation, because it would mean a reaction from a policy of criticism and self-sufficiency which has lasted a thousand years, ever since the 16th July 1054—the very fatal date when the Pope's delegates put an Excommunication Bull on the altar of St Sophia's in Constantinople. The primitive monks, who practised self-castigation because of the world-evil, experienced a wonderful purification of soul, a new vision of God, and an extraordinary sense of unity with all men, living and dead. Well, that is just what the Church needs at present; a purification, a new vision of God, and a sense of unity.
The present agony of the Church has resulted from an illusion which has been common to all the Churches, i.e. that one of the Churches could be saved without all other Churches. It is, in fact, only the enlarged Protestant theory of individualism, which found its expression, especially in Germany, in the famous formula: "Thou, man, and thy God!" It is an anti-social and anti-Christian formula too, quite opposed to the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father," which is in the plural and not in the singular possessive. This prayer is a symbol of our salvation: we can be saved only in the plural, not in the singular; only collectively, not as individuals: i.e. we can be saved, but I cannot be saved. I cannot be saved without thee, and thou canst not be saved without me. For if thou art in need I can be saved only by helping thee; and vice versa, if I am in need, thou canst save thyself only by saving me. And we all, and always, are in need of each other. Peter could not be saved without Andrew, and John and James, nor could the others be saved without Peter. That is why Christ brought them all together, and educated them to live and pray together, and spoke to them in assembly as to one being. If Christ's method were like the German Protestant method, "Thou, man, and thy God!" He would really never have gathered the disciples together, but He would have gone to Andrew and saved Andrew first; and then to Peter and saved Peter; and then to John and James and the others, and saved them individually, one by one. That is just what He did not—because He could not do it. He knew, and He said (speaking of the two Commandments), that God is only one constituent of our salvation, and that the other constituent is our neighbours. What does that mean, but that I cannot be saved without God and my neighbours? And my neighbours! The whole of mankind must become the mystical body of Christ before any one of us is saved. If ninety nine of us think we are saved, still we must wait in the corridor of Heaven until the one lost sheep is found and brought in; the door of Heaven does not open for one person only. And speaking in larger circles we may say: If ninety-nine Churches think they are saved, still they must wait in the corridor of Heaven until the one retrograde Church has become the member of the mystical body of Christ. The door of Heaven is open for Christ only and for nobody else. And the mystical Christ does not mean one righteous man only, or two, or twelve, or one Church denomination, or one generation—no. It means milliards and milliards of human beings. All the Churches are inbuilt into His body. This building is yet far from being finished, still it is much larger and more magnificent than we think. It is larger than a denomination, it is loftier than our nation, or our race, or our Empire; yea, it is stronger than Europe.
Consequently, the Church of England cannot be saved without the Church of the East, nor the Church of Rome without Protestantism; nor can England be saved without Serbia, nor Europe without China, nor America without Africa, nor this generation without the generations past and those to come. We are all one life, one organism. If one part of this organism is sick, all other parts should be suffering. Therefore let the healthy parts of the Church take care of the sick ones. Self-sufficiency means the postponement of the end of the world and the prolongation of human sufferings. It is of no use to change Churches and go from one Church to another seeking salvation: salvation is in every Church as long as a Church thinks and cares in sisterly love for all other Churches, looking upon them as parts of the same body, or there is salvation in no Church so long as a Church thinks and cares only for herself, contemptuously denying the rights, beauty, truth and merits of all other Churches. It is a great thing to love one's Church, as it is a great thing to love one's country, but it is much better to love other Churches and other countries too. Now, in this time, when the whole Christian world is in a convulsive struggle one part against the other, now or never the consciousness of the desire for one Church of Christ on earth should dawn in our souls, and now or never should the appreciation, right understanding and love for each part of this one Church of Christ on earth should dawn in our souls, and now or never should the appreciation, right understanding and love for each part of this one Church begin in our hearts.
Stick to your Church: it is a beautiful and a holy Church, but, nevertheless, break up every sort of disgraceful exclusiveness from other Churches. That is the way to bring the Church out of the present agony and weakness. That is the best way for you to serve your own Church and your own nation. And the Crucified does not ask any other service from your Church in the present world agony.
What is the Church, psychologically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A school of the Christian spirit. That is her first task in the world.
