It is well sometimes to define our terms and phrases, and it is absolutely necessary in this case. What is it that we mean when we speak of the religious life of a people, Christian and non-Christian alike? Our soldiers have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with Hindoos and Mohammedans, whose British commander, on the eve of their first battle, addressed them in words which ought to be long remembered by those who are working and praying for the hastening of God’s kingdom, appealing to their faith, and reminding them that prayers were ascending from Mosque and from Temple to the God of all, on their behalf.

The Hindoos and Moslems have their religious life as well as ourselves. And it behoves us of the Christian Church, especially when such stirring words can be addressed to two Eastern peoples, so widely different in their creeds, to remind them that their prayers are going up to the same “God of all,” to look very earnestly and sympathetically at the religious life and worship of all the different Churches which make up the “Mystical Body of Christ and the blessed company of all faithful people.”

It is along that way and that alone—the affectionate, respectful, and sympathetic interest in the religious life and worship of those who differ from us and those not in communion with us, that unity lies, and I feel sure there is no other. The religious life of a man, or people, is his life as it is influenced by the creed he professes and the worship he offers.

We are not thinking at the moment of a moral life, for a moral life is led by many who, as they would express it, “make no religious profession.” It is open to us to question whether they are not more influenced than they are aware by the religion of those about them, which is in the very air they breathe, for there is such an influence as “religious atmosphere”; or we may think also that they have more religion than they suspect; but they themselves would disclaim all this. Some live, as John Stuart Mill lived, frankly without religion, yet leading a blameless and irreproachable moral life. Then as a contrast there are the lives of religious people leaving as far as moral values are concerned much to be desired, and probably, in many cases, most of all by themselves.

Religious life, however, is creed and worship translated into daily life and expression, effort and achievement; and accepting that definition I unhesitatingly claim for the Russian people that they are one of the most religious peoples in the world. Their religion is the desire and effort to know God. “This is life eternal, to know God, and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent.” The Russian has not been fully taught as yet the ethical and moral side of this knowing God, though he is ready for it, but only its mystical side. He seeks the knowledge of God, quite simply, as a spiritual experience.

It will always be found that when races have received civilization and Christianity suddenly, as the Russians have done, while they astonish and charm by their spiritual fervour and deep earnestness, they disappoint by their want of consistency in moral life. But spiritual fervour and great earnestness arising out of a real need for God and a deep sense of His meeting that need “fulfilling minds and granting hearts’ desires,” and a real sense of communion with the Great Eternal in Christ in beautiful and uplifting worship, afford the best of all foundations for building up moral conduct permanently and well.

To the Russian, as to the ancient Hebrew, moral law will only lastingly and effectually appeal when prefaced by “God hath said.” His religion is God; the knowledge of the Most High as revealed in Christ. And he is one of the most consistently religious persons in the world, for he must have his religion everywhere, and, just as the Hebrew felt it must be, “when talking with his children, when sitting in his house, when walking by the way, when going to lie down, and when rising up, written upon the posts of his house, and on the gates.” The mystical or spiritual temperaments of the two peoples are much the same. Russians have a passion for God. They never want to be away from the sense and consciousness of His presence. Only when they have gained some sense of this spiritual endowment of the Russian race will my readers be able to see where their religious life corresponds with our own, and where it widely diverges from it. We have spoken of this war as a righteous war; the Russians as a religious one! They have brought their religion into it as they have never done into any war before. A Russian officer, for instance, gave a very picturesque account of the great battle of the Vistula last October, and ended with these words: “My company was the first to cross the river, which seemed to boil from the bursting of the shells. Afterwards nine companies rushed the enemy’s position. A priest with long, streaming hair, and holding high a cross amid a hail of bullets, stood blessing the soldiers as they ran past.” That is the true Russian, his religion everywhere and in everything. There is nothing in life, throughout the year, however secular it may seem to us to be, which does not have that blessing by the priest. The war has had it from first to last. All through mobilization, in the families from which the bread-winner was to go, there would be special little private services such as I have described in my last chapter. On the day when the conscripts were to depart from the village there would be the Liturgy in church, with all who could be present, and others outside. There would be, it has been described for us, the solemn reading of the Holy Gospel in the open-air, the book resting upon a living lectern; and as they rode away the last thing the departing men would see, as with those nine companies on the Vistula, would be the cross lifted high by a priest, with his long hair streaming over his shoulders, or out upon the wind.

