CHURCH AND STATE IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume LXIX, Issue 119, 22 May 1905, Page 6

CHURCH AND STATE IN RUSSIA

* — - A DECISIVE DEFEAT. THE RESIGNATION OF M. POBIKDOXOSTSEFF, "PobiedonohtselF is fallen," monk whispered to monk find abbot to abbot with gladness, tempered by doubt, in the cloisters ol tho Alexander Novsky Monastery on tho 6th April '(wrote the SI. Petersburg correspondent of tho London Telegraph). For tho welcome tidings had como that tho lay Torquemad.i of Orthodoxy is retiring fiom the scene of his labours and has placed his resignation in the hands of the Tsar. "Ood gn.nt it is true," they pray. Having spent a quarter of a century in a seemingly successful struggle, ho quits tho battlefield after a, decisive, defeat. This thiii, dry, bespectacled official, whoso theological unction was like oil springing from a rock, has played .in important political part in the Empire for the last twenty -live, years. Somo people regarded him as the saviour of tho autocracy., and many more ius the destroyer of orthodoxy, but in truth he was merely a pedant, who allowed his views to degenerate- into convictions and found monarchs willing to adopt them as political principles. M. PobiedouostsetT is Urynsdutt quickened into life- and rained to tho position of tho mentor of Koyalty. 1 often met liim during tho close of Alexander Il.'s reign, and shortly uftor the accession of Alexander 111. Under the dictatorship of Loris Melikoff, after Alexander 11. had been killed, M. Pobiedonostseff was wont to begin and to end all bin strictures on Russian Ministeru with the words, "Those men have lost their heads ; they are mod." Tho Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, when raised to their place, proved to bo not a statesman, but a mere cold-blooded fanatic, whose views of men and things are curious, not practical. In his taut important work, called "Tho Moscow Thesaurus," he condemns European political institutions ns the embodiments of two dangerous errors, luniely, rationalism and belief in man's essentially good nature. Tho ulectivo system, he holds, is loathsome to men of honour and duty. Tho newspaper Press is unspeakably pernicious, ruining tho whole nation by demoralising it« families. Tho spread of enlightenment among the people is absolutely baneful, and because it w powerless to "endow them with underaUvnding it bestows upon them mere knowledge, and teaches them to think logically, and that is bad. Faith is tho root of almost nil good in national existence, and the essential part of faith is tho Church liturgy, through which the people learn intuitively the- meaning of the Church's teachings. Therefore attempts to reunite the Churches are meaningless, for tho Churches will always bo divided so long a* their ritual is different. The ideal of ecclesiastical government is that which prevails in Russia. " Tho religious lifo of a pcoplo like ours, who are abandoned to themselves and left untaught, is Mimmcntnl. Tho Bible is non-existent for illiterate people, for whom all that remains aio Divine services and certain prayers. In somo lonely places the people understand absolutely nothing, neither tho words of the Church service nor oven the Our Father. And yet in all these untutored minds is erected, a» at Athens, ono'knows not by whom, un altar to tho Unknown God." Those are M. Pobiedonostieffs own published words, and explain why ho was opposed to popular ■enlightenment, but the most extraordinary part of the deliberate teaching of this inspircr of monarchy is that he declares that if "our people aie ignorant in matters of fuith, saturated with superstition, spoiled by reprehensible and vicious habits, and if our clergy are rude, ignorant, and sluggish," one should regard those phenomena us " not important," and for a quarter of a contuiry these principles have been vigorously and perse- . veringly applied to -the State- and to the j Church, which is become n mere prop of ( tho State, with results writ so largo in contemporary history that nil who run may read. In fact, "-the Orthodox Church is to-day little better that a department of tho police. It has no spiritual head, no canonical government, no unity, and no union. AU the rays of its spiritual grace are focussed in the faded figure of M. Pobiedo- , nostJwff, who, like a !en«, collect* the rays J th*t burn, bat himself remains cold. One bishop cannot arrange a meeting with an- j other without applying t«> the Ober-Pro- j curator of the Holy Synod. Grwt. there- J fore, wan his aetoniabment and di* A ati*fac. > tion on learning that the Metropolitan j Archbishop Anthony h«d discussed Church . reform with M. Witte unknown to him- j self, yet with the Imperial authoriwttoD. j When informed of the design it had at- i ready assumed a very practical shape, and i although the Tstnr jvmored the project at j his destic from the competence of the *p«- ; cial cominittoe unoVr M. Witt* 1 to the Synod, where M. PobiedonoBt*eff ruled supreme, the precaution was too Utc. He began by asking the Metropolitan Arch- , bishop why ho hud leagued himself with j M Witt? instead of broaching this itn- , portant matter to the Ober-I'rocurator, who alone rcpnacntu the Church in the Imperial Council and tho Committee of Minisbeis. M. Pobiedonostseff, however, in the namo of tho autonomous Church, assured the AivhbUhop that the Church did not need uutonoiny. but the members of the Holy Synod, who met at too Archbishop's house, thinking differently, unanimously voted for reform, and, fearing lest th« Ober-Prouurutor might pigeonhole flhur resolution, determined simultaneously to present a holy image to tho Tsar. Then only Iti.t Majesty ivw requested to recfivo tho Archbishop Anthony in audience, uh 1 announced yesterday. This sucqeis of the Orthodox clergy means, of course, tlm defeat of M. Pobi«donosUeft, who thus beholds the uttor annihilation in less than ft week of his work of twenty-fivo years. And M. Witto is the Apollyon or destroyer. It in hardly too mucli (o affirm that during two reigns Russia, has served as a seed-plot for tho teachings of M. Pobiedonostaeff. Under Alexander the seed wan sown unsparingly, and undr Kicholan 11. the fruits arc being consumed reluctantly.