2. She is the Body of Christ. That is her official and physical determination—her firm, her name.
3. She is the living Christ Himself, i.e. Christ's body (consisting of all the human bodies inside the Church organisation), and Christ's spirit (filling all the human bodies inside the Church). That is her ideal, her end, her Horeb.
What is the Church, sociologically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A Theocracy. That is her general virtue, which she shares with all the religions in history.
2. She is a Christocracy. God is the abstract Ruler of Humanity, but Christ is the pragmatic God, leading, enlightening, encouraging and inspiring Humanity. That is the Church's special charter, special way, different from the charters and ways of other religions.
She is a Sanctocracy. The saints ought to lead mankind—not the great men of the world, but the saints. But when all men become saintly, no special leaders will be needed: no authority, no state, no law, no punishment. All men will do their over-duty, and all will be happy in their neighbour's happiness. The fight for right is an inferior stage in human history. It is a savage fight. But there will come a fight for over-duty. It will be a smiling, pleasant fight.
What is the Church, historically viewed?
The Church is:
1. A heresy regarding Judaism and Paganism, a real, deep heresy. Not so deep was the outward gulf as the inward. Outwardly, this heresy made a thousand compromises with Judaism and Paganism. That did not matter. But inwardly it was a new, an absolutely new and most uncompromising spirit with anything in the world.
2. She was a heresy regarding the whole practical life of mankind: politics, society, art, war, education, nationalism, imperialism, science. She meant the most obstinate conflict between what exists and what ought to exist. Therefore her martyrdom is quite comprehensible.
3. She was built up and applied to human life by the Graeco-Hebrew spirit. Yet she has become the European religion, par excellence, almost exclusively European. That is her historical development and fate. Europe's acceptance of Christianity is nominally definite. No other Asiatic religion (all great religions are Asiatic) has had any notable success in Europe. Yet Europe's mission of Christianity has been no success. St Paul has done more for the Christian mission than the whole of modern Europe. Historically, Christianity has been and has remained until now the religion of the European race only.
What is the Church viewed from the point of view of the world war?
The Church is:
1. The only keeper of the secret of the present war. The present war is the result of the de-christianisation of Europe, and de-christianisation of Europe's Church. The Church only is conscious of this fact and keeps silent. She has no courage to accuse because she has no courage to self-accuse.
2. She is the only thing which makes European civilisation not lower than the civilisation of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and China. The ruins of those ancient civilisations are more magnificent than the actual constructions of Europe. But the Church gives Europe a special nimbus and a special excellency over those ancient worlds. Secular Europe does not know that, but the Church knows it and keeps silent. She cannot announce it because she has sinned. Her sins keep her tongue-tied.
3. Nothing is sure to survive the present catastrophe of Europe, but the Christian Church. None of the European potencies has the idea for the reconstruction of the world, for durable and Godlike world-peace, but the Church.
Socialism, Masonry, Philanthropy, Rousseauism,—all these are only small units of the great treasury that the Christian Church hides under her clouds and dust of errors and miseries. All non-Christian systems and schemes mean, my own interest first and then thine, or first I and my nation and my race, and then thou and thy nation and thy race, or, my happiness and, along with it, thy happiness. The Christian idea hidden in the Church is a revolutionary one, the most revolutionary idea in the world. The Christian idea is, thou and thy nation and thy race first, and then me and my nation and my race; or, thy happiness first and in thy happiness my happiness. Saintliness above everything, the true saintliness including goodness and sacrifice. That is the fundamental idea of the Church. That is the only constructive, Godlike treasury that Europe still possesses, the sleeping, never used, never tried treasury. The Church is the keeper of this treasury. This treasury must survive the old Europe and the old Church, the de-christianised Europe and the de-christianised Church.
The poverty of European civilisation has been revealed by this war. The ugly nakedness of Europe has brought to shame all those who used to bow before Europe's mask. It was a silken shining mask hiding the inner ugliness and poverty of Europe. The mask was called: culture, civilisation, progress, modernism. All was only vanitas vanitatum and povertas povertatum. When the soul fled away, what remained was empty, ugly and dangerous. When religion plunged into impotence, then:
Science became a mask of pride.Art—a mask of vanity.Politics—a mask of selfishness.Laws—a mask of greediness.Theology—a mask of scepticism.Technical knowledge—a poor surrogate for spirituality.Journalism—a desperate surrogate for literature.Literature—a sick nostalgy and a nonsense, a dwarf-acrobacy.Civilisation—a pretext for imperialism.Fight for right—an atavistic formula of the primitive creeds.Morals—the most controversial matter.Individualism—the second name for egoism and egotism.