It would be just the same all through the long journeys: the sacred ikons were carried, the priest marched steadily along, or sat in the railway carriages with the soldiers, and always with his cross. The soldiers of course saluted their priests as they saluted their officers, and for a time it was a little puzzling to decide how this salute should be suitably returned in such a war as this. For a priest to raise his hand to his cap did not seem to belong to his sacred office, and so it was decided he should touch his cross instead. Quite apart from the regular and official services, the priest would be always fulfilling his part in bringing God home to his countrymen, until the very end when he stood blessing them, as we have been told, as they rushed past him to attack, many of them to return no more. There is something very inspiring in the thought that the last earthly object many of them saw as they rushed on to death was the Cross of Him Who had robbed death of all its terrors, and brought Immortality to light.

One of my great reasons for looking to the Orthodox Church of Russia to give us our first opportunity, in seeking to promote the larger unity of Christendom, is, as I had occasion to say at a large public meeting in London last year, that, like ourselves, they wish to have the New Testament sense of the presence of Christ. I cannot use any other phrase to express my meaning. It is to me the whole spirit of their worship, not only at the Holy Communion, where one would expect it, but at all the other services as well. Litanies form a very important part of their worship, and as one hears that softly repeated “Lord, have mercy” (Gospodi pomilui) again and again from the choir, it is as if they were all conscious of speaking straight to their Lord with the feeling that He is there Himself to grant their prayer. No other refrain that I have ever heard has the same appealing note of real and moving faith.

I have attended the “all-night service” at S. Isaac’s, in Petrograd, on Saturdays at 6 p.m. It lasts two hours in cathedrals and churches, but all night in monasteries and convents, and some of us going to S. Isaac’s for the first time would almost wish that it could be “all night” there also. The glorious richness of the men’s voices, their deep rolling basses and sweet tenors, the silvery trebles of the boys—there is no organ or other accompaniment—when heard as a new experience makes one involuntarily think to one’s self “I have never heard prayer and praise expressed like this before.” Whether one is behind the screen, where I was conducted at once, or standing with the choir before it—there are no seats in a Russian church—noting their picturesque uniforms like those of officers, and their profound reverence, or moving amongst the congregation, and looking towards the screen, the same impression is given everywhere and by every one, “We are praising Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ.”

The screen separates the sacrarium from the body of the church, and is a carved partition painted and gilded, and in the cathedrals and great churches, is covered with silver and gold ikons, often richly jewelled, and with numerous lamps and tapers burning before them. At each side of this screen is a narrow door through which people seem to pass at will, to and fro, for there is a great feeling of freedom in a Russian church, and every one does just what he feels led to do. No ladies, however, may ever pass behind. In its centre are folding doors which are only used for ceremonial purposes, and are called “The Royal Gates.” In the Liturgy it is a moment of deep solemnity when they are opened wide, and the priest passes through carrying the bread and wine for consecration. This is “The Great Entrance.” At the evening service on Saturday night also there is an entrance, when the deacon carries the Gospels through, before which the gates stand open wide for a little while, and the congregation may look straight through. Immediately within stands the altar, a perfectly plain, square structure with nothing at all upon it but a large copy of the Four Gospels, and behind it is the seven-branched candlestick. It has an extraordinary effect upon the worshipper who has only just come to Russia when the Royal Gates are thrown open thus, and, with incense filling the air, the seven lamps on the great candlestick come into view. It is for a moment as if one was back in the days of Zacharias and Elisabeth, waiting for him to come forth through the gates to bless us, as he did on that memorable occasion after the announcement of the birth of S. John the Baptist. It is, however, only for a moment that the Temple fills the mind, for on looking up the representation of our Lord is there in the great window above, where He seems to look down upon us in love and blessing, and “The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,” seems to have new and blessed significance.