Christ—a banished beggar looking for a shelter, while in the royal and pharisaic palaces lived: Machiavelli, the atheist; Napoleon, the atheist; Marx, the atheist; and Nietsche, the atheist, imperially ruling Europe's rulers.
The spirit was wrong and everything became wrong. The spirit of any civilisation is inspired by its religion, but the spirit of modern Europe was not inspired by Europe's religion at all. A terrific effort was made in many quarters to liberate Europe from the spirit of her religion. The effort-makers forgot one thing, i.e. that no civilisation ever was liberated from religion and still lived. Whenever this liberation seemed to be fulfilled, the respective civilisation decayed and died out, leaving behind barbaric materialism in towns and superstitions in villages. Europe had to live with Christianity, or to die in barbaric materialism and superstitions without it. The way to death was chosen. From Continental Europe first the infection came to the whole white race. It was there that the dangerous formula was pointed out: "Beyond good and evil." Other parts of the white world followed slowly, taking first the path between Good and Evil. Good was changed for Power. Evil was explained away as Biological Necessity. The Christian religion, which inspired the greatest things that Europe ever possessed in every point of human activity, was degraded by means of new watchwords; individualism, liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, imperialism, secularism, which in essence meant nothing out de-christianisation of the European society, or, in other words, emptiness of European civilisation. Europe abandoned the greatest things she possessed and clung to the lower and lowest ones. The greatest thing was—Christ.
As you cannot imagine Arabic civilisation in Spain without Islam, or India's civilisation without Hinduism, or Rome without the Roman Pantheon, so you cannot imagine Europe's civilisation without Christ. Yet some people thought that Christ was not so essentially needed for Europe, and behaved accordingly without Him or against Him. Christ was Europe's God. When this God was banished (from politics, art, science, social life, business, education), everybody consequently asked for a God, and everybody thought himself to be a god, and in truth there it failed, not on theories in Europe proclaiming, openly or disguisedly, everyone a god. So the godless Europe became full of gods!
Being de-christianised, Europe still thought to be civilised. In reality she was a poor valley full of dry bones. The only thing she had to boast of was her material power. By material power only she impressed and frightened the unchristian (but not antichristian) countries of Central and Eastern Asia, and depraved the rustic tribes in Africa and elsewhere. She went to conquer not by God or for God, but by material power and for material pleasure. Her spirituality did not astonish any of the peoples on earth. Her materialism astonished all of them. Her inner poverty was seen by India, China, Japan, and partly by Russia. What an amazing poverty! She gained the whole world, and when she looked inside herself she could not find her soul. Where has fled Europe's soul? The present war will give the answer. It is not a war to destroy the world but to show Europe's poverty and to bring back her soul. It will last—this war—as long as Europe remains soulless, Godless, Christless. It will stop when Europe gets the vision of her soul, her only God, her only wealth.
The Church must first awaken out of her sleep and her European emptiness, and then Europe will come again to life. The Church has failed, not because she was not Europeanised, but just because she was too much Europeanised. Instead of inspiring Europe she was inspired by Europe, i.e. emptied by the empty Europe. The soul obeyed the body and became the body itself. All the secular watchwords entered the Church and the Church watchwords were eclipsed. Liberalism, conservatism, ceremonialism, right, nationalism, imperialism, law, democracy, autocracy, republicanism, socialism, scientific criticism, and similar things have filled the Christian theology, Christian service, Christian pulpits as the Christian Gospel. In reality the Christian gospel has been as different from all these worldly ideas and temporal forms as heaven is different from earth. For all these ideas or forms were earthly, bodily, dustly—a convulsive attempt to change unhappiness for happiness through the changing of institutions. The Church ought to have been indifferent towards them, pointing always her principal idea, embodied in Christ. And her principal idea meant never a change of external things, of institutions, but a change of spirit. All the ideas named were secular precepts to cure the world's evil, the very poor drugs to heal the sick Europe outside of the Church and without the Church.
Yet the Church only possessed the true remedy, although she became forgetful of it, because she herself got sick, and instead of giving the world the necessary remedy she looked about to take it from the world. Weakened in her position in the world and forgetful of her external value, the Church, or some parts or parties of the Church, made even coquetry with the current and transitory potencies in order to make her position stronger. Yet the fact stood in history as big as a mountain that the Church always failed when making concessions of her spirit to any temporary power, and when not making concessions as to the visible forms and transitory shapes of human societies.
Neither Ritualism nor Liberalism helps anything without the true Christian spirit. The modern Ritualism and Liberalism are absolutely equally worthless from the Christian point of view, being so hostile to each other as they are, filled with the unclean spirit of hatred, unforgiveness, despising and even persecuting each other. They are equally unchristian and even antichristian. Measured by the mildest measure they are a new edition of the Judaistic Pharisaism and Sadduceeism. The Ritualists cling to their ritual, the Liberals cling to their protest against the Ritualists. But the true spirit by which both of them move and act and write and speak is the unclean spirit of hatred and despite of each other, the very spirit which excludes them both from communion with Christ and the saints. The Church has been equally de-christianised by Ritualists and Liberals, by Conservatives and Modernists, by bowers and by talkers. The Church must be now re-christianised amongst all of them and through all of them.
Let the Church be the Church, i.e. the community of the saints. Let the world know that the Church's mission on earth is not to accumulate wealth, or to gain political power or knowledge, or to cling to this institution or to that, but to cleanse mankind from its unclean, evil spirits, and to fill it with the spirit of saintliness. Let the Church first change her spirit and then urge the whole of mankind to change theirs.
Let the Ritualists know that however devout they might be, still they can call the Protestants their brothers. The most devout have been often killers of their neighbours and killers of Christ.
Let the learned doctors of Protestantism think that however learned they might be, still they are foolish and ignorant enough to be self-satisfied. It is doubtful whether the most elaborate sermon of a Protestant doctor smells more beautifully than incense. The most learned theologians in Germany and elsewhere have whole-heartedly supported the criminal enterprise of the warlike and criminal scientia militans. The deepest learning and the meanest spirit have often shown in history a very brotherly alliance. Christianity is not that.
Let the Pope be congratulated for his tenacious keeping of the idea of Theocracy. But let him consider this idea only as the starting-point in the social science of the Church. His Theocracy has been refused because it was not at the same time Christocracy and Sanctocracy. The saints in Christ are alone infallible. Let the Vatican be filled with saints, and infallibility then will not need to be preached and ordered but only to be silently shown. Nobody believes infallibility upon authority, but everyone will accept it upon Saintliness.
The way of authority is a fallible way.
The way of knowledge is quite as fallible.
But the way of saintliness is infallible.
Every spirit is fallible but the spirit of saintless. The Church is infallible not by any talisman but by her saintliness. The Bishop of Rome or of Canterbury will be infallible only if they are saints. The saints are detached from everything and attached to Christ, so that Christ incarnates His spirit in them. Not we, but Christ in us, is infallible.
Let the people of the Eastern Church stick to their Christian ideal of saintliness. Their interpretation of the Christian spirit may be the best and truest. Yet the ideal must become flesh. Let them not be proud of their not having pride, and exclusive because God chose them to understand the bottomless deepness of the esoteric Christianity. By pride towards the proud and by exclusiveness they may spoil and darken their ideals and remain in the dark.
Let all the Churches feel their unity in the ideal spirit of saintliness. But if that is difficult for them, let them first feel their unity in sinfulness, in committed sins and crimes, in their nakedness and poverty. Just to start with, this first step seems absolutely necessary. Never any great saint became saintly unless he first thought himself equal in impurity and sinfulness with all other human beings. The Churches must go the way of the saints. Their way is the only infallible one.
When you deeply search in history about the causes of the strength of the primitive Church and of the weakness and decay of the modern Church, you will come to a very clear and simple conclusion.
1. The primitive Church was inclusive as to its forms, but exclusive as to its spirit.
2. The modern Church has been exclusive as to its forms, but inclusive as to its spirit.
The primitive Church was very puritanic concerning the Christian spirit. She was not particular as to the vessels in which to pour the new wine, but she was extremely particular as to the wine itself. She borrowed the vessels in Judæa, Alexandria, Athens, Rome, but she never borrowed wine. The Christian spirit and the pagan spirit were just like two opposite poles, like white and black, or day and night. The Church was conscious of it, and jealously watchful that no drop of any foreign spirit should be mixed with the precious spirit of the New Gospel. There existed no thought of compromise, and no idea of inclusiveness whatever regarding the spirit. The terrific conflict of Christianity and Paganism through centuries sprang from the irreconcilability of two different spirits. Were the Church as inclusive as to the spirit as she was to forms, doctrines, customs and worships, conflicts never would arise—but then neither would Christianity arise.