Russian worship to me is just dominated by the very presence of Christ. All the meretricious surroundings, the lights and glittering and jewelled ikons have not the least power to diminish the joyous, thankful sense of it. He is in the midst of us “gathered together in His Name.” Every one seems to feel it, every one seeks to realize it. They are there for that! That is why the beautiful voices keep singing “Gospodi pomilui” or “Lord, be merciful to us.” We feel it is real worship, and I can only hope that many of my readers who have not had the joy of it in that special way may yet have the opportunity afforded them. There are Russian churches, of course, in England, and I have happily and helpfully worshipped in the Russian church in Paris at 6 p.m. on Saturdays; but Russian worship can only be truly known and fully shared in Russia.

This “New Testament sense of the presence of Christ,” as I have called it, is no doubt promoted by the extraordinary veneration given to the Gospels, both in their external and internal form. There is an intense feeling of close personal attention as the deacon carries them through the Royal Gates. They are always beautifully bound, rimmed and clasped with gold or silver, and often sparkling with diamonds and other precious stones. A beautifully bound copy—in ordinary churches the best they have—rests upon the altar, in its very centre, with a silken covering, and when the priest comes to celebrate he first kisses it, and then, lifting it up and setting it upon end, and laying the corporal where it has rested, with the chalice and paten upon it, proceeds to the Liturgy. The consecration takes place on that part of the altar where the Gospels have lain before, and where they will again be laid when the service is over.

The four evangelists always appear painted upon the Royal Gates, together with a representation of the Annunciation, our Lord, and the Holy Virgin, on either side. This is never departed from. In every church which follows traditional lines there are the four huge pillars holding up the whole structure—typifying the four evangelists again. Upon the roof they are set forth in the four cupolas, which are always there at the corners, while a fifth rising above them typifies our Lord over and above and dominating, yet supported by, them. Then there is nothing in the ordinary services to compare with the reading of the Holy Gospel to the people, nor is any special or private ministration complete without reading some portion of these, the most important parts of the sacred Scriptures.

It is easy to see, therefore, how it comes about that the Russian sense of the living Christ is essentially that which is realized by His Apostles and described in the New Testament.

Last year no less than three writers, as different from each other as they could well be, writing of visits paid to the Holy Land—Mr. Robert Hichens, the novelist, in The Holy Land, Sir Frederick Treves, the well-known and eminent surgeon, in The Land that is Desolate, and Mr. Stephen Graham, in With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem—all alike show us that no one had made the same impression upon them as the Russians who had come to realize their Lord in the very place where He had lived our human life. They all so clearly felt that those simple-minded folk, as they followed traditions and visited one place after another from Bethlehem to Calvary, and wept where He had wept, and prayed where He had prayed, looked over the places and the waters upon which His eyes had rested, crossed themselves reverently again and again where He had suffered, and sung Te Deum and Alleluia where He had risen, were looking not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, believing with all the strength of their great and simple hearts that “the things which are seen are temporal, while the things which are not seen are eternal.”

To the devout Russian the so-called good things of this life are unsubstantial and swiftly passing experiences, while the great and only realities worth thinking about seriously are those spiritual experiences of the Apostles as they went in and out with Christ and companied with Him, which are now described in the Gospels that we may have the same “even to the end of the ages.” If Russia gives, as we pray she may, a lead to Christendom in the direction of unity, she will have a wonderfully uplifting and apostolic contribution to offer to the common stock of our Christian heritage.

And yet with all this wealth of very real spiritual experience there goes also a sad deficiency of moral conduct. “But that vitiates it all,” some of my readers may exclaim. No; it does not. We, with our very different temperament, have come to substitute morality for religion and the ethical for the spiritual, whereas for the “whole man,” as even Ecclesiastes tells us, both are necessary. Morality is not religion at all while the spiritual faculties are absolutely quiescent and the soul knows no need of God nor cries out for Him. A deep sense of the spiritual and a longing and effort to attain touch with the eternal is religion, although an imperfect morality impairs and cripples the adequate witness, the full unfettered enjoyment of it. And, as another writer has lately done in the political sphere, I would plead for the Russians that “they did not get a fair start.”