The modern Church is particular as to its institutions, but not particular at all as to its spirit. The Roman Emperors never would persecute the modern Church, for they would easily recognise their own spirit included in her. Nor would the Pharaohs from Egypt persecute modern Christianity. Nor would Areopagus or Akropolis be puzzled so much had St Paul preached to them the modern European Christianity with its complicated spirit of all kinds of compromises with Heaven and Hell, compromise with the State, Plutocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism, Conquest, War, Diplomacy, Secular Philosophy, Secular Science, Agnostic Parliaments, Tribal Chauvinism, Education, Officialism, Bureaucracy, etc., etc. All these things have their own spirit, and every such spirit is partly or wholly included in the spirit of the Church, i.e. of modern Christianity. None of the Christian Churches of our time makes an exception as to this inclusiveness of all kinds of spirits. Even Protestantism, which claims the simplicity of its Christian ritual and administration, represents a lamentable mosaic of spirits gathered from all the pagan corners of secular Europe and mixed up with the Christian wine in the same barrel.
The Church of the East excommunicated thousands of those who crossed themselves with two fingers instead of using three fingers. The Church of the West burnt thousands of those who did not recognise the papal organisation of the Church as the only ark of salvation. Yet there is rarely to be found in the Church annals an excommunication on the ground of chauvinism or brutal egoism. No one of the world conquerors—neither Napoleon nor Kaiser William—have been excommunicated by the Church. It signifies an extreme decadence of the Church. And this decadence penetrates and dominates our own time. Speaking on the reunion of the Churches the peoples of the East are anxious to know—not whether the Church of the West has preserved the unmixed Christian spirit in its integrity, but whether this Church still keeps Filioque as a dogma, and whether she has ikons, and whether she allows eggs and milk in Lent. And the people of the West are anxious to know whether the Eastern Church has a screen quite different from their own screen at the altar, and whether she has been always tenaciously exclusive in teaching, worship and organisation. Who of us and of you asks about the integrity of the Christian spirit? If St Paul were amongst us he would ridicule our controversies on Filioque and all the trifles concerning Church organisation and the external expressions of Christianity. He would ask: What happened with the spirit he preached? What happened with this spirit which excommunicated de facto the Jewish narrow Patriotism and the Roman Imperialism? Have we still this exclusive spirit which moved the world effecting the greatest revolution in History? I am sure he would have to repeat with good reasons to every Church and to everyone of us: "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."
Well, we must come again to this source of Christian strength and greatness, which is Christ's spirit. A new revival, yea, regeneration of Christianity, could be possible only in a united Christian Church; and the union of the Church is possible only upon the ground of the primitive Church, which was inclusive in teaching, worship and organisation, but exclusive in spirit. On the day when we all exclude from ourselves the Jewish and Greek and Roman spirit, and retain only the pure Christian spirit, we shall be at once ready to include each other's Church into one body, into one Christianity. We must be clear about it, and we must confess that the divisions of the church are due to the invasion of a foreign spirit, an unclean spirit, into the Church. When the Church cleanses herself from this foreign unclean spirit she will be victorious over herself, and from this victory to the ultimate victory of Christianity over our planet will be a very short distance.
How can the church get her past strength again and triumph over the evil inside and outside her walls?
If she were united she could get it by waiting for the ruin of Europe—i.e. of a house which is divided in itself—which is not very far off. But she the Church—is divided too. She is fighting with and for the European parties, and against herself. Consequently, in waiting for the ruin of Europe she is waiting for her own ruin. Therefore she must make up her mind lest it is too late. Horribile dictu—she must start a dramatic movement in order to get her soul back.