I have already described the rough-and-ready way in which they were converted to Christianity, never having anything like our opportunities of instruction from the first. I have never heard a Russian sermon! The vast majority of the clergy have never been trained to preach, and would not be able to do so if they tried. The people are not taught at all in church, except by what is read to them in Scripture, or what they read for themselves. Let Englishmen give them “fair play” all round, both in political and constitutional, and also in moral deficiencies; and let us remember that it was to a body of real and earnest Christians—“saints” and “faithful,” he himself calls them—that S. Paul found it necessary to write and caution against “the lusts of the flesh, foolish talking and unseemly jesting, covetousness and uncleanness, lying and stealing.” If it was necessary to write those fifth and sixth chapters of the Ephesians to a body of Christian believers of whose sincerity an Apostle had no doubt, we may well have hopeful patience with a great body of our fellow Christians whose want of consistency in conduct provokes such ready criticism. It is well known how a mystical people like the West Indians (I have described it at length in a former book, A Bishop among Bananas, in chap. v) resent being accused of theft when helping themselves to “God’s gifts,” as they call them, in the shape of fruit and fowls, when they would not dream of taking money, clothing, or other material things, or would consider themselves thieves if they did. And so it interested me to learn the other day that the Russian peasant views thefts of the same kind of things in much the same way, drawing in his mind a distinction between that which God gives for all and that which man produces for himself. It is imperfect reasoning, we know, as there is no real distinction between what a man produces by cultivation and what he manufactures; but we can understand an untrained and rather childlike mind making such a distinction.

The devout Russian peasantry in this stage often seem to illustrate our Lord’s words concerning things revealed to “babes” which even the “wise and prudent” seem to miss. Sir Donald M. Wallace again tells the story in Our Russian Ally which he told in his Russia—it will bear constant repetition—as an instance of real spiritual insight in a simple and untrained mind. “I remember once asking a common labourer,” he says, “what he thought of the Mussulman Tartars among whom he happened to be living; and his reply, given with evident sincerity, was—‘Not a bad sort of people.’ ‘And what about their religion?’ I inquired. ‘Not at all a bad sort of faith—you see they received it like the colour of their skins, from God.’” He assumed, of course, in his simple piety, that whatever comes from God must be good. It necessitated a very special spiritual experience and real vision before a Christian Apostle could say the same thing, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons”; but that common labourer in this little incident had taken in the same wide outlook, in a perfectly normal way, from his ordinary surroundings and the religious influences which make up such an important portion of his life.

The lesson is learnt early. I was, one morning, in an elementary school in Siberia, just before the work of the day began, to speak to the children. They opened with prayer, but how different from prayers in our own schools! The master and teachers did nothing except pray with the rest. At a sign that all was ready a boy of twelve stepped out and took his place before the ikon in its corner, and then bowing with that inimitable grace which belongs alone to the Russian when at prayer, and making the sign of the Cross, he gravely led the simple prayers of the whole school, all singing softly and reverently in unison. It was all inexpressibly touching and appealing, and to be treasured up with those other things of which one says, “I shall never forget.”

The sign of the Cross is always made very slowly and solemnly, quite differently from other Churches, and from right to left upon the breast, and it is always accompanied by a slow and reverent bowing of the head, and is repeated usually three times. It is the special sign during the public services that a worshipper is just then feeling his or her own part in it. People do not use this devotion at set times during service, but just when they wish, and as the spirit moves them. I have been in the S. Isaac’s choir when all the men and boys were singing a hymn, and suddenly a man near me would stop, bow, and cross himself devoutly, and then resume his hymn. No one would take the least notice, but all would go on singing as before. Then a choir-boy, after a moment or two, would do the same, his companions continuing to sing till their turn of being moved within came also. I have seen soldiers in the ranks do just the same when bareheaded at an outdoor service. There is so much spontaneity and elasticity and liberty in Russian worship. They do just as they feel “led by the Spirit” to do.