First of all she must become again a heresy towards Europe and European secular, antidivine civilisation, just as she was a heresy towards the theocratic Israel and semi-theocratic Greece and Rome. Theoretically, she must stick to Theocracy, historically, to Christocracy, and practically to Sanctocracy. She must loose herself from all the chains binding her either to the chariot of any dynasty or of any oligarch or president, or whatever political denomination it may be, and insist upon the Holy Wisdom to lead humanity. It ought to be absolutely indifferent to the Church what political denomination, or social creed, or institutional shape a human society shall have as long as this is founded upon any other ideal but saintliness. The Church ought to know only two denominations—politics and social life, inter-human as well as international and inter racial-racial relations in trade and business, in education and family life—i.e. saintliness and unsaintliness. If you ask what saintliness ought to mean, Christianity has not to argue but to show you the saintliness in the flesh. Christ the saintly Lord, St Paul and St John, Polycarp and Leo, Patrick and Francis, Sergius and Zosim, St Theresa and hundreds of other saints. And if somebody thinks still that a few thousands of Christian saints are not a sufficient argument to show that saintliness is practicable, then the Church has still not to give her ideal up and to take as her ideal thousands of great and small Napoleons and Bismarcks, and Goethes and Spencers, or Medics and Cromwells or Kaisers and Kings—no, in the latter case it would be much nicer for the Church to point out the saintly men outside of Christian walls, like St Hermes and St Pythagoras, or St Krishna and St Buddha, or St Lao-Tse and St Confucius, or St Zoroaster and St Abu-Bekr. Better even is unbaptised saintliness than baptised earthliness.
Saintliness includes goodness and sacrifice, and excludes all the earthly impure spirits of selfishness, pride, quarrels and conquests. Therefore, when the Church returns to her fundamental ideal, she will return to her elementary simplicity in which she was so powerful as to move mountains and empires and hearts at the beginning of her history. That is what the world needs now just as much as it needs air and light, i.e. an elementary spiritual power by which it could be moved, cleared up, purified and brought out of its chaos to a solid and beautiful construction.
Europe has been eclipsed because her Church—her soul—has been eclipsed; the Church has been eclipsed because her principal ideal has been eclipsed. The principal ideal of the Church is saintliness. This ideal, plunged down into darkness like a sun into ashes, must come out again to illuminate the Church and Europe. Europe has tried all the ways but the way of the Church, the European Church has tried all the ways but the way of Christ. Well, then, Europe must try the only way left, which is saintliness. The Church must give an example to Europe.
Europe has been materialistic, heroic, scientific, imperialistic, technical, secular. At last she has to be holy. Whatever she has been, she has been unhappy and restless, and brutal and criminal, unjust and gluttonous. Soldiers and traders, despots and robbers, popes and kings, gluttons and harlots, have ruled Europe, but not yet the saints, the holy wizards. The Church's duty has been to provide Europe with such holy wizards. She has failed because she has been obscured by Europe, as a fine soul often is obscured by a heavy and greedy body. The body, one thought, the soul, another, until their thought became one and the same, i.e. the bodily thought. Now, after a bitter experience, the soul must come to its rights. Europe and Europe's Church have not henceforth to think two different thoughts, but one and the same, and this one thought has not to be a bodily one but a spiritual one. The aim of the Church as well as of Europe has to be God, Christ, saintliness. If this thing is given to the Church and Europe, everything else will be easily given. A Holy Church in Holy Europe!
A holy Europe only can be a missionary Europe. No other mission has Europe on other continents but a Christian one. It was an illusion to speak about Europe's mission in the wide world without Christ. Well, but only a Christlike people can be a missionary of Christ. How could an unholy Europe preach the Holy One?
Do you think that the Arabs, who gave Europe knowledge, are expecting from Europe knowledge? No, they expect Europe's goodwill.
Or do you think that India, whose history is a history of saints, is anxious to accept German materialistic science, individual philosophy, and a destructive and shallow theology? No, they expect from Europe more saintliness than they have had in their history. And that is just very difficult for Europe to give them.
Or do you think that Chino-Japanese civilisation has anything worth mentioning to borrow from Europe but Christian ideals? No, nothing that could make them happier than they have been.
Well then, let Europe kill her pride and self-conceit in this war and become humble and meek. The Church ought to give an example to secular Europe: an example of humility, goodness, sacrifice—saintliness.
But which of the Churches ought to give this example for the salvation of Europe and of the world? Yours, if you like. Why not just your Anglican Church? But whichever undertakes to lead the way will be the most glorious Church. For she will lead the whole Church and through the Church Europe and through Europe the whole world to holiness and victory, to God and His Kingdom.