One of the most interesting experiences I had last year was attending on the Feast of the Epiphany—the appointed day for that and similar services—the blessing of the Neva. The ceremony takes place just outside the Winter Palace at Petrograd. Diplomatists and other visitors who wish to look on, stand within at the windows, but I much preferred to be outside, even though it was bitterly cold and we had to be bareheaded. There was a magnificent and bewildering gathering of Russian ecclesiastics, gorgeously vested. Priceless ikons were carried, and beautiful banners of rich embroideries, the whole effect being strangely Eastern in character. A few only could enter the small kiosk on the river’s bank where the water, brought in a silver basin, was blessed. But the thrilling thing that day was the glorious singing, chant and refrain, which so richly filled the air, stirring the very depths of one’s being, and the innumerable rows of deeply attentive soldiers in their long grey coats, whose frequent bowings and devout crossings all through the ranks showed that, though they were there officially, they were there to worship also. The Emperor walked from the palace amongst others and returned to it, bareheaded like any common soldier, with a perfectly plain overcoat like the rest, and nothing whatever to distinguish him from the crowd. He was unattended and moved quite freely with the rest, and could not be recognized except by a few of us standing near the door, who were already familiar with his appearance. There was but little cheering in consequence, though he acknowledged it in that modest and unaffected way which always distinguishes him. It was then that I saw the Grand Duke Nicholas for the first time, the generalissimo in the war, a magnificent man. He had certain announcements to make, or directions to give, and his grand voice rang out on the clear air so that every one could hear. “A real leader of men that,” one felt instinctively without dreaming how soon one would have cause to remember the thought, under tragically altered circumstances.

We cannot possibly attach too much importance to the fact, admitted on all sides and in the most unexpected quarters, that this great race, coming so very closely into our lives, uniting their destiny in some measure with our own, is above all others a distinctly religious people. Russia, as must be ever becoming more and more evident, is to be our ally in a way hitherto entirely unknown to our race and nation. Thoughtful observers have seen it coming for some time, and are not taken at all by surprise, but the idea is still new and not altogether welcome to many. There is no doubt at all about it in my own mind, and I shall return to it more fully in a later chapter, that while we shall still remain the friends of France and act the part of true “friends in need” should occasion again arise, and look with a friendly eye upon other nationalities, and even—how much I hope it—make up our quarrel with Prussia and the German peoples she has influenced against us, yet with Russia our relations are already altogether different, and our two empires are rapidly beginning to realize that they are coming together in an entirely different relationship, to knit up true and enduring ties of brotherly unity with each other, not for selfish purposes at all, but for a great work together for civilization and for God. We Anglo-Saxons are a deeply religious people at heart, though with our temperamental reticence and reserve we speak least about the things of which we feel the most. The Russians are also a sincerely religious people, and they, on the other hand, bring out most readily, spontaneously, and naturally, the things which mean most to them. We are unlike each other in temperament, yet absolutely like each other in our view of the deep things of God. Thus complementary to one another, we have a real intelligible hope of a lasting friendship. We should have no hope at all of any such tie between ourselves and them if they did not share our serious view of human life and responsibility, and base that view upon a firm belief in God. We should feel at heart that we had no real confidence in their stability, grit, and powers of staying and lasting out.

Surely the one thing that has come out during the war is the supreme importance of morale. Napoleon went so far, I have seen it stated, as to say it counted for an army, in proportion to its numbers, as three to one. I remember too how the military correspondent of the Times, in one of his most interesting articles on the Balkan War, when it was drawing to a close, explained the disastrous defeat of the Turkish army by the gradual loss of morale they had sustained by the decay of religion amongst them under the rÉgime of the Young Turks. Prayers had been largely given up by the troops, who no longer had the ministrations of their spiritual leaders, and morale had gone in consequence. Then had come disaster. He contrasted with all this the tremendous fervour of the Balkan League, and described a picture he had recently seen in a French illustrated paper. Two French officers were shown looking at a Bulgarian regiment on their knees, their priest praying for them and blessing them before they went into action. “What would one of our generals get,” said one of the French officers to his friend, “if he ordered such a thing as that?” “He would get the victory,” quietly said the other.

I am expecting great things from Russia, and for us through Russia, for civilization and for God, and what I have written is being ever more and more widely felt by others also, and even expressed in daily papers, where at one time we should not have expected such a thing to be thought of in the midst of a great war. “That Russia is one of the most truly religious countries in the world is proved by the crowds which filled and overflowed in all the churches yesterday when thanksgiving services were held in celebration of the victory, nor is it possible to doubt the sincerity and devotion of the worshippers. The firm belief in the divine ruling of the world is to be found among all classes.”[